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Gas Select™ and Composer™ tutorial

Alicat mass flow devices come preloaded with 98-130 gases that are selectable using Gas Select™. Composer™ firmware additionally allows the user to create and store up to 20 custom gas mixes.

See below for instructions how to use Gas Select™ and Composer™.

Video tutorial

Video transcript

“Hello, my name is Michael Whiteside. I am an applications engineer here at Alicat Scientific. In this video, I am going to show you how to change the gas select, as well as walk you through how to use the Composer™ functionality on an Alicat device. Now let’s get started.

In order to change the gas select on your Alicat device, we will hit menu (bottom right button), basic configuration (bottom left button), and gas up in the top left. We have a long list of gases you can select. We will go to our standard list, and we will change this to neon ((top left button for ‘up’, top middle button for ‘down’), hit set (bottom right button). We can see that it is now set for neon.

If you have your own user mix you would like to establish on the device, we will go back in here and hit Composer™. Now this composer functionality, you can add a specific mixture that you’re flowing, and the device will do all the necessary calculations.

We will add a new mix (bottom right button for ‘set’). Just name it ‘A’ for now, and we will add our first gas. Say we are looking to replicate atmospheric air. First we will add our nitrogen. Scroll down until we find our nitrogen (top left for ‘up’, top middle for ‘down’), there we go, and set that at 78% (top three buttons for ‘up’, ‘down’, and ‘select digit’, bottom right button for ‘set’).

Next, we will add our oxygen, add gas (top middle button), standard list, scroll down (top middle button) until we find oxygen, there we go (bottom right button for ‘select’). We will set that to 21% (top three buttons for ‘up’, ‘down’, and ‘select digit’, bottom right button for ‘set’).

Last but not least, we have our 1% of argon. In our standard list, the second one down (bottom right button for ‘select’). The device already auto-fills 1%, we will hit set (bottom right button). Now we have our own user mix and we will save that (bottom right button).

That is how you properly select a gas, or create your own user mixes on an Alicat device.”

Step-by-step instructions

Gas Select™ (front panel)

  1. Press the bottom right button for “MENU” selection.
  2. Press the bottom left button for “BASIC CONFIG” selection.
  3. Press the top left button for “GAS” selection.
  4. Use the up and down buttons to select your desired gas.

Composer™ (front panel)

  1. Press the bottom right button for “MENU” selection.
  2. Press the bottom left button for “BASIC CONFIG” selection.
  3. Press the top left button for “GAS” selection.
  4. Use the up and down buttons to select “COMPOSER User Mixes”.
  5. Press the bottom left button for “SET” selection.
  6. Use the up, down, and select letter buttons to name your user mix.
  7. Press the bottom left button for “SET” selection.
  8. Press the top middle button for “ADD GAS” selection.
  9. Use the up and down buttons to select your desired gas.
  10. Press the bottom right button for “SELECT” selection.
  11. Use the up, down, and select digit buttons to set your desired gas percentage.
  12. Press the bottom right button for “SET” selection.
  13. Repeat for the remaining gases in your mixture.

Composer™ (serial)

Use your RS-232 or RS-485 serial connection to create a Composer™ gas mix with a single command:

  • [unit ID]gm [mix name] [gas number, or 0 for next available number] [1st gas composition %] [1st gas ID in Gas Select] [2nd gas composition %] [2nd gas ID in Gas Select]

For example, to generate a Composer™ user mix called “Laser2” with a composition of 71.35% He + 19.25% N2 + 9.4% CO2 on an Alicat with a unit ID of A, simply type the following into your serial interface:

  • agm Laser2 0 71.35 7 19.25 8 9.4 4 <enter/carriage return>

Contact an applications engineer for support

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