Chromatography Forum

My company is currently on the road to becoming ISO certified, and our QC manager has been coming down hard on everyone to have a full maintenance schedule for all equipment. In addition to this, I only recently took over one HP 5890 Series II Plus, and one HP 5890 Series II, and I have no idea how often some of the filters or traps have been replaced. I have searched extensively for a recommended schedule on both HP and Agilent's websites, and have found nothing. If anyone has something produced by either of these companies, or knows where I could locate them, I would really appreciate it.

Wouldn't it be more difficult to become ISO certified with your out-of-support 5890 systems? Anyway, at least yearly I'd change the filter traps in the left side of the unit and your gas traps, clean out the inlet including the gold inlet seal, clean the detector and jet. I personally like the flip-top inlet systems because we find we check the liners way more often, and liner replacements are more efficient than re-running samples.

Wouldn't it be more difficult to become ISO certified with your out-of-support 5890 systems? Anyway, at least yearly I'd change the filter traps in the left side of the unit and your gas traps, clean out the inlet including the gold inlet seal, clean the detector and jet. I personally like the flip-top inlet systems because we find we check the liners way more often, and liner replacements are more efficient than re-running samples.

In addition to this we also clean the inlet weldments. This involves some stripping of the instrument but you would be astounded at the amount of crud that ends up in the split line connection. Usually brown but sometimes with bits of wool stuck in the split line at the swagelock connection. We keep a cleaned one on standby to speed things up. We also check the flows using a calibrated flow meter, a bubble one would do. I would also thoroughly clean the detector. We generally allow about half a day per instrument.

GCguy

try this

http://www.chem.agilent.com/temp/radB4191/00034461.pdf

Or try this one:

http://www.chem.agilent.com/temp/radA609E/00051171.pdf

Wouldn't it be more difficult to become ISO certified with your out-of-support 5890 systems? .

No. ISO certification is all about the quality systems, which clearly include performance monitoring and maintenance schedules, however they don't care about the support status, or even certification of repairers, provided the maintenance is appropriate and effective.

For ISO, a risk/impact assessment, combined with continuous improvement, define what's acceptable. The FDa is moving more towards that model as well.

The main aspects are some routine preformance checks/monitoring, such as flows and pressure, regular treatment of gas purfiers, and cleaning and seal replacement of inlet and detector

In some industries testing equipment can be many decades old ( consider long-lifetime items like lab furnaces, metal hardness testers, centrifuges, ovens etc ). I've worked in an ISO cerified lab that had a pre-WWII furnace from a firm that had disappeared many decades before.

The main issues with replacements for a 5890 these days could be the hardening of diaphragms of the gas control systems, and in the purge switching valve of the split/splitless injector, as all the other items are pretty much available from alternative suppliers.

Bruce Hamilton