Not unlike your car, regular maintenance is essential to keeping your IC running at its best performance and preventing any major issues down the road. It’s critical to understand the typical “mileage” of the various parts of an IC system and to know when items need to be replaced or inspected. In addition to performing regular maintenance, learning how to do basic troubleshooting so that you don’t have to call the instrument vendor for minor issues can save you money in the long run. A combination of carefully reading the data and inspecting system components can often lead you to a simple solution to the problem.