I have an intermittent fault with the capillary heater inside the API stack of a Thermo Finnigan LCQ Deca XP Plus. There's no 48 V DC power to the electronics board (no green light) and the capillary heater light isn't flashing. An engineer came out a few months ago for the same problem and couldn't ID any faults, but after unplugging cables to the board the heater worked again. It seemed to relate to the APCI heater cable connection on the board, but not the cable itself. I cleaned the pins and made sure it was connecting okay like the engineer did last time but still no joy. I guess it's the 48 V power supply but has anyone had the same issue before?
It must be the power supply circuit board which also acts as a circuit breaker in case of power surges. If you can replace or get the engineer to replace it then I think you will be able to solve the problem.
I use the same instrument, it is problematic.
Try to replace the main board to seem if everything is OK.
Last time the engineer replaced the heater and that didn't fix it, then he replaced the board and that didn't fix it either. He put the original parts back in and somehow it worked again, which indicated a poor electrical connection somewhere. It worked fine for a few months and has now stopped working. The cable from the stack to the board tested okay, so I guess it only leaves the power supply to the board.
Thanks Varun. I checked and cleaned the connections as many times as my patience would permit but still there was no power to the heater.
It's not the APCI source but the ion transfar capillary witin the stack. I'm using ESI but it seems the power supply is the same one as used for the APCI heater.
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