For those of you who don´t know, Apeks is short for Apeks Marine Equipment Ltd – and they are one of the leading regulator manufacturers today. Their factory lies in Blackburn, England – and believe it or not, they make EVERY part that is used in their regulators on site. After reading through the last few sentences, I realized this blog entry seems more like an advert, but I promise it´s not. I just really like them.
Peter Greenweell, the Sales & Marketing Executive at Apeks, invited me to come visit and do their Service Course in maintenance of Apeks regulators. With my recent epiphany on how regulators are put together – I was more than excited to learn more, so of course I said yes!
It all started an early winter morning in Blackburn. We were a group of 9 people, all very much excited – but some more routined than others in the maintenance of regulators. Most of the other participants had already done other service courses, and then there was me. The blond girl with all the amazing questions (like, ”wow, why does these have different colours?”). But honestly, if you don´t know something, I always feel it´s better to ask, even though it might make you feel like an amoeba sometimes. Peter led us through the factory so we could see how the workflow was and get an idea of how things are built – rather than just seeing the finished product. I was amazed how much effort is put into the moulds and the mould tools . Remembering these things are designed to keep us alive – it makes perfect sense. If something is only a millimeter (or even less) out of the grid, they can´t use the product.
After the tour we got our hands on some first stages. Peter, thankfully, went through how the regulators function and explained to us in a very understandable manner the physics behind some of the features in the regs. We started out with the DST stages, with the promising words from Pete: ”If you can service the DST´s, you can service anything”. So I was very happy after disassembling and reassembling it seeing mine still functioned. When I first thought of regulator maintenance, I had this picture in my head of a big, strong guy working hard and manhandling the regulator to do the job properly. To my relief, as my biceps are not what they used to be, I have learned that everything about servicing regulators should be easy: ”If you need to force it – you´re doing it WRONG”. Or some diver has been manhandling it before bringing it to you, in which case you will need super-tools.
Another reason why I like Apeks so much is that they are the first diving manufacturer to have been awarded ISO 14001:2004, which is the standard confirming their environmental credentials. They were also the very first to pass EN 250 and be awarded the CE mark – and I feel that these awards confirm that Apeks take their work seriously. As Peter promised me, they would never put anything on the market that was not as good as the stuff already there, or better.
As you can see, after being drilled in the maintenance of both DSTs, second stages, the new Flight regulator, dump valves and much more – I was very happy. Thank you to Apeks for giving me insight in the technical side of things!
