Chromatography Forum

Bruker is sending someone out next week; I'm just trying to do what I can in the meantime. They don't appear to be the greatest at customer service; as I said, I'm starting to wish I was hear for the purchasing process.

I'm pretty much positive that all leaks have been sealed at this point. The problem appears to be in the MS, but may have been caused by leaks that went undetected for ~1.5 months before I got here. I really hate that this is happening in my first month on the job, but I can hardly be blamed for something that was caused by those before me, right?

I can hardly be blamed for something that was caused by those before me, right?

One thing I've learned over the years is that beign blamed and being the guilty party may or may not be related... But that's other stories for other days.

Bruker is sending someone out next week; I'm just trying to do what I can in the meantime. They don't appear to be the greatest at customer service; as I said, I'm starting to wish I was hear for the purchasing process.

I'm pretty much positive that all leaks have been sealed at this point. The problem appears to be in the MS, but may have been caused by leaks that went undetected for ~1.5 months before I got here. I really hate that this is happening in my first month on the job, but I can hardly be blamed for something that was caused by those before me, right?

I know how you feel. I was great at working on the GC-MS systems at my old job. I have been at my current job now for two years and I/we are still trying to get a certain magnetic sector instrument to work. A lot of it has to do with poor support from the vendor as we keep receiving broken parts and there is only one service person nationwide right now for this instrument. Our service contract says we get "within 5 days on-site response" for a service call and we are averaging 2 to 3 weeks from them for a visit in the last two years. More than twice a service engineer was working on it on-site for over a month straight. I don't feel that bad personally because I found out many of these instruments in the world are experiencing similar problems. I think the vendor is overwhelmed.

On the other hand, early on a lot of my problems with the instrument were basically user error in that I just didn't know enough about it as the learning curve for it takes about a year to complete. Now I know enough about it to know when to call the service engineer .

Don't let it bring you down. Use this as a learning experience as these types of problems usually help you to learn the most about the instrument in the long run

Thanks, Ty, and really, I do know that. Solving problems is absolutely the best way to learn an instrument, and I think I am definitely learning MS faster than I would be if everything was going great.

Perhaps one of the best ways to learn is when things go wrong. It is frustrating, but you will know many details on how to keep the instrument working its best.

And, I should have added above that if you can take command of a situation in the first month on the job, this is a very good thing. And, most places it gets noticed.

Interesting: A circuit board arrived in the mail from Bruker ahead of the service rep's visit. Do ou think they know what's wrong and just haven't told me?

They may have a guess, but the better part here is that they are going to be sure the service engineer has everything he reasonably might need ready for him when he arrives.

I've seen the case where the service engineer arrives, does diagnostics and orders parts. Parts arrive over night and if they work good, if not more are ordered over night...

They may have a guess, but the better part here is that they are going to be sure the service engineer has everything he reasonably might need ready for him when he arrives.

I've seen the case where the service engineer arrives, does diagnostics and orders parts. Parts arrive over night and if they work good, if not more are ordered over night...

Don, you don't know how lucky you are ! Overnight orders, what a pleasure. I am just off the phone from chasing gas that I ordered two weeks ago, stuff from major chemical suppliers takes 3 - 4 months to get here.

Peter

Don, you don't know how lucky you are ! Overnight orders, what a pleasure. I am just off the phone from chasing gas that I ordered two weeks ago, stuff from major chemical suppliers takes 3 - 4 months to get here.

I've seen an overnight order where on the next day the shipper has been trying to figure out where the shipment went...

Service tech was here two days, today will be day two with the lead tech. I don't feel so bad about not being able to solve this problem now!

If you had a significant air leak for 1.5 months as you say I'd be looking at the ion detector / multiplier. It sounds like you have covered pretty much everything else short of a board failure.

So, after many, many man-hours with three different Bruker reps, as well as the consultant who set up the cold trap, we're ready to run. Nearly every part in the MS was replaced, finally the entire source module was replaced, and the MS came back to life; we speculate the source was completely coated by column bleed, possibly due to air leakage, though we were never able to find a leak. I had cleaned the lenses, but not the source body, so perhaps the body had active stuff on it the was "eating" all of our ions. In addition, we determined that another source of contamination was Viton ferrules in Bruker's plumbing outgassing some fluoropolymer. All of these were replaced with Valco furrules, and Valco "getters" were placed after all system pneumatics. This eliminated large, ugly, early-eluting peaks.

This uncovered a new problem, strange peaks of mostly m/z 52 and 56 were coming out around the same time, but were covered by the fluoropolymer peaks. After much experimenting, we solved this one, too. Nitrogen is our sample gas, and, somehow, when N2 from the cold trap goes on column, it is causing something to come off. Purge the trap with He before raising the temp, et voila, no more peaks.

So the question is, how could nitrogen possibly be reacting with the column? We're happy to have it working, but completely baffled as to why.