Hello,
J Young tubes are getting stuck on occasion during the loading step in our
walkup Bruker 400 with sample case. I believe the issue is that these
top-heavy tubes are bouncing into a groove in the top of the upper barrel,
then wedging themselves diagonally between these grooves and the shuttle of
the autosampler.
I made a movie of the issue and have uploaded with annotations to youtube -
https://youtu.be/zpM9dHy0qWE
The system will try to reinsert 5 times before giving up. Many times one of
these attempts is successful. Sometimes the tube will not load after five
times and the systems goes into an error state, which requires manual
intervention to restart the queue. Even if the sample loads successfully on
the 2nd, 3rd, etc. try the extra time backs up the queue and seems to irritate
the students.
I would appreciate ideas to test my hypothesis (that tubes are jammed diagonally
into between grooves on the BST and the sample shuttle) and ideas on how to
address this issue. I can't imagine I am the first or only person to have
this issue.
A couple of additional comments:
These JYoung tubes were "shortened" by a glassblower to address the height
requirements of the sample case. Hence, it is at least conceivable that tubes/valves
have asymmetry. We have a tool to check tube straightness and all of the tubes
are acceptable. The tool doesn't check the valve, though. Given that all tubes
will load at least some of the time AND the amount of money already spent on
these J Young tubes, I would anticipate skepticism (to put it politely) from the
faculty if I suggest the issue is with the tubes. In addition, there is another
instrument right next to this 400 and (to our knowledge) no JYoung tubes have ever
gotten stuck in its sample case! And I'll also note that (to our knowledge) no
standard 5mm tubes from any vendors (Wilmad, Norell, New Era, etc.) has ever
gotten stuck in either sample case.
One faculty member suggested trying to rig some sort of "bumper" that fits
on top of the shuttle and dampens the oscillations of the JYoung tube (but
presumably have no impact on normal tubes). Having spent the better part
of an afternoon perched on a ladder watching tubes go in and out of the
instrument, I think it is conceivable, but it seems like there is a lot that
could go wrong just above the bore of the magnet, which makes me nervous.
Thanks,
Justin
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Received on Mon Jul 06 2026 - 06:20:52 MST