Vial pickup on Tray on 7683 autosampler frozen

Was it making a horrendously loud beeping noise? I had the up and down portion of the arm break on a 7890 once. There's a plastic piece inside the arm that can crack and you can't buy the part by itself. I ended up making a franken autosampler by mounting an old school HP arm on an Agilent tray.

You could unmount the tray and try shaking it, if it rattles that arm is probably toast.

Are there any videos on how to take the arm apart? Mine is locking up too as it goes up and down.

Hello soccerdad ,

I know this is an older post and probably resolved, if you do have the solution for your case, please feel free to post it here.

garyb007 , I see you have a similar problem as well.

When the arm is locking up, you mean it does not move up and down at all, or it moves down, and locks? Are there any fault lights thrown by the tray? Any errors in the Software?

Some suggestions:

- The first thing I would check are physical obstructions in the arm path,  and maybe try to do some maintenance following the 7683 manual (see chapter 8).

- Check if something was recently changed in the configuration of the tray (see page 90 in the manual above, on how you would configure that on a 6890 for example). May or may not be useful, depending on the symptom.

Otherwise, it could simply be a mechanism problem, and the only solution would be to change the mechanism, if you can find the parts and instructions on how to open that. Otherwise, you will need to contact Agilent Technical Support.

If the up and down won't freely move through the full range of motion and locks up at a certain point the arm is toast. You can order a replacement arm (G2614-60531). If you have the budget I would recommend buying a newer ALS.

If you want to take it apart and tinker with it remove all the trays and look underneath the arm, there's a Phillips head screw on each end. Take care not to move the rods the arm rides on from the position they were in after disassembly.

Well I pushed it down when it was trying to pick up a vial and after a few "helps" it started working fine again. We'll see how long it lasts but it's been 5 days working now.

How do you get to those screws underneath?  Especially the one close to the middle or do I just remove the 3 screws on the side if I just want to check the belt?