Dealing with sequencer problems is hard enough when your machine notifies you of what’s wrong. But working with a machine that won’t give you any information can make you want to crawl under a rock. 

A common service issue we see on 31xx and 3730 series machines is failure of the CCD camera. You may recognize this scenario: You arrive early Monday morning ready for a productive day of sequencing, load your plates, and then disaster strikes!  All that appears in the array viewer is a black screen. Panic mode sets in. After a deep calming breath, you email SeqGen the screen captures for our expert engineers to review and troubleshoot. Within 2 hours, SeqGen’s expert team responds by email and then by telephone:  “We are very sorry to report that your CCD camera has passed away.”  RIP, CCD Camera. You gave us some great years!

They say that it’s all about the little things in life that make a big difference. Although “they” were probably referring to things like compliments or ice cream cones. Instead, we’re referring to changing out the polymer for your 310, 3100, 3130 and 3730 machines. 

Changing out your polymer might not be glamorous, but it is an imperative part of making sure you’re gathering accurate data. If you’ve been wondering how often you should change out your polymer, don’t worry, we get that question a lot

When it comes to your capillary sequencers, we always assume “Green is for go” signaling that everything is up and running smoothly.  You may be looking for the “green light” on your sequencer to ensure you’ve passed the initialization sequence, but it’s just not happening, even after rebooting.  Let’s go through just exactly what you should see.

First and foremost, when checking sequencer functionality, be certain the computer and sequencer are plugged in. Sounds like it doesn’t need to be said, but we’ve seen this issue before.  Also, if the machine has been in “idle” mode for a long period of time, it may have tripped the safety breaker and turned the machine off.  These are two items to check for immediately.

Murphy’s Law states: Whatever CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong. As hard as we all try to make sure we are careful to avoid problems, problems are an inevitable fact of life. The sooner we accept this, the sooner we’ll be able to get our machines back up and running! So whatever problem comes your way, when it comes to DNA sequencers, SeqGen is here to help.

A recurring problem that we have seen of late is an error message stating: “Capillary Leak Detected”, but the capillary array is not necessarily due for replacement. If you’re like most people, you want to try everything you can before you order a new one (which could cost you thousands).

Your sequencer is a lot like a car. It requires regular routine maintenance to ensure that all of the moving parts are working like they should be.  And just like a car, if you take care of your machine and perform regular maintenance, you can expect it to run properly for many years to come.

A coverage plan from SeqGen comes with one preventative maintenance visit per year; however, you can perform some of these functions yourself. To assist you, we’ve listed a few of the common problems and errors that can be avoided with preventative

We usually see this error in couple different instances.