Regular Maintenance
Our air samplers are durable. The current record UPAS that came in for service had over 8000 hours of run time on it and after a quick flow rate recalibration we sent that unit back out to do some more sampling. Another time we had a customer send back a unit that had been run over by a forklift. That one received a new housing and was back in the fight for clean air in no time. Amazing!
8000 hours of operation is impressive but we recommend keeping track of your air samplers and sending them back for periodic maintenance before you get to those kind of numbers.
The Basics
We put a sticker on the back of our UPAS products so you know when it was last calibrated with a primary flow meter. We put a nominal one-year expiration on the calibration sticker. Unlike a laboratory balance. The need to send UPAS in for service can vary, which is a good thing. Our products are in use all over the world and we want to keep you up and running as long as possible.
If your sticker has recently expired but you are periodically checking your set flow rate with a primary flow meter you are probably fine to keep going.
If it’s been a long time since your UPAS have been calibrated, >2+ years, or if you’ve lost track of when it last went in for service you may want to consider sending the device back to us so we can verify it’s good for its next adventure.
Another useful way to gauge if it’s time for a check-up is to run the UPAS for a short period of time and review the log file. The log file will list among its properties the total run hours on the device. If it’s been over two thousand hours since the last time the UPAS was serviced, you should probably consider sending it in for recalibration. We do observe a very slow drift in UPAS flow rate after several thousand hours of use.
Other common reasons to send in hardware for evaluation.
There are additional reasons to send in your UPAS for a professional evaluation. In our hands we will look for signs of age and deterioration that may require attention even if there are no symptoms. For example, after thousands of hours of use we occasionally identify corrosion on the circuit board from exposure to the elements. Corrosion can cause issues with microSD card data storage, UPAS charging and the ability to update firmware. When UPAS are returned we evaluate for corrosion damage as well as other points of concern such as the ingress of dust or debris inside the units.
Is your battery losing charge? The batteries inside UPAS products are rated for 300 charge cycles but each battery has a unique history of charge-discharge and operating environment. After a few years of deployments the UPAS has likely seen some extreme heat and cold conditions amd racked up several thousand hours of use. When we receive the device we may suggest harmonizing your fleet to new battery packs. This ensures you get the performance you’ve come to expect. Don’t worry we’ll take care of recycling the old battery pack.
If you have units not functioning properly, we can often provide you some feedback remotely by sending us a log file run in ‘debug mode.’ This mode collects additional data during operation that our engineers can use to identify some likely explanations for out of the ordinary behavior. Our most common finding from evaluating a log file from a misbehaving UPAS relates to battery charging. It is typical during international deployments to find electricity access or electricity reliability are as expected. In this case we can usually see from a UPAS log file there was not an increase in battery voltage from the last run. This is a telltale sign of a weak link in charging.
What to expect after we receive your hardware.
Once we conduct our intake analysis we’ll give you a report on the state of the equipment. We’ll make some recommendations to bring your hardware back up to like-new performance.
Want to start a service inquiry now?
