So I've had this old pump in storage for at least 10 yrs
Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 10:48 pm
...probably more like 15 & I've never even so much as turned it on. I got it in a pile of equipement from an aquisition the company made and it was old then, but I thought I would hold onto it just because it looked so similar to the nice 600's I was working with at the time.
Fast forward to today: I'm reading a couple of papers that entail some post column derivitization and I pretty much have all of the equipement I need, but a little isocratic pump would be ideal for reagent delivery and I remember that little ancient orphaned pump.
It's a Waters 590, circa 1980 or so.
Long story short, I go deep into the bowels of the basement, find the little beast, clean it up a bit, and power it up.
It actually seemed happy to be alive.
OK, the electronics work. So I give it a few minutes to warm up then loosen a few compression screws and push some methanol through with a syringe until it's good and wet all over, then gave a shot at priming. Hey! It seems to be pumping smoothly and it'll push a nice stream at 5 ml/min, so I back it down to ~ 1 ml/min and install a column.
Pressure ripple is ~10 psi at ~900 psi. Really??
OK. Check flow rate with column installed:
Set rate 2.000 ml/min. Pressure: ~1750 psi.
Observed flow rate: 1.93 ml/min and running smooth as a baby's bottom.
Nice! Free pump for me - and oddly I like the SS piston indicator rods on the thing...they look a bit more macho than the standard 600 fare...
Thanks to whomever worked at Waters 30 years ago and built that pump!
Fast forward to today: I'm reading a couple of papers that entail some post column derivitization and I pretty much have all of the equipement I need, but a little isocratic pump would be ideal for reagent delivery and I remember that little ancient orphaned pump.
It's a Waters 590, circa 1980 or so.
Long story short, I go deep into the bowels of the basement, find the little beast, clean it up a bit, and power it up.
It actually seemed happy to be alive.
OK, the electronics work. So I give it a few minutes to warm up then loosen a few compression screws and push some methanol through with a syringe until it's good and wet all over, then gave a shot at priming. Hey! It seems to be pumping smoothly and it'll push a nice stream at 5 ml/min, so I back it down to ~ 1 ml/min and install a column.
Pressure ripple is ~10 psi at ~900 psi. Really??
OK. Check flow rate with column installed:
Set rate 2.000 ml/min. Pressure: ~1750 psi.
Observed flow rate: 1.93 ml/min and running smooth as a baby's bottom.
Nice! Free pump for me - and oddly I like the SS piston indicator rods on the thing...they look a bit more macho than the standard 600 fare...
Thanks to whomever worked at Waters 30 years ago and built that pump!
