We have been unable to get into contact with Isolate Extraction Systems (IES) since last week. My main contacts in their service dept have not been responding to my calls or texts for over a week, and nobody picks up the phone on their main line either. I have spoken with two other companies that use their machine and their experience is the same.
Our hydraulic booster pump has gone down, and with the radio silence coming from IES, we are getting really worried that they may be going out of business. Doing a quick google search, there have been at least two lawsuits brought against IES in the past few years for alleged violation of settlement agreements or misrepresentation of their product. These were back in 2022, but i’m wondering if this has finally caught up to them and they are going under.
Any other IES operators out there who have had contact with them recently?? If you know any information on this topic, reach out to me.
On a separate note, if you are familiar with their hydraulic booster pumps and are certified for repairing them, please DM me.
The last contact we had with them was on 10/1/24. We have also been looking into either rebuilding the gas booster ourselves or finding another company that can retrofit when of their pumps onto our IES’s. If i get anymore info I’m more than happy to share on this thread so we can all keep our IES’s alive.
If you guys have any contacts to technicians for either Apeks or IES, please let us know too. We have a ton of buyers who purchase second hand equipment and then have trouble getting in touch with either the manufac or techs for repairs.
Or better yet, anyone reading knows/is a tech for multiple different types of processing equip, (since a decent amount of companies are being bought out) happy to partner or feature you/your team on our website as a go-to tech for a certain region. That would really help us strengthen our community of second hand equip users!
@RuderEquipment, @Marijuana or anyone else,
As far as Apeks equipment goes I have a healthy inventory of parts and consumables and I offer remote technical support, on-site services and more for anything Apeks, of any any age.
I have 6 years of non-stop experience working with this equipment and the processors who use it, all over the country and beyond. I always aim to be very fair and transparent and have a great track record with customers.
Please reach out to me with a DM here or via my email below with any questions or needs.
What a bummer. We have been waiting some time for paid seal kits as well for our IES machine. Most recent attempt to contact was unsuccessful. Hope there will be a way to source parts and any leads would be appreciated.
I have been trying to get through to them as well. We just paid for the virtual commissioning and then nothing. Would you know of anyone that can help me set up the machine?
Another IES user here. We’ve been a customer for 5 years. They have also gone radio silent on us as well. Not a single person to answer the phones, and their entire headquarters in CO is dead empty when we sent some people to go see what was up… Real crazy. Our system is also experiencing some issues that we require some assistance troubleshooting.
I thought IES acquired APEKS last year, so hopefully they can have some of their technicians assist. I’m not sure what else folks like us can do.
What a bummer. Former IES employee here. I may have spoken to some of you guys on the phone, or even visited your facility in-person if you had issues with your machine in 2018-2020. I left when the pandemic sent the company into the beginnings of the death spiral. I am very familiar with these extractors and especially the pumps. A few things to know about the pumps:
They are a custom IES design, but built from off-the-shelf internal components. That being said, there are a number of flaws that they refused to address, and the service life is…bad, frankly. The tolerances on the cylinder walls were poor, they are not the same diameter all the way through the bore. Wavy, if you will. They are solid stainless and should have been sleeved with polished liners. This really does shred the piston rings and they start leaking gas out of the weep ports.
They opted to build their own hydraulic cylinder to drive the compressor ends. The ports on the hydraulic oil cylinder are at the ends of the cylinder. This makes the piston slam into the ends of the cylinder, and the pump eventually breaks itself, because the internal piston parts are plastic. Normal hydraulic cylinders have the ports on the side, so when the piston moves past the port the oil flow is cut off by the piston body, and it can’t slam the piston into the end of the cylinder.
Related to #2, the machine’s PLC runs the pump by following a program that tells it to push in one direction for “x” seconds, then it shifts oil and pushes in the opposite direction. There is no proximity sensor that shifts the pump direction, so again, it slams the piston into the ends of the pump and then pins it there with force, until the program makes it shift and it does the same thing to the opposite side.
I have seen newly rebuilt pumps undergo a complete failure on the test rig, and never make it out of the facility. Owners and the engineers just instructed us to throw parts at every problem…pump fails after an hour of run time. Did we do a forensic analysis to find out why? No, we would just rebuild it again.
A pump rebuild consists of replacing all the o-rings, roll pins and snap rings that seal all the parts together, and there are also springs and balls for the check valves, and piston rings for the gas and hydraulic pistons. It is not super difficult and no special tools are needed.
A retrofit of a different gas compressor pump is feasible, but there would have to be some workarounds for their programming. Haskell makes a H2 compressor pump that is everything the IES pump is not.
I believe the majority of the rebuild parts could be obtained from McMaster Carr, and Rocket Seals in Denver. It might be possible to develop an open-source parts list.
I feel really bad for all those affected, those machines were not cheap! Happy to answer questions if I’m able.
Any idea what platform IES used for their PLC/HMI? Have some PLC experience and the cables/software/licenses to talk to older Allen Bradley, Siemens and Automation Direct stuff. Are you in Colorado? Glad to see someone else suggesting Rocket Seals that place is a treasure.
Does the hydraulic pressure running this CO2 pump not have an adjustable relief valve to keep the excessive strain on the piston/sealing parts from happening?
I am no longer in Denver but agree that Rocket Seals is a treasure. If you need something, they will figure it out.
The hyd pump does have a relief valve, but is not easily adjustable. The pump is not a variable displacement pump, either. The machine pumps CO2 at a range of different pressures, and the hydraulic pump is set to push CO2 at the highest pressure needed.