First, thanks to EVERYONE for all of the suggestions and advice! I would
reply individually but there have been no less than 30 helpful responses!!
For my first post to AMMRL I'm quite impressed with this list!
On another note, I can't seem to find a way to 'reply all' without sending
another post to the list, so I apologize if there is a better way to do
this...
In any case, the consensus was largely that the most likely culprit was a
dirty upper barrel/stack and air ports... This seemed to correlate well
with our observation of increasing issues with spinning and sample
detection as a whole. And given the fact that the barrel had not been
pulled in over 3 years it seemed very likely due for a good cleaning...
The cleaning did not reveal any obvious blockages, but there was clearly
aluminum oxide residue and other residues throughout the barrel and base of
the barrel with the air ports. In particular the detection windows were
quite contaminated. So a thorough cleaning with isopropanol is hoped to
have alleviated that...
For now at least, the sample detection and spinning is much more reliable.
No more missile launches have been reported. Though the missile launches
are rare and intermittent enough that one can never be sure...
Anyway, I'll update you in a few weeks when I can be more certain that this
has resolved the issues.
Thanks again!!
Ken
Received on Fri Sep 14 2012 - 03:35:22 MST