Chromatography Forum

We (small college) have two Waters 410 refractometers, one is working the other is not. I'm an electronic tech looking for a Service Manual and/or a set of Schematics for the 410, anyone have a source? $$$?

I have contacted Millipore but haven't heard back from them.

Appreciate your help,

Ron.

Millipore and Waters went their separate ways in the mid-80's, so maybe you should look for a Waters office in your area.

I doubt very much that Waters will supply you with schematics to any of their instruments. The 410 was discontinued many years ago. These detector were very robust, and about the only thing that breaks is the analogue board (either the detector just beeps on startup, or stays dead). The only fix is to replace both the control and analogue boards with a single new board (the old components are just not made any more). However, the cost of this repair is not very different to the price of a brand new 2414 RI detector.

Please describe the errors in detail and take pictures of the boards.

A look into the manual might help too.

Thanks for the replies... I used the "Waters: A division of Millipore" on the manual cover as my "hint" to whom I should direct my manual inquires to <blush>... I have since found out Waters and Millipore split (Millipore finally responded to my e-mail and the reply here).

The problem with the second refractometer... the baseline is "maxed out to one power supply rail"... as were told (it's in pieces - but I do have all of the pieces... I hope) - both instruments were a gift to the college.


Appreciate the help.

Ron.

The error description doesn't make much sense to me... I'd assume that one of the voltage rails of the power supply is out of range/no longer stabilized or was damaged by an overload caused by some other problem of the unit.

As you have one working unit, you might consider to reassemble the damaged one and check the LEDs on the PCBs of both to find any abnormalities, i.e. missing voltages.

Another hint for Waters units from that time: Some of their ICs seems to have defective substrates, i.e. they ICs crack in middle (no joke, you can see a very fine line on the housing). Check for those and replace them.
Furthermore, I guess the PCB with the CPU has eight LEDs mounted in a row. While the units is fired up each LED it lit for around 1 sec., starting left. If any error occurs, the n-th dark LED hints towards the error.