Time to clean ion source?

[Tarapan]

Hi all,
After using our Shimadzu QP2010 for more than 6 months. I noticed one time our baseline stayed flat at zero instead of the typical increase in baseline from column bleeding from our temperature programming. sample peaks signal was also very very low.

This happen just after we've done inlet maintenance and the usual leak checks . Tuning results was still okay.

then as soon as I called the technical service man to have a look and injected a sample to show him the problem the system went back to normal . we can see our usual sample peaks with the expected peak signal strength and the raising baseline just like before.

Can a dirty Ion source cause this to happen since we haven't done any ion source cleaning yet?

Tarapan

[Ron]

That doesn't sound like a dirty ion source, so far no one has invented a self-cleaning ion source, wish they would. Did you retighten the nuts at the injection port and MS interface after the maintenance? They tend to loosen up a bit over time, ferrules actually shrink a little with thermal cycling, and you may have had a leak.

[Tarapan]

Yup done that as per protocol. Anyhow if there was any leak, the system wil detect it and automatically stop the run immediately as we experienced before.