Is Scheduling Preventative Maintenance worth it?

   Preventative Maintenance (PM) sometimes gets overlooked on instrumentation for good reasons. It requires a few hours of downtime and sometimes could be up to half a day if a source cleaning is required. It also does cost money out of pocket, if you do not have a service contract. The price of the service and some parts (filaments, oil, traps, other consumables), can be expensive. The question becomes is it worth it?

At Compco we believe it is worth it for a couple of reasons. Both cost and time are reasons not to schedule your PM, however they are also the same reasons that the PM is important. Money spent and downtime over the life of the instrument are major factors. Over time and use there are parts of the instrument that require cleaning. If you have a Mass Spectrometer (MS) the source needs to be cleaned, your GC split vent line and trap need to be cleaned as well. If you have a dirty source your tuning and data over time will start to diminish. By getting the PM done at least annually you do not have to worry about your source or GC getting to the point of causing major repairs.

This is where you can save money and time in the long run. If your instrument gets to the point where you can not pass calibration or your sample chromatography looks poor you will spend time trying to track down what you can do to fix the problem. You will also then have to give Compco a call and schedule a source cleaning and inlet cleaning. At that point, even with the best response times in the industry your instrument may be down for a couple of days. Up-time is money in the laboratory world.

   It is also possible without scheduling an annual PM you can damage parts of your instrument. If the rough pump oil is not changed at least annually it is possible to overheat and stop functioning. If that happens the cost of the rough pump alone could be comparable to the cost of a full PM. It will also take days of downtime before a service engineer with a pump could arrive, which is even more money lost.

    At Compco we strongly suggest our customers have an annual PM. The PM is included in our service contract if that is something your lab is interested in. Keep your instrument running optimally by scheduling a PM.

    If you have any more questions about what goes into our Preventative Maintenance please contact us.