FACSCalibur - O ring not forming seal

Last night, I received an email from Jason Meyer indicating that he had problems getting the RUN light to turn green, and that the seal with the tube didn't seem tight. He also said that he changed the sheath fluid but couldn't stop it from leaking.

I came in this morning and fixed the new sheath fluid cap and checked the system. There were a few air bubbles in the line, but everything else looked fine. I pressed RUN and the light stayed amber. I changed the tube and could feel that the seal was not tight. I took apart the assembly and put it back together with no improvement. So, I called BD support. Reference number was 886802; the rep said someone would call me.

Background: Periodic Maintenance was done by Dave Straub on the 4th. Prior to the PM, the cytometer was failing FSC in FACSComp, due to high minimum scatter values. Straub's reports show it passing with flying colors after the PM. At the time of the PM, I realized that our unlabeled and PE beads had expired over a month ago. We used them anyway and I asked Eric to order some new sets of beads as well as some FACSRinse and FACSClean solutions.

10:30 am: finally received a call back. Initially, they said that consumables such as O-rings are the customer's responsibility. After telling the rep that PM was just done and that the problem occurred right after PM, he said that Straub would have replaced the O ring for us, and that it may have been tighter than expected, such that the next user might have been too forceful and bumped it out of position, causing the problem. I again took the assembly apart and reassembled it and moved the O ring around, and while I was on hold, it began working properly again. I told Jason Meyer about it, and he will be trying to run his samples soon.