Leaking

Today I discovered that the leak detector sniffer is very sensitive, but also sensitive to water vapour. That means that a wet joint will appear to be leaking. It means that when I breathe near the probe it will appear to be detecting a leak. Combine this with the fact that a gas cylinder is just about as tall as I am, and you'll see why I've been having so many problems with detecting leaks on my gas line. Just to rub it in, I found this in a leak detector manual. (No, I've never read our leak detector's manual. We don't have one. If we did I would have read it.)

Leaks

Today I discovered that even very experienced technicians do not necessarily know not to mix ferrules and tube fittings from different manufacturers. This was the cause of (at least some of) the leaks. The leaks caused the cylinder of helium to empty too fast, which meant I had to close the cylinder when I wasn't using it, which meant that I had to shut down the GC-MS when I wasn't using it, which meant that it wasn't ready for use, which meant that it wasn't used as often as it could have been.