In the mid-1970s, two enterprising friends decided to combine their joint passion for diving and their knowledge of precision engineering.
Working at first in an ‘archetypical location’ that has spawned some of the world’s most successful businesses — a small domestic garage — they set about creating a premium product.
Today, the name Apeks (derived from the initials of the founders — Ken Smith Ainscough and Eric Partington) has become a by-word for high-quality diving regulators.
The company’s early spirit of precision engineering and innovation continues, and it now operates from a purpose-built design and manufacturing facility in Blackburn, Lancashire.
Every element of Apeks’ regulators is designed and manufactured in-house, so the company has total control over all of its R&D, production and quality functions, thereby ensuring that each of its regulators “adheres precisely to design intent”.
Given the vital function that they perform — reducing breathing gas to an ambient pressure and delivering it to the diver — absolute reliability is of paramount importance.
Quality is assured by the ‘painstaking in-process checks’ that are made at each stage of manufacture and by the ‘comprehensive final inspection routines’ that the company’s products undergo before dispatch.
Apeks’ rigorous procedures comply with the highest standards under the European Quality Assurance System BS EN ISO 9001.
In addition, the performance of the company’s diving regulators has been tested by the world’s leading authorities; indeed, Apeks’ products were the first of their type to pass EN 250 and to be awarded the coveted CE mark.
Quality regime
The mainstay of Apeks’ quality regime is its assortment of Mitutoyo profile projectors, which are located throughout the company’s production facility — and in its quality control department.
Ever-growing global demand for the company’s regulators had resulted in increased levels of production and the need for an additional profile projector — in this case, a Mitutoyo PJA3010F-200 from Andover-based Mitutoyo UK (
www.mitutoyo.co.uk/en_gb).
This has a 200 x 100mm X-Y range and a 380 x 250mm table with built-in linear scales.
Moreover, its easy-to-read digital counters are located near its 315mm-diameter projection screen, while an accurate digital angle display facility eliminates the need for operators to perform complex calculations.
The inspection data gathered by Apeks’ Mitutoyo profile projectors is downloaded to Mitutoyo’s MeasurLink software via the projectors’ RS 232C outputs.
This software links and manages the measurement results generated by the profile projectors into a common database of part information and statistical data that is shared across Apeks’ entire manufacturing facility.
This information is used to prompt corrective actions, for analysis purposes and for various reporting functions that make quality-related data available for viewing and examination by the company’s production, engineering and managerial staff.
Focus on safety
Quality manager Simon Mercer said: “Reflecting our commitment to safety, our investment in research and development and our strict quality control regime, Apeks’ products consistently top independent performance tests throughout the world; and the fact that we have total control over every aspect of our manufacturing processes and quality-control systems helps to make Apeks regulators the industry benchmark for quality and performance.
“Although we use a range of material-testing and inspection aids, we regard our Mitutoyo profile projectors as our QA ‘work-horses’.
“Our quality control staff use them for making regular in-process quality checks, as well as for final inspection routines.
“In addition, our machine setters use them for checking the accuracy of first-off components before our machine operators continue a production run.
“We use profile projectors to project the magnified silhouettes of our parts under inspection onto the projectors’ screens, thereby enabling the dimensions and geometry of the parts to be precisely compared against pre-set tolerance limits.
“As our optical projectors are so easy to use and provide the levels of accuracy that we need, we ensure that our staff are skilled in their use.
“It also helps that our Mitutoyo projectors use non-contact inspection techniques — particularly when we are measuring components made from plastics, rubber and other deformable materials.
“Because our projectors instantly communicate their findings via Mitutoyo’s MeasurLink software to a common database, we can quickly intervene when component features drift from nominal conditions.
“Moreover, because our use of Mitutoyo optical projectors and MeasurLink software has allowed us to refine our systems and reduce the time between the production of components and their inspection, we have been able to further reduce our already impressively low levels of scrap and rework.”