BEWARE OF APEKS SUPERCRITICAL 1500-L MACHINE
Before purchasing anything from Apeks I suggest you read my experience below......
I just wanted to stop by and include my experience with Apeks.
I live in the North Bay area of California and I now many people with machines that work properly, many of those machines being made from Eden Labs. Let’s just say I regret not doing my research before purchasing Apek's 1500-L benchtop machine.
Everything went well with Apeks until the machine finally arrived. When the machine ran the first time it ran okay while producing lower yields than expected.
After studying the manual and spending time on the phone with customer service I decided to give the machine another 4 hour run, only this time the yield was almost nothing and mostly water. During the third run the pump started to make popping noises and guess what I needed to do, change the seals already in the first ten hours of use.
After buying a set of costly seals and more filters Apek’s said to check the orifice orientation on the separation vessel and everything was in spec according to the manual. So I started the machine for the fourth time only to see the yield of the first run, and steadily declining after that.
So as I went down this road for the next couple months I found myself purchasing and replacing multiple sets of seals and filters only to have the same problem over and over again.
I was on the phone constantly with customer service and all they could direct me to do was follow the cleaning steps in the manual which I have been since the start. They then told me a may need to add another coalescing filter to the loop and possibly change my regulator because I started having pressure drops in the separation chamber.
Keep in mind this entire nightmare was in the first 100 hours of the machine operation, when I should have had to change the seals once I changed them about 8 times, while receiving very little in product over the 100 hours.
So I finally said enough is enough, I called Apeks and demanded they take the machine back, since I was under warranty still I expected some compensation for spending $30,000 on a machine that doesn’t work as promised. They were only willing to give me half my money back and refused to honor their 25% restocking fee and I am still battling with them till this day. They claimed the machine had oil in it, and that was obvious to me. It was only then Andy Joesph the owner explained to me there is several ways oil can get into the pump 6 of which are mentioned nowhere in the manual, oh yeah and the pump is not manufactured for CO2 recirculation.
Needless to say this was my honest experience with the Apeks 1500-L machine and beware of purchasing this machine. As of right now this machine is not ready for market and they need to more R&D on this “fully automated” machine because it is any but fully automated. I have a bachelor’s degree in engineering and have had multiple experienced growers and supercritical guys scratch their heads with this machine. BEWARE!
If you have further questions about my experience please feel free to email me at
[email protected].
