Even the break of a fibre is not unusual, but if it happens every 6 or 7 samples then there is something wrong. Do You know the exact moment of the break of the fibre? Or is it really the needle?

Anyway, it is possible to teach the system about the positions of the agitator and the injector. There are several versions of the PAL (GC-PAL, CombiPAL, PAL-xt) so i am not able to give you detailed advice, but following you handbook you should be able to do so. I recommend this as a first step ....

Once the needle has been bent it is weak. Replace the needle, align and test.

One additional comment: We have observed many people purchasing used CTC samplers from popular website auctions. Most, if not all, of these samplers have been shown to have worn out sample transport and/or injector mechanisms. The wear results in "slop" in alignment and positioning. This translates to frequent failures and replacement of parts without correcting the primary problem (worn out mechanism).

Thank you both for your answers. Bill, theoretically, this equipment is brand new.

Ludwig,while the needle is in extraction mode, it is agitating. It seems that the needle guides graze the needle, doing a notch on it, so it damaged. When the needle moves to the injector, it breaks exactly in the graze. So, I don't know if it is a problem of the design of the equipment or if I am doing something incorrect.

The instrument is a PAL (Agilent GC Sampler 80) with a module of agitation/incubation.

Hi Juan, I added the additional comment just in case. We see a lot of worn out units.

If your system is new (not sure what "theoretically" new is?), then it still sounds like an adjustment is needed. Is the guide bent or misaligned?

I have made several alignments, but I don't get solve the problem. My next solution is call technical service. Thank you very much.

We have the EST Flex autosampler, when doing an SPME fibre extraction with agitation the method has an extra step where the needle carriage comes down against the side of the incubation unit and pushes the needle guide half way up to a magnetic catch. This means the needle guide is half as long and the fibre has a larger area to move in without catching on the guide. Maybe there is something similar for yours? Ours is programmed within the settings for SPME analysis and cannot be changed. Might be worth having a look to see if you have the same capability in your method settings?

I suspect that it is an alignment issue as others have said, or possibly the tension cord may be slack within the CTC autosampler and may need to be replaced (as you say it is 'new', but you could easily check the slack just to be sure). We had a bent SPME issue with just one particular fibre a while ago (it would bend just before it went into the autosampler, but did not break). As we had labelled each fibre individually, we soon realised that it was just this one fibre that was visibly longer than the other ones (by ~ 1mm), so it was a manufacturing fault. I only mention it as something worth a quick check to rule out whether you may have a faulty batch of fibres.

Hi Juan, 

if you are sure about your alignment parameters and your tension cords are in a good status, then maybe your problem is the septa of your vial. I had a similar issue before. I could not understand why my SPME outer needle would bend, while the alignment and all the autosampler hardware was okay.  Finally I figured out that the septa of my vials were slightly thicker that the ones I had used before (it was due to a factory problem). Another parameter you may want to check it is your needle penetration speed.

I hope this can help 

Thank you Melia. It happens with different fibers. I will check the tension cord.

Emanuella, I will check the septa. I am using other batch of them, and I see that are a little bit thicker. Thank you very much to both.

Donna-Marie, I haven't seen you comment before...but I think this would be a good solution. The problem is during the agitation step, the needle, even at lower speed of agitation, seems very strained. I have the same trouble with the software, Masshunter does not allow changes and extra steps, because the methods are pre-charged.

I will give all your commentaries to the technician. Thank you very mucho for all.