Chromatography Forum

There are seemingly a zillion and a half threads on what's going wrong with our LC's and the methods we develop with them, but I have yet to see a thread on how we show our love to our faithful instrumentation, so here it is.

What have you done for your HPLC (or GC or MS) today?

I'll start: On my $300 eBay refugee Waters 996 photodiode array detector (that's been running without a hiccup for a year), I've replaced the flow cell gaskets & lenses, the L1 beam splitter, the M1 mirror, the lamp, and the little foam filter media thingy. I've aligned the mirror, checked the lamp energy & wavelength accuracy, then run all onboard diagnostics. While doing this, I found a screw with crossed threads holding in the M1 mirror; now repaired.

The lamp energy quadrupled from where it had been, all onboard diagnostics passed, and wavelength accuracy was spot on.

Now to qualify the beast.

Love the blog! You've won a new, dedicated reader.

juddc, although nearly all of my experiences with service engineers have been great, I really wish you were a service engineer visiting my lab.
All I seem to do for my LC systems is keep changing the solvents. But I honestly believe that LC systems are like toilets: if regularly and carefully flushed, they remain much happier.

Replaced all check valves, inline filters, a good 25% IPA flush, and played it's favorite song! (If you show your machine love it will produce beautiful chromatography)

-Tim

Purged with ACN/water, changed valves and loops flushing solvents, switched off completely, and finally wished a lot of running hours in a new year

Hi folks - thanks for all of the positive comments! If you're interested, I've posted the procedure I used for replacing the mirror and beam splitter on my old 996. After doing that I was able to get a 500% improvement in lamp energy. It still won't give what new instrument will, but given that it's 20 years old, I bet I've gotten a few more years out of it.

Any comments, criticisms, or questions are welcome!

Rebuilding a flow cell is no mean feat. Good job!

I just got my 2695 a new loop because mine brittle-fractured.

Rebuilding a flow cell is no mean feat. Good job!

I just got my 2695 a new loop because mine brittle-fractured.

I've never seen a 2695 do that, though I can understand how it could.
Rebuilding the flow cell wasn't bad. I learned how to do it after I clogged one on an instrument that was on a service contract. Waters sent a new unit and I had the clogged one, so I took it apart and got lucky enough to clear the clog, so I ordered the parts to rebuild and made up a spare.

A friend of mine just bought a second hand 2695 that I'll be refurbishing soon and I'm really looking forward to it!