Good morning. I have recently had 3 machines, at different clinics, get pulled for inlet flow errors. Of course, in the tech room no errors. All my pressures have been good. Diasafes are all good. In one of the machines I changed the de-air brushes. In that machine the staff told me that the inlet flow error flashed right at the beginning of the morning then went away. Which made me think it may not be the brushes. It also seems like it is only happening when the clinics start up in the morning. All the machines have about 4500 hours on them. No reports of water coming from the vent tube. All have stated conductivity stuck at 17 when this is going on. I was wondering what the most common reason for this problem with machines of this age is. Any suggestion are greatly appreciated.

If you have central acid and/or bicarb, the techs maybe hooking up the acid and bic wands to the wall before starting the machine in dialysis mode. The pressure from the loops will over come the inlet springs in the pumps and cause just what they reported. This can happen and you may or may not see any water out of the vent tube depending on how much pressure and how long they sit.

I'm with old F Guy on this one. I've experienced the same problem. Make the staff aware that they need to start the machine in dialysis mode first, then connect their acid and bicarb...if they use a central feed system.

I have a K machine in Bio-Med shop with the same problem, with 7000+ hours, Flow Inlet Error appears 1 or 2 minutes then disappears for another 3 to 4 hours and then alarms again with conductivity, no central feed, new diasafe. Hard to troubleshoot with error disappearing fast, Any one experienced something like this before?

dear.or flow pump or head can cause on/off problems. Also I have seen transducer#9 cause with high venous pressures/ pull machine and can not find a problem!!! Runs for days no problem and then gets a high venous patient and alarms flow error? I have seen this on H machines 3 or 4 time not yet on K s. Also when this happens BOB/flow indo. is still moving when it is a bogus error from #9??? Good luck

Replace the gear pump head on your degas pump motor.

The brushes on a new deaeration pump should be good for about 10,000 hours. The pump heads should last longer than that.

If you can't duplicate it, I am kind of stumped. Does VERR read 0? Could you have a sticky valve?

I come in the morning and turn the machines on and plug them into the valbe box connections. The PCT's will come in and start building the machines and put them into dialysis mode. I plg them up at 445-500am. We then turn the acid bicarb on at about 5:40 and allow them to build and run through test. I have never seen this procedure cause conductivity to go to 17 and cause a inlet flow error. What I have seen cause this to happen is bad BC membranes.

KD5DWE. You said you connected a and b wands @ 445 but did not cut the a and b on till 5:40, that's why you haven't seening this problem. If the a and b was on when you connected the wands and it set there till 5:40 before they started the machines in dialysis mode you 2 would have this problem. The more pressure you have on your acid and bicarb loop the more of a problem this will be.

Why Oh Why Would you plug into the central loops with the mach running and NOT have the Central loops turned On YOU ARE CAUSING YOUR OWN PROBLEM!

Hey Dudz,
check flow pumps and deair brushes and head, then calibrate cond cell , if VERR = 0, check the orifice in Hydroblock