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- Posts: 2
- Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:35 pm
Hello everybody,
So I have been using Agilent GC/GCMS systems for a few years now and I am a big fan of chemstation. The UI is very simple and straightforward and I feel like I am able to use it in various applications and it performs well in every way that I use it.
Recently, I have picked up a few PerkinElmer GCs (Clarus680) because of the quick heating/cooling cycles. I was running certain methods on my Agilent GCs that had their runtime cut in half on the perkin elmer GCs, really benefiting production. But now that I have acquired the data, using PerkinElmer's TotalChrom software is a nightmare. I feel like they have over-engineered the software and put so many bells and whistles in it that they have made it way more complicated to integrate data than it needs to be. Below is a rough description of how I am using the instruments, read it or dont, I am more concerned on how the community is using this software because for the life of me I cannot find the practicality in it. I spend more time going through the mistakes that the software has made than I would just manually integrating the data.
Some of my quantitation involves single peak analysis which TC performs somewhat ok in doing. But in adjusting the noise/area thresholds either gives me every single piece of static in the baseline being identified as a target analyte or not identifying all the peaks that need to be identified as target compounds. I have tried messing around with this and it is almost impossible to find that perfect butter zone where the software can find the target analytes and disregard static in the baseline. This is why I have never been a big fan of automatic integration, I think that it would be very difficult to create algorithms that can adapt to the ever changing conditions within a GC system. I have yet to see a software package that can legitimately be hands off and correctly integrate the data automatically.
Also some of my work is integrating timed ranges, specifically testing for hydrocarbon content. The TC software is terrible at this. I have tried using a baseline compensation program as well and it cannot perform the way that chemstation does. Chemstation allows me to manually manipulate the integrated baseline, which I understand in some applications it is not desirable for the chemist to be able to manually manipulate the baseline, but in my application it is. TC does have a manual integrate function, but it snaps the drawn line up to the baseline which doesnt make any sense if I am trying to integrate a hump. When I draw a baseline on chemstation, it stays where I drew it.
We have been relentlessly working with PerkinElmer trying to get this up and running, but they are not even able to get it on par with my agilent machines. Every perkinelmer chrom guy that I talk to says that TotalChrom is the best thing since sliced bread, but none of them have been able to get me up and running on the level of my agilent systems. I have asked them what the other clients are doing that I am not, and what applications they are using them for. From that I have been able to take away this: it seems like a majority of the people who are using the TotalChrom software are people who do not care and/or do not know anything about their data. They come in after an overnight run, check their calibration checks, the calibration check passed, data gets reported. For example, I am running a dual-ECD setup with one injection being split at a "Y" connector into two separate columns. On Chemstation it is very simple to switch between the same analyte that is being displayed on two different signals. This makes comparing the two signals very easy and also I am able to get a better comparison, I can see if the point has deviated from the determined retention time, and if so, by how muich. The way that TC does it is that both signals are two separate files. So if I have a positive hit, then I have to verify it using both signals. That involves me either having the overlay the two signals on each other (which doesnt make any sense because the two columns are different columns) or having to look at the files separately which makes it really difficult to get a good idea of how they compare.
So at the end of this all, what are you doing with totalchrom? how do you like it? do you have any suggestions?
So I have been using Agilent GC/GCMS systems for a few years now and I am a big fan of chemstation. The UI is very simple and straightforward and I feel like I am able to use it in various applications and it performs well in every way that I use it.
Recently, I have picked up a few PerkinElmer GCs (Clarus680) because of the quick heating/cooling cycles. I was running certain methods on my Agilent GCs that had their runtime cut in half on the perkin elmer GCs, really benefiting production. But now that I have acquired the data, using PerkinElmer's TotalChrom software is a nightmare. I feel like they have over-engineered the software and put so many bells and whistles in it that they have made it way more complicated to integrate data than it needs to be. Below is a rough description of how I am using the instruments, read it or dont, I am more concerned on how the community is using this software because for the life of me I cannot find the practicality in it. I spend more time going through the mistakes that the software has made than I would just manually integrating the data.
Some of my quantitation involves single peak analysis which TC performs somewhat ok in doing. But in adjusting the noise/area thresholds either gives me every single piece of static in the baseline being identified as a target analyte or not identifying all the peaks that need to be identified as target compounds. I have tried messing around with this and it is almost impossible to find that perfect butter zone where the software can find the target analytes and disregard static in the baseline. This is why I have never been a big fan of automatic integration, I think that it would be very difficult to create algorithms that can adapt to the ever changing conditions within a GC system. I have yet to see a software package that can legitimately be hands off and correctly integrate the data automatically.
Also some of my work is integrating timed ranges, specifically testing for hydrocarbon content. The TC software is terrible at this. I have tried using a baseline compensation program as well and it cannot perform the way that chemstation does. Chemstation allows me to manually manipulate the integrated baseline, which I understand in some applications it is not desirable for the chemist to be able to manually manipulate the baseline, but in my application it is. TC does have a manual integrate function, but it snaps the drawn line up to the baseline which doesnt make any sense if I am trying to integrate a hump. When I draw a baseline on chemstation, it stays where I drew it.
We have been relentlessly working with PerkinElmer trying to get this up and running, but they are not even able to get it on par with my agilent machines. Every perkinelmer chrom guy that I talk to says that TotalChrom is the best thing since sliced bread, but none of them have been able to get me up and running on the level of my agilent systems. I have asked them what the other clients are doing that I am not, and what applications they are using them for. From that I have been able to take away this: it seems like a majority of the people who are using the TotalChrom software are people who do not care and/or do not know anything about their data. They come in after an overnight run, check their calibration checks, the calibration check passed, data gets reported. For example, I am running a dual-ECD setup with one injection being split at a "Y" connector into two separate columns. On Chemstation it is very simple to switch between the same analyte that is being displayed on two different signals. This makes comparing the two signals very easy and also I am able to get a better comparison, I can see if the point has deviated from the determined retention time, and if so, by how muich. The way that TC does it is that both signals are two separate files. So if I have a positive hit, then I have to verify it using both signals. That involves me either having the overlay the two signals on each other (which doesnt make any sense because the two columns are different columns) or having to look at the files separately which makes it really difficult to get a good idea of how they compare.
So at the end of this all, what are you doing with totalchrom? how do you like it? do you have any suggestions?
