Vintage late 80s hplc equipment

I’m looking at used hplc systems on ebay. It looks like you could piece together an old system for under $1000. Does anyone have experience doing this? My knowledge on the subject is limited. What type of detector, solvent system, and columns are approptiate for cannabinoids? Also any recommendations to help avoid hard to adapt or source proprietary components, parts, connectors or software would be appreciated. There’s currently some decent looking shimadzu, Beckman coulter, and waters equipment listed on Ebay affordably. There appears to be open source software available for analyzing run files in native format. I’m wondering if I can use that old shimadzus floppy drive on the system contrller to save the file like that and open on a modern computer.

Yeah software will be your number one issue here. I know the grief of working with proprietary software that only runs on highly outdated OS. Hopefully you can side step that.

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Some of these old systems look like they have the software and a monitor built in to the system controller. No external computer required? But I don’t know enough off hand without reading manuals. I think it’s a early 90s or so model shimadzu controller, listed for 350. If anybody knows anything about it, I would appreciate the info. Thanks

You’re likely prepared for windows ME or earlier, but expect it. It will likely be able to save to PDF or print and then tell windows to print to PDF, that is what I did on old Waters equipment.

You will use the same solvents and columns as modern HPLCs and GCs. Don’t think they changed the size of the port for the columns. If you are just worried about cannabanoids, ethanol will be a fine solvent.

Be prepared to replace seals. They get old, they crack, they leak. I don’t remember them costing more than ten dollars a pop. Finding the part number and who sells it is the hard part.

The bulbs they use might set you back a decent amount as well. Never had to replace one but I remember them being at least 500 a pop and a continual worry when troubleshooting.

Also, the old software can do enough but you will want to familiarize yourself with Excels graphing function. It is easy if you haven’t done it before, kill a day playing with it if you are new.

The old one I worked with controlled flow rate, pressure, and other small things but couldn’t print. I imagine it will have a line of screws that you can attach wire to which then goes to a device you can plug in to your computer via USB to pull readings off of.

Remember if it’s optical don’t bother. The reason is the diodes and eyeballs that will give you data via identification will have a actual lifespan. You are furthest from it’s ability to be accurate since it’s from the 80s

Usually 99% of the time the software is ambiguous to the system. It’s the monthly subscription to the data libraries. Without the data libraries it’s very hard to keep it running.

UV detectors are readily available. Is a conductivity detector an appropriate alternative for cannabinoids considering the temporal degredation of the optical components on a system this aged?