Chromatography Forum

I have been having major injection issues with several Acquity systems. The peak needle is bending out of its "holder". THis is happening sporatically in the middle of several hour runs. The plates are characterized correctly and again it does several injections before the issue is happening. Once it happenswe see a low sample pressure error and the needle is visibly bent out to one side. The Z axis is properly calibrated and the XYZp is also properly calibrated. Has anyone been seeing simialr issues? Waters cannot seem to give us an explanation as to what could be causing this. For the longest time they were leaning towards user error and not caracterizing the correct vial trays. This is not the issue. Any insight would be helpful. We have had many hardware issues with these Acquity systems since purchasing them, and I am curious as to how others feel about the Acquity.

One thing I've noticed is that one has to be careful in choosing septa for the H-class...probably extends to the I-class or the Acquity "classic version." Skinny needles seem to need TLC in terms of pre-slit septa...don't know that this is a potential cause of your issue, but we observed this phenomenon with the septa. We Did Have some Plate Programming Problems at the very beginning, too, but these were resolved.

We had this issue, too. In our case we used inlets with holder in our vials. The error occured, when the PEEK needle (not the piercing device) hit the inlet edge. We don't use the holder anymore, so during the piercing and sample drawing process the inlet is able to be adjusted by the needle.
We also used other formats (without inlets) and no errors with the needle were observed.
Hope it is clear what I meant and hope also it helps !

Strange, we never saw this issue.
We use the standard 2ml vials (ANSI-48Vial2mLHolder).
In the beginning we used standard septa (PTFE/silicone), but we were pointed out that we needed to use pre-slitted septa.

Never had problems with the non-slitted version though.

I'm wondering what kind of vials do you use?
Are you sure the holders are correctly placed inside the tray?

Ace

Waters 2ml vials and their pre slit caps are what we are currently using. ilee can you possibly expand on what you were saying. I didnt make much sense of it. Sorry, but you are the only one that seems to be offering up things we havent tried yet. Hopefully you get this and can help me out.

We had this issue, too. In our case we used inlets with holder in our vials. The error occured, when the PEEK needle (not the piercing device) hit the inlet edge. We don't use the holder anymore, so during the piercing and sample drawing process the inlet is able to be adjusted by the needle.
We also used other formats (without inlets) and no errors with the needle were observed.
Hope it is clear what I meant and hope also it helps !

Are you talking about individual holders that hold each vial into the tray? Like a sleve of some sort around the vial?

Currently we have the metal trays and they are holding the 2ml 48 vial plates. We are seing the same issue, some times the needle hits the rim or close to the rim and we are getting bent, or broken needels. Sometimes it does slide through, but not until after it has started to draw up, which is reducing our area counts. Even after these events when the XYZp and the Z axis are still correctly calibrated. We also think its a waters vial cap quality control issue.

Does anyone know if the puncture needle can be set or calibrated to puncture further into the vial? It appears as if the PEEK needle is still coming into contact with the septa.

Wow...Was hoping Metrology, that it was just a case of "tough septa." Sounds like you're doing all of the proper things as per Waters and based upon what I have seen.

@aceto: the vials that were "popular" at that particular lab were the thick red rubber ones more commonly used for GC work. Good to know that more "typical" HPLC-style vial caps work well if need be. The Acquity-H autosampler Didn't Like Thick Red Rubber Septa.

@Metrology again--you folks know what you are doing. Aside from the calibrations of XYZp and Z axis and the correct assignment of plate you're not going to be able to change anything else on your own.

This is sort of a dumb question, and my recollection is fuzzy, but early on when we had some troubles with the plate assignment, we placed the proper plate into Empower 3, but for some reason the assignment was not maintained when the sequence began...we also we using ANSI 48, but when the sequences inititated for some reason the software "defaulted" (?) to ANSI 24.

Did you notice anything weird like this?

We had this issue, too. In our case we used inlets with holder in our vials. The error occured, when the PEEK needle (not the piercing device) hit the inlet edge. We don't use the holder anymore, so during the piercing and sample drawing process the inlet is able to be adjusted by the needle.
We also used other formats (without inlets) and no errors with the needle were observed.
Hope it is clear what I meant and hope also it helps !

Are you talking about individual holders that hold each vial into the tray? Like a sleve of some sort around the vial?

Currently we have the metal trays and they are holding the 2ml 48 vial plates. We are seing the same issue, some times the needle hits the rim or close to the rim and we are getting bent, or broken needels. Sometimes it does slide through, but not until after it has started to draw up, which is reducing our area counts. Even after these events when the XYZp and the Z axis are still correctly calibrated. We also think its a waters vial cap quality control issue.

Sorry to come back so late.

I'm talking about 2mL glass autosampler vials with glass inserts (0,2 mL). When the bending of the needle occured, I used a small metal spring to press the glass insert against the autosampler cap with PTFE septum. Not using the metal spring helped, I didn't see the error again.

The rack we still use is the blue (plastic) standard rack from Waters that can contain 48 vials.

We have had many hardware issues with these Acquity systems since purchasing them, and I am curious as to how others feel about the Acquity.

Absolute nightmare they are. And then we bought another!

Honestly we have so many problems with these instruments it's ridiculous. Getting decent results is like a lottery. I won't hijack your thread though.

We have had many hardware issues with these Acquity systems since purchasing them, and I am curious as to how others feel about the Acquity.

Absolute nightmare they are. And then we bought another!

Honestly we have so many problems with these instruments it's ridiculous. Getting decent results is like a lottery. I won't hijack your thread though.

Strange, we haven't had this problems at all (running 7 Acquity systems here).
Maybe it depends on samples and methods which are used?

Ace

We have around 10 Acquities. Some are perfect, never have any downtime with them. They run like a dream and rarely break down. Then there are our problematic systems... those are a treat.

I know this post might be dead but decided to post anyway.

I am having a TON of sample manager issues with our 2 Acquity UPLC systems - primarily with z-axis hardware. One Acquity has already had a new carriage assembly installed, and now the other Acquity will get a new one next week. Until it gets replaced, its going to be like playing Russian roulette!! alright, made it through 20 injections ....error ...inject 5 more samples...error ....inject 15 samples...error I give up!!!

Soon we will be purchasing a new UPLC system, so with regards to:

We have around 10 Acquities. Some are perfect, never have any downtime with them. They run like a dream and rarely break down. Then there are our problematic systems... those are a treat.

and

Strange, we haven't had this problems at all (running 7 Acquity systems here).
Maybe it depends on samples and methods which are used?

Ace

what classes are your Acquity systems? Mabye the issues that myself, richiekchi and others are experiencing can be attributed to us having older models that still have all the bugs.

what classes are your Acquity systems? Mabye the issues that myself, richiekchi and others are experiencing can be attributed to us having older models that still have all the bugs.

We have all "OLD" systems, not H of I-classes, but the regulary BSM, SM, PDA setup.
Some are from the really first days of UPLC, others are from last year.

Ace