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1. After a cleaning procedure, flush ethanol in the flow cell (this will evaporate once the flow cell is removed and detached). Stop the flow and vent the pressure.  

2. Slightly ease off the the 4 screws and then remove the tubing from the flow cell holder by grabbing the tubing as close to the holder as possible and pulling them upwards. Wearing gloves helps your grip.

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Please note that the tubing can be very stuck in the flow cell holder, and you might stretch it when you pull it out for the first time. If this happens, cut off the stretched part with the little black guillotine (should be in the white box of spare parts).

3. Loosen the thumbscrews (Fig. 1, indicated with the red circles) by unscrewing them with your fingers. If the screws are too tight, you may need tot should not be necessary to use a screwdriver., but for unlocking you can use one if necessary.  You will see that after untightening those, the flow cell will be easily removable from the holder.

4. Once the tubing are removed and thumbscrews are lose, oOpen the two parts of the holder. Make sure you don’t lose the white ferrules (Fig. 2).

5. Remove the flow cell and store it safely.

6. Place a new (C1) flow cell on the base (bottom side) of the flow cell holder and set the white ferrules in each of the corresponding holes on the flow cell holder’s top side (Fig. 3) (inside). Channels 1-5 should be on the left- hand side and channel 6 should be on the right hand side. The image below shows one ferrule in a hole.

7. Insert the tubing for of Channels 1-5 into each of the corresponding holes in the flow cell holder, making sure each is secured in the ferrule. What you need is that the tubing tips are flush with the ferrules, and are not sticking out (Fig. 3 above).

8. Place the top of the flow cell holder gently on the base, making sure the connectors line up with the holes. Be careful that the ferrules don’t fall out.

9. When locking the thumbscrews (indicated with red circles in next figure), use your fingers and not a screwdriver. Tighten two diagonal corners until there is slight resistance. Then tighten the other two corners to the same level. Tighten the rest of the way in an star pattern (like in the red arrows direction of Fig. 4 below the second image below). The screws should be only so tight that the top and bottom of the flow cell holder are flush, and there is noare sandwiched firmly without any visible gap between them anymore. There is no need to tighten them more beyond that point.

10. Flush MilliQ at 2 bars for a couple of minutes to get rid of air bubbles in the flow cell and to check that there is no fluid leaking from between the top and bottom of the flow cell holder. When you see that some liquid is leaking, you can use the star pattern to tighten the screws a little more, and then try again. If that does not help, go back to step 3 and see if the tubing is sitting well in the ferrule for each channel.

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