LC-TOF or QTOF for 200k EUR ?
Hello,
We are a medicinal chemistry group in Europe that basically had a very rationed access to a mass spectrometer. So finally we got funding to buy one, that would be the end of the story but always the devil is in the details.
We generally do organic synthesis, so a mass spec would help to prove the structures and help resolve reaction mixture compositions, but our group also does loads of protein work and wishes it could do metabolomics and proteomics on top of that. The minimum requirement would be to detect a protein of around 20-30kDa with some ligands attached covalently, other mass specs in the facility are basically booked 100% of the time, hence our inability to get a time slot usually.
So with that in mind, after haggling with sales people for a month and a half we finally got offers that work for us, with the budget being 200k EUR.
Basically we got offered an Agilent LC-TOF that barely fits in our budget(Infinity III 1260 with quaternary 800 bar pumps and 62030B mass module with ESI)
If we ignore the biology part we were also offered SQ Pro iQ plus with both UHPLC and HPLC variants (looking more in to HPLC since the upkeep of UHPLC is not really worth it for the gains we get, as far as we were consulted).
We also had an offer from waters for Arc core and an SQ2 with a bunch of gucci ionization source options for 180k and a thermo vanquish with ISQ EM for 200k, but when it comes to single quads we would like to go with Agilent for logistic reasons.
But we basically settled on the TOF offer right now.
Another crazier option that we are being offered is a shimadzu QTOF LCMS-9030 module that we could integrate in to our old LC-20 Prominence system that we have(binary pumps at 300 bar), the sales rep said he would work out a deal for LC maintenance package as well with that, which for the given budget seems crazy good, however the offer is still not final, the sales rep is only promising that he can get the price down in to our budget.
Tldr:
Doing organic synthesis and want the ability to find accurate masses of the compounds for publication, want to do protein work too,
Got offered:
LC-TOF 62030B with infinity III 1260.
Shimadzu LCMS-9030 to be connected with an old LC-20 prominance for cost savings, however that is still not final.
If we ignore protein work we also have an offer of Pro iQ Plus (3k m/z) with Inifinity III 1260
What would be the best option in your opinion ?
I'd like to hear some stories of success (or opposite) of integrating new stuff to old stuff, also the probability of stuff breaking and the maintenance requirements and the learning curve of using such devices to that they dont get fried in the first two weeks of use. Since our group never had direct access to such equipment we have only superficial understanding of the the workflows required.