Clarity discussion forum

Hello,

I have installed a Clarity 2.6.6.574 version on a customer site some time ago. He works with a Marathon autosampler that is driven by Clarity. Every time he wants to add samples to a running series, he leaves the serial mode with F0 during this series and rotates the sample plate "manually" with the arrow buttons on the sampler in manual mode. Then with F4 he returnes in serial mode. This method did not interrupt the running series. Now I have updated Clarity to 3.0.3.358 and every time the customer now leaves the serial mode by pressing F0 to add some samples the communication and sequence are immediately aborted. Is this behavior correct, is there any possibility to add samples to a running series directly behind the last sample of this series? I hope this question is not too specific.

With best regards

Michael

Dear Michael,
I'm afraid that there will be no easy solution for your customer. Clarity now checks the state of the instrumentation connected to it continuously to ensure that the information on its state displayed in the Device Monitor window are correct. For the autosamplers, the operation in the overlapped mode is also to blame - it does not hold true that the sampler is not doing anything when the injection itself is finished - there may be some wash steps programmed and the timer may be set to start the preparation of the next sample at any time. Thus, Clarity must know of the actual state of the autosampler all the time.
When the customer exits the serial mode, the communication is, of course, disrupted (for the communication, the sampler MUST be in the Serial mode), which results in the abortion of the analysis as a whole. Not communicating devices are presumed to be in such state that only the opening of the communication once more is able to get them working once more. As the communication opening is performed during the opening of the Clarity Instrument, it is necessary to close the Instrument and open it once more (thus, the analysis cannot be running anyway).
I'm afraid that it will not be possible to insert vials into the sampler while the sequence is running if it needs to turn it off the Serial mode and rotate the tray manually first. I would advice for using the Stop/Resume Sequence commands and inserting the vials into the tray when no analysis is running.
Best Regards,
Daniel