Dionex PDA-100 acting up

[Celvin]

Hello

I've reactivated the HPLC in our lab a couple of months ago; while it had not been in use for a very long time, I got the whole setup working relatively quickly, and it has been used since every now and then by myself and a couple other people.

However, the other day, some time during equilibration, the detector started behaving downright weird, since that time constantly producing error messages for both the deuterium and tungsten lamps in Chromeleon, as well as for the little automatic test sequence it runs on startup (power LED flashing). I've disassembled and checked the parts accessible via front panel and everything seems fine, no leaks, no loose plugs or anything. The lamps seem fine, too, and are supposed to have a couple hundred hours of lifetime left each according to the Chromeleon log. As per the manual, I've flushed the cell to make sure it's not just air bubbles in the cell making the wavelength match on startup fail.

Whenever I try to control something from Chromeleon, the Audit Trail tells me the detector's already running an autozero command; this makes me think the instrument's stuck in some sort of loop - is there any way to perform a hard reset?

I'd appreciate any help and apologize if this is a stupidly simple issue to resolve to all you experts. I have no prior experience with HPLC instrumentation and am basically just getting by on manuals. It's been a long time since anyone's even been responsible for the setup, so there's no one around anymore who knows how to troubleshoot something like that.

Regards
Daniel

[bunnahabhain]

... while it had not been in use for a very long time ...

Deuterium lamps age even when not in use. It is well possible that it is too weak even it was not active more than 100 hours. The best hard reset still is turn off and on again after a minute or so. Or try disconnect / connect from Chromeleon.
Good luck

[Celvin]

Deuterium lamps age even when not in use. It is well possible that it is too weak even it was not active more than 100 hours. The best hard reset still is turn off and on again after a minute or so. Or try disconnect / connect from Chromeleon.
Good luck

Previous to whatever event caused this, the lamp intensity was fine - true, it's possible it's deteriorated enough to cause a failure message, but I also get failuremessages for the Tugnsten lamp when I switch on the detector. Since it seems stuck in this startup routine, I can't control the lamps from Chromeleon to check the intensity counts. If this were just a failure of the Deuterium lamp, I should still be able to at least control the Tungsten one, and the startup routine shouldn't fail since it can do the wavelength matching with that lamp, too - right?

I did try to switch the detector on and off, naturally, but to no avail.

[bunnahabhain]

The wavelength calibration is done based on the deuterium lamp, so if this lamp is dead, it will fail. Did you try to power on the instrument without connection to Chromeleon?

[Aurion]

Open up the unit by removing the front screws, and opening the top hunged cover, locate the big black button on the main board towards the back, push it.

It will reset the motherboard, and usually this will force it to run through a factory calibration and statt functioning again.

You can also check lamp intensity counts, and verify those numbers as per the manual. I think it needs to be over 10 million counts.

Hope this helps