Chromatography Forum

Friends,

I am visiting a lab where there is a 5 year old THERMO HPLC. The software Chromquest seems to be straightforward, we build the method, download it, and then the instrument status never goes beyong the INIT stage. Looking on instrument status we see that the pump gives an indication of Not Ready, but the software does not indicate what part or function is not ready.The Autosampler also shows the same problem (NOT READY), but all the indicators look READY (Column Temperature for example). The UV detector shows READY.

Obviously, we can not inject or do anything. We have tried turning everything off and starting from "cold conditions". If any of you has any idea what is happening, and how to fix the problems, please help us.

Thanks

josebenjamin

The most probable source will be the pump - the TSP pumps are smart ones with pressure pulsation smoothed by pressure sensor feedback. This may cause problems when you are trying to start a pump with air bubles/dirty valves - it will not get out of the init state. Also operation at extremely low backpressure may be a problem. Please note, the pump uses the high pressure limit value in the compensation algorithm - it should be set close to the expected operating pressure. The sampler will not be ready until the pump is.

Thanks very much for the reply. Indeed, apparently it was an operating pressure much lower than the maximum. We have solved this one.

Thanks again,

josebenjamin

Friends,

I have a new request. Now we are unable to start a sequence, for a few days we have to do manual injections. Ouir methods specify "External Trigger", but when we try to start we get an error message and sometimes the systems is blocked.

Anybody has any ideas what is wrong?, could this be a configuration problem?

josebenjamin