RF driver cannot maintain the requested mass setting

1.17 MS1 RF driver cannot maintain the requested mass setting fault. This error message will then switch to a fault cleared message. Does anybody have any information they may share about this fault and how it may be fixed? Thank you.

Parents
  • Is the instrument GCMS or LCMS? Is it single quad or triple quad?

  • This was GC triple.

     

    The issue ended up being that the aluminum/stainless steel leads that attach towards the rear of the analyzer were making contact with the “chassis” and shorting out the RF.

     

    darren

     

    Darren [personal information removed by moderator]

  • Hi Darren,

    I have same problem but I have LCMS (QqQ) instead of GCMS. I don't know if I will have same solution with me too. Can you please post the pic of the aluminum/stainless steel leads that were touching the chassis or can you please describe (along with the location) it so that I can try to correct the error? is it IN or OUT of QqQ ? If it is IN, obviously need to vent but if OUT don't need to vent which makes easy to correct the error. It is happening randomely but very frequently and recently frequency increased  (10-15 times in a day). I believe it is contributing the peak area; means, out of 10 replicate injections (from same vial), one or two (random) replicates will have inconsistent peak area (0.5x or 2x etc.), while rest of replicate injections  are very consistent and reproducible. Again, I am not sure if this error is the reason of inconsistent area!

     

    Other community members, any help is greatly appreciated.

     

    Thanks in advance

    Cherry

Reply
  • Hi Darren,

    I have same problem but I have LCMS (QqQ) instead of GCMS. I don't know if I will have same solution with me too. Can you please post the pic of the aluminum/stainless steel leads that were touching the chassis or can you please describe (along with the location) it so that I can try to correct the error? is it IN or OUT of QqQ ? If it is IN, obviously need to vent but if OUT don't need to vent which makes easy to correct the error. It is happening randomely but very frequently and recently frequency increased  (10-15 times in a day). I believe it is contributing the peak area; means, out of 10 replicate injections (from same vial), one or two (random) replicates will have inconsistent peak area (0.5x or 2x etc.), while rest of replicate injections  are very consistent and reproducible. Again, I am not sure if this error is the reason of inconsistent area!

     

    Other community members, any help is greatly appreciated.

     

    Thanks in advance

    Cherry

Children
  • Hi harryp,

    I'm a service engineer in the UK. This issue needs to be looked at by a trained engineer as most likely the Quad Driver (the assembly that provides RF to the quadrupole) requires replacement and/or adjustment.

    Cheers Chris

  • Hi Cherry, Chris is probably correct, we had an LCMS single that exhibited the same area loss during a sequence due to mass drift, we concluded. I think we identified the one of the RF boxes by elimination, but only after we had corrected some front-end issues with the HPLC. We ended up trading the instrument in rather than repairing it, so I can't say definitively that was the problem, but we inferred that diagnosis by eliminating all chromatography-related causes (we set up a flow injection method without a column, and with the UV detector in series, and compared the peak areas).

  • OK, Thanks Chris and .

    It seems that this error occurs only when instrument is on standby mode. Also, the the reason for area count problem was improper tuning which got corrected too. I scheduled the 30 replicates and following is observation;

    first 2-3 injections contain little more (minor) area but down the line a minor area reduction or minor fluctuation. This is in urine matrix, so I believe over 30 injections, source is getting dirty and hence reflecting minor area reduction/fluctuation. I have not scheduled IS. So, if same pattern observed with IS too, I think I should be good.

     

    Please comment/share.

     

    Cherry

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