Heavy duty support for a light weight project

No application is more personal or demanding than one you put in your mouth and on which, while you’re using it, your life can depend on the performance of its materials. One such application in which Distrupol recently played an important supporting role is that of Apeks ‘Flight’, a pressure regulator for scuba diving equipment.

A long-time partner for many of its diving equipment components, Distrupol was approached by Apeks Marine Equipment, UK, to contribute its expertise in the development of Flight. Flight was conceived to be the cutting edge of technology and the lightest pressure regulator available in the global market. It is specifically aimed at satisfying the needs of sport and hobbyist divers who travel extensively, and who require equipment that is both compact and lightweight but without involving any sacrifice in performance.

“As always Distrupol came on board as a committed partner,” says Lee Holt from Apeks Marine. “With weight saving at the heart of the project, Distrupol’s knowledge was critical as the design called for high strength to weight ratio materials. These had to be robust enough to cope with the tough in-water operating environment, yet sufficiently engineered to enable precise and sensitive part functions.”

Working with Apeks’ own engineering team on and off-site, Distrupol provided technical support with material selection, tool design and process fine-tuning for a series of regulated parts. These drew on many different polymers to provide the precise properties and performance levels, combined with the lowest weight characteristics, demanded for each component.

According to Holt: “As well as the complementary technical expertise Distrupol brings, its distributor role was also key in giving single-source access to a comprehensive range of materials and making them available in small lots. This is an invaluable aid to our production cost control.”

Material supplied to the project includes DuPont Crastin PBT and Delrin POM, Elastollan TPU, APA Alcryn MPR, VTP Dryflex/Vitaprene TPE, Chi Mei Polyac ABS and Wonderloy PC/ABS.

Performance rated from -30˚C to +80˚C, the Apeks Flight regulator has undergone rigorous tests including more than 1 million breathing cycles. Launched at the London International Dive Show in March, Flight has generated considerable interest in the marketplace, not least because of a ladies’ version of the regulator incorporating a smaller-design mouthpiece and its availability in a range of colours – green, pink and orange, as well as black.