Chromatography Forum

Thinking a little more on this one. If the quads were removed during the maintenance, make sure that the contacts inside the radiator tube are connecting with the quads as they should. It would definitely give the error saying peak widths too wide if there is a problem with the contacts. It used to happen often with the 5971/72s when the quad contacts went bad. The 5973/75s have different contacts and should not go bad, but if they were damaged with removal and reinstall of the quads it could cause a problem.

So far, we have replaced the HED supply and the sideboard. Neither fixed the problem. I'm going to attempt to replace the power distribution board today.

Yeah. We've also replace the HED supply and the power distribution board before (but not the sideboard). That also did not solved our problem.

Yeah, the power distribution board wasn't it. We have a main board coming soon.

Thinking a little more on this one. If the quads were removed during the maintenance, make sure that the contacts inside the radiator tube are connecting with the quads as they should. It would definitely give the error saying peak widths too wide if there is a problem with the contacts. It used to happen often with the 5971/72s when the quad contacts went bad. The 5973/75s have different contacts and should not go bad, but if they were damaged with removal and reinstall of the quads it could cause a problem.

Hi James,

They didn't do anything with quads as I've observed. I wonder if they could dismantle and clean up the HED? Is it possible?

Thanks.

Thinking a little more on this one. If the quads were removed during the maintenance, make sure that the contacts inside the radiator tube are connecting with the quads as they should. It would definitely give the error saying peak widths too wide if there is a problem with the contacts. It used to happen often with the 5971/72s when the quad contacts went bad. The 5973/75s have different contacts and should not go bad, but if they were damaged with removal and reinstall of the quads it could cause a problem.

Hi James,

They didn't do anything with quads as I've observed. I wonder if they could dismantle and clean up the HED? Is it possible?

Thanks.

Just remove the two screws that hold the HED in place and pull out the power lead from the socket on the side board, then clean with IPA and a kemwipe. That is what an Agilent engineer showed me and it works great. Very easy to do. If you remove the HED mount though, it is possible for the ceramic piece that holds the quads to come lose and allow them to drop, so be careful if you remove that.

Just remove the two screws that hold the HED in place and pull out the power lead from the socket on the side board, then clean with IPA and a kemwipe. That is what an Agilent engineer showed me and it works great. Very easy to do. If you remove the HED mount though, it is possible for the ceramic piece that holds the quads to come lose and allow them to drop, so be careful if you remove that.[/quote]

Hi James,

We've did that but still the problem persist. Do you think that it is possible that the rough pump might be the problem?

Thanks.

espx_2, we actually just switched our rough pump yesterday and it didn't seem to help. Who knows, it might work for you.
At this point we are wondering if we have some sort of lab-wide power problem because I feel like we have tried pretty much everything...

espx_2, we actually just switched our rough pump yesterday and it didn't seem to help. Who knows, it might work for you.
At this point we are wondering if we have some sort of lab-wide power problem because I feel like we have tried pretty much everything...

Nothing seems to work... I'm all out of ideas... Anyone around has?

We were able to fix the problem! What we did was we took out the entire detector (off the hinge) and compared it with one of our detectors that worked. We noticed that the metal wire that wraps around the underside of the quad was crooked ever so slightly. (There would have been no way to tell this was crooked if we didn't compare it with a working detector) We straightened it and it worked. I hate the solution because I spent so much time on it but at least it's working. Hopefully it's that easy for you.

We were able to fix the problem! What we did was we took out the entire detector (off the hinge) and compared it with one of our detectors that worked. We noticed that the metal wire that wraps around the underside of the quad was crooked ever so slightly. (There would have been no way to tell this was crooked if we didn't compare it with a working detector) We straightened it and it worked. I hate the solution because I spent so much time on it but at least it's working. Hopefully it's that easy for you.

Emar,

Currently, we're on the verge of having our MSD in operation. We're not encountering HED error. We just tighten everything. But we still have numerous peaks in Autotune scan report (870 peaks below 10% abundance) and m/z 502 with little jagged image.

How can we correct the jagged lines on m/z 502?

Thanks.

This is actually really crazy because we're having that same problem but on a different 5975. Unfortunately we haven't fixed it yet. I tried cleaning the HED but that didn't seem to do anything. I've never really come across this problem before so troubleshooting it is a little tricky. At first I thought there might be some metal touching metal but I couldn't see any discrepancies in the detector. There didn't appear to be any dust anywhere either. I can't believe we're still having the same problems as each other...

This is actually really crazy because we're having that same problem but on a different 5975. Unfortunately we haven't fixed it yet. I tried cleaning the HED but that didn't seem to do anything. I've never really come across this problem before so troubleshooting it is a little tricky. At first I thought there might be some metal touching metal but I couldn't see any discrepancies in the detector. There didn't appear to be any dust anywhere either. I can't believe we're still having the same problems as each other...

Yeah! I believe so... By the way, our air components abundances were reducing gradually. But still, I'm having a lot of peaks across the scan from 10 to 700 m/z. Have you try to check the pressure inside the ion source chamber?

Thanks.

Unfortunately we don't have a vacuum gauge controller so I don't have a way to check the pressure. Have you tried that?

Unfortunately we don't have a vacuum gauge controller so I don't have a way to check the pressure. Have you tried that?

We don't have vacuum gauge also...

This is actually really crazy because we're having that same problem but on a different 5975. Unfortunately we haven't fixed it yet. I tried cleaning the HED but that didn't seem to do anything. I've never really come across this problem before so troubleshooting it is a little tricky. At first I thought there might be some metal touching metal but I couldn't see any discrepancies in the detector. There didn't appear to be any dust anywhere either. I can't believe we're still having the same problems as each other...

Yeah! I believe so... By the way, our air components abundances were reducing gradually. But still, I'm having a lot of peaks across the scan from 10 to 700 m/z. Have you try to check the pressure inside the ion source chamber?

Thanks.

What do you have the threshold set to in your tune? Normally it is run about 50-100 counts. If you have the threshold set to 0-10 counts you could easily get those 800 peaks across the scan. The lowest I have ever been able to run my threshold was 10 and that was after it had been running for a week and I had reduced the multiplier voltage as low as I could without loosing sensitivity.