Shimadzu HPLC - Turning off Gas Detector?

[ichauv2]

Hello, this isn't really a question about chromatography but I figured I would ask in case anyone has an answer here.

I'm using a Shimadzu HPLC (column oven CTO-40S with LabSolutions RealTime Analysis Version 5.111). The gas detector in the column oven is very sensitive, and whenever it detects gas (there is no actual leak) it shuts the pump off and stops your run if you had one going. For the most part I've avoided the issue by sequestering the HPLC in an area of lab with nothing else going on to avoid the risk of solvent vapors traveling through the air, but sometimes it still happens. I looked through Shimadzu's manuals and asked our representative, but they said as far as they are aware, there is no way to turn the gas detector off. I still want to use the column oven, so I was wondering if anyone has found any hidden ways to turn the detector off, a threshold limit to adjust, or even just a setting to allow a run to continue on fault? It's annoying to have my runs stop because someone accidentally walked by with an open vial of solvent.

[mcjeod]

I had this issue a couple of years ago. Fortunately, my local engineer told me how to turn the sensor off.
1. On the keypad hold down CE and the spot that becomes 5 when the keypad is active. After around 5 seconds you should hear a beep.
2. Press the right arrow to enter the menu system and then press the down arrow until you reach the Factory menu.
3. Press the right arrow to enter the Factory and locate the 'Gas sensor Thr' entry.
4. Set this to 0 and press enter.
5. Press CE until you are back at the home screen then repeat step 1 to deactivate the Factory menu.

Hope this helps.

[H.Thomas]

You could also just change the threshold of the sensor. We did this and now it reacts to actual leaks, but not to the cough of a fly on the wall.

Go into the menu, to VP functions and then to Calibration. You need to enter a password (usually '00000'). Scroll down to 'LEAK THOLD' and set a higher value. Watch the actual level for a while to get a feeling for where you should set it.

[lmh]

I do the same as H Thomas. Shimadzu's leak sensor is a thing of exquisite beauty. Yes, you can set the threshold, and at the maximum (23000 I think) it won't detect even a drastic flood (so you can use the column oven to dry parts of your mass spec that you've just sonicated in solvent...).
The thing that makes it beautiful is that you can monitor the actual readback of the leak sensor. If you start the pump and the number climb-climb-climbs and won't stop, then you have the sort of leak that in any other system will reveal itself after 2 runs, just after you've left the lab, meaning you come back on Monday morning to find a lot of red lights and no results.
Thermo, bless them, implemented a vapour leak sensor in their Vanquish UHPLC and didn't bother providing the readback. Basically, most manufacturers seem able to make complex autosamplers with no carry-over, mass specs with huge sensitivity, PDAs that can detect half a photon missing, pumps that can provide stupendous precision over 4 orders of magnitude flow at 1000 bar - and none of them (except Shimadzu) are capable of making a practical, functional column oven. Let alone a door on the front of a module that (a) opens and closes, and (b) doesn't fall off when you want it to stay on, or get stuck on when you need to remove it (and Shimadzu, you're guilty on this one too).