When we came back later, some oil had again leaked out of the fore pump, but there was sufficient oil in the pump to run it. As recommended in the manual, we installed a solid ferrule (one without a hole) into the gas chromatograph interface (transfer) line (shutting off all gas chromatograph carrier gas flow into the mass spectrometer). When we restarted the mass spectrometer’s pumping system it was able to reach a pressure of 10-5
Torr - suggesting that the vacuum problem was being caused by the GC. We checked all of the gas chromatographic fittings, and re-attached the gc column to the mass spectrometer transfer line. We restarted the gc ms and it initially pumped down to 10-5
Torr and appeared ready to run, but then, after ~10 minutes, the vacuum again fell to 10-4
Torr and the gc inlet shut down. We rechecked all the GC fittings and everything appears okay. Could the fore pump be the only source of the problem - the ability of the system to reach operating pressure with the solid ferrule in place has us worried other factors are causing our problem. We’re hoping for some suggesting that will help us understand why the system reached and maintained operating pressure with the solid ferrule in place. Could the leaking fore pump be the only source of our problems - i.e., it has the ability to pump down with the solid ferrule in place, but can no longer handle the gas flow coming from the gc?
