Interface pump oil disappearing
We recently had an issue with the interface pump oil whereby it almost completely disappeared (within 2 weeks) and I was wondering if anyone had an explanation of why this can happen.
Briefly, I replaced the interface pump oil as usual and we ran some samples over the next 2 weeks. I checked the oil after that and it was fine. About a week later, we started seeing low Tb counts and low argon dimer signals and over the next few days the tuning results did not improve even after we tried cleaning everything, replacing lines/nebuliser, and a whole list of other troubleshooting. Luckily our Helios was scheduled for a preventative maintenance so when the engineer arrived, he told us that one of the reasons we're seeing a low argon dimer signal could be due to the interface pump oil. When he checked it, we saw that the oil was running out, it was almost empty! The engineer said it could be due to running samples with a lot of debris but that doesn’t quite explain why the oil would disappear? Has anyone seen this happen before or know why it can occur?
Thank you!
Diana