Advice from a person who was laid off 8 years ago and started chromatography company:
1, Don't buy any equipment for home use. You will eventually kill yourself and people around you. What if I buy one principally to rebuild and on which to learn the software? Organic solvents are flammable and toxic. Regulation are strict and your "home" activities can be punishable (EPA, FBI, DEA)
2. You will have hard time finding tasks which are relative to your potential employers. But if one learns the instrument techniques and operation, one can then present to an employer and follow his "recipes", gradually expanding into method development Very soon if you don't see response to your "home classes" you will abandon it after wasting few thousand dollars. I've already "wasted" many thousands of dollars on HPLC and other chemical training without seeing any return on my investment. (I do not consider any education a "waste", but I have to find some means of supporting myself.)
3. You need constant interaction with people regarding new trends, methods and approaches. It is impossible to do at home and just through internet/emails. I could contribute much more intelligibly at the ACS chromatography group meetings if I could have some first hand experience
4. Learn basics, mechanisms of interactions, out-of-the-box solutions. If you know what is "inside" the column/method you will be more successful than learning Chemstation (or other software). I have already studied these things, yet have been unable to get a chemistry job that would expose me to HPLC. Pressing buttons is easy and you can learn it in a day or two.
5. With 100s of experienced LC-people out of work, why somebody would hire a person who learned chromatography at home? I would rather hire somebody with experience or fresh graduate, who's brains are not clogged and who can learn everything fast. This will cost much less. It's not as though I have no chemical experience. I have been a wet bench assay method developer and trouble-shooter for 25 years, reading hundreds of peer-reviewed classical chemistry journal articles and book chapters, treating of side reactions, protections, ion-pairing, masking, demasking, homogeneous preciptitation, non-aqueous solvent chemistry, equipment assemblies, SIE's, passivation, etc; I have advanced degrees and a score of ACS continuing education credits, (including many for HPLC & mass spec). With this experience, I have repeatedly been able to troubleshoot and resolve work-stopping instrumental experiment problems that have eluded the "younger-brained" or less-rigorously trained analyst/instrument operators. Labs need both kinds of people. And as regards salary, I have repeatedly offered to work at or below entry-level wage, which takes us to the problem I discuss in the next paragraph.
6. Consider taking entry level position in any chemical position with some LC equipment. You can learn this on your job in the lab next to you in your spare time. Third shift in Environmental Lab is very convenient for this. I have taken this type of job for the last 4 years, and because it's entry-level, I'm put "on-the-time-clock", which means that I am not allowed to examine or experiment with anything that is not on my assigned list of duties. I have lost 2 jobs for hanging around after hours, "off the clock" trying to resolve difficult problems for other analysts or to study instrumentation. These days, that is what "entry level" means, and that is why I need the instrument and the software at a location where I am permitted to explore it.
7. Consider changing field Chemistry is the only field that I know well and love; it is supremely well-suited to my temperament and to my particular variety of intelligence.
8. Consider starting your own business In spite of everything you have just said?
