1290 Infinity II Binary Pump Tuning/Conditioning

Question

Greetings, 
 I am trying to determine whether or not my binary pump is working properly. I have heard three different opinions with respect to the tuning parameter. This post ( RE: Tuning A and Tuning B parameters in Binary Pump of 1290 LC ) indicates that +/-1 is acceptable. However, I have also heard +/-0.4 from an Agilent trainer, and +/-0.2 from my service technician. 
 For my system, the tuning parameter for Pump A typically stays below 0.1, but pump B can vary from 0.05 to 0.2. However, lately the tuning parameters for both pumps have been drifting upward, sometimes as high as between 0.15 and 0.2. According to my service tech's opinion above, this is brushing against the upper limit for acceptability. 
 My questions for the community are: 
 
 How do I interpret what is going on? I don't have any other indication of error (e.g., leak, pressure fluctuations) 
 What at what point do I really need to worry about the pump tuning parameter? Is it even something that I should bother monitoring? 
 Would running a conditioning routine for the binary pump have any effect? 
 How is conditioning different from, say, running at a high flow rate for ~15 minutes? I ask this because I am experiencing difficulty executing a conditioning routine in MH Acquisition from the "prepare pump" menu (nothing happens). 
 
 Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! 
 Mike

kbusch · Accepted Answer

1. I created this table to explain what some of the values could mean: 
 
 2. Yes, as I mentioned in the other post. Between plus and minus 1, you should still be in the specification for retention time precision. 
 3. Yes, conditioning is useful for removing micro air bubbles from the system. During conditioning (flow to the system, not ready state "conditioning"), the tuning value does not change. After conditioning, the pump will go back to its normal operation and then begin to update the tuning and you may see values closer to zero because micro air bubbles have been removed during the conditioning. 
 4. Using higher flow rates and pressure is also helpful, but conditioning helps the primary chamber better remove air bubbles from the system. Do you have more information as to why it is not working? Conditioning is using the flow rate and composition from the loaded method in masshunter and then runs for the time set in the prepare pump context menu. This runs in a not ready state, but flows to the column.

1290 Infinity II Binary Pump Tuning/Conditioning

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