Chromatography Forum

Happy Friday, all,

Does anybody have a shutdown method for LabSolution software for a Shimatsu LC-2030C Plus or LC-2030C 3D Plus ? It would be great to not have to manually shut things down at 0100 on a Saturday night!!

Thanks, everybody

Hi C18,

You should be able to make your own shut-down method file and attach it to the batch you're running. I generally use a wash method that, depending on the next time of use, ends in a storage solution. Otherwise, I just give it an extended wash and the instrument will "shut-down" on it's own. I will say, my instrument does not turn off, but enters more of an idle mode which works fine for me.

Tyler

Hi Tyler,

So, you attach a wash solution to one of the free lines, say line C and a storage solution to maybe line D?

I didn't know the instrument would idle on its own. I'll give it a try Thursday morning and look for it to idle sometime in the afternoon.

I'll click around some more and see if I can set this all up.

Cheers,
Carbon

Hi C18,

Yup, that's exactly what I do. Except my storage solution is really just a mixture of my wash solution without any additives. I store my columns in near 100% ACN and have had no issues with them, but your columns might require something else.

The shut-down setting and method acts a little strangely. It will go for the full time if you want it to, but, instead of selecting the method's length, you choose how long to run the shut-down on this method file. So the method could be set to run for thirty minutes, but you manually program it in the batch for the length you require. It's extremely useful if you want to start runs at the beginning of the day and potentially have a busy afternoon, or for a time that you will not be in, and everything will be put into the idle state.

Shimadzu instruments continue to do, at the end of a batch, what the last method was doing. There are therefore various things you can do to stop the system.
(1) If you don't care in what state you want to leave your column, you can just tick the boxes for shutdown in the batch settings.
(2) If you do care, you can write a method using the spare solvent channels to put an appropriate solvent through the column for as long as you want... and...
(3) In all cases, you can write a "stop" method with zero pump flow, deuterium lamp turned off, and whatever other conditions you want.
You can then list these methods at the end of your batch. In fact this approach avoids using the batch settings at all, while giving you complete control over the instrument. If you put the wash method second to last, and the stop method last, then your wash method will do all the washing, with detectors turned on so you can check whether you actually washed anything off, and the stop method will run, turn the flow to zero and leave the autosampler cold, whatever else you want - and the following morning, the instrument will still be "on" and "pumping", except it's pumping at a flow-rate of zero, with all the detectors turned off.

The down-side of this is that anyone trying to purge the pumps the following morning needs to be aware that pressing buttons on the pump won't do anything (because so far as the pump is concerned, it's on and pumping, under software-control), so the pump needs to be turned off. And if anyone sets a flow the following morning, it will happen straight away. And the biggest problem: if tomorrow's user is setting up a method and forgets to start a new one, next time you try to use your "Stop" method, you find it's now someone else's "Go" method!

... oh, and remember you don't need to make an injection for these wash and stop methods. If you give vial position -1, I think it will not make an injection at all.