An open letter from the Miflex Hose Company in Italy:
Miflex do not usually get involved with forum issues, because on our webpage we have under the section “How to contact us”, an email address to which a customer can refer for any kind of questions, and where we answer within 24-48 hours. Most of the people that wrote to us, received a satisfactory answer within very short time.
To avoid confusion between Miflex, and Miflex distributors, Miflex mail is :
miflex@miflex.com.
We have also to say that we noticed that as we are the only ones putting our name laser printed on the hose, we are the only one that get attention in case of problems with braided hoses..
Even in this thread about LP hoses, we have seen an user jumping in with a story of an HP hose that blew throwing the SPG 35 feet far away.
When someone told him it was not a Miflex hose, it seems the issue did not need more comments.
About the degradation issue reported on Scubaboard forum, these are our comments:
We have contacted Mr.Davis immediately, and we have received his answer today. We have asked him to send back the hose for inspection at our cost because first of all we want to ascertain if it was one of our hoses.
To give to the public a better idea about who we are, Miflex is a privately owned company, that makes a few million technical hoses a year, good part of which are used in safety critical applications. We have been in business for about 40 years, and our mission is to develop and produce, the best possible product for the intended use.
For the scuba diving market, we have developed and patented a hose radically different from previous hoses, reinforced by two braided layers, and without solid outer coating.
This structure gives advantages whose details can be read on our website.
Since the first day we have bought and used only material suitable for breathing air, and scuba diving use.
All our scuba diving hoses are made in Italy, and all the components we use are coming from EEC countries, We do not use any Far East component, simply because we want to have all our supplier under constant control, and for us this is not feasible with Far East manufacturers.
All the materials we use, both for the hose, and for the fittings, are RoHS and REACh conform, and this means that they do not contain any harmful substance.
We then mark indelibly all our LP hoses with Laser printer, because we stand by the quality of our product, and we want our customer to know who is the manufacturer.
To give some first comments about the degradation issue, we share the thoughts of Andy’s and some other people about the care hoses need.
Hoses do have to be checked, and sometimes changed.
They can be damaged also unwillingly, and diver should not think they will last forever. They are a safety critical component, and as we do not use the same car tyre for 20 years, we should not use the same hose for 20 years.
In the email we receive from Andy, he tells us that a technician to whom he showed the problem, said he saw the same thing happening before, and we had the same statement from regulator’s manufacturer technical people. They were referring to other manufacturers hoses, and not to our braided hoses.
So far these are the most common causes we found damaging the hose:
-Cleaning the hoses with cleaning solutions different from mild soap and water.
-When cleaning solutions go inside the hose inner liner, not drying it immediately with high pressure air flow.
-Cleaning the brass fittings with descaling solution. Because of the Venturi effect, this can let some drop of corrosive solution inside the hose, and shorten dramatically the life of the inner hose.
-Charging the tank with compressors that have not been properly maintained, as this might pollute the air with oil. Especially EPDM rubber has problem when in contact with oil.
The above operations, most of the times will not cause an immediate damage, but will shorten the life of the hoses, and with seven or eight years old hoses, like the one in the picture, this could be the cause of the problem we are witnessing.
We can add that in the few hoses showing this problem that we inspected, not a single one showed a degradation on the whole surface, typical of ageing, but always a degradation of a limited area. Also no one showed a degradation starting from the outside of the hose, but always from the inside.
If degradation was due to sun, or heat exposure, as someone speculates, it should have damaged the outside surface of the inner liner first, and then the inside.
We have produced so far more than 1,5 million LP hoses, and we have seen not more than 10 customer claims addressing this problem, and, as said, we feel that this is due to the action of some substance on the inner liner.
We have investigated on possible reasons, and we carry on our investigations, but so far we have to admit, we have not find a positive answer to give.
We all at Miflex will continue with our effort to supply you with the best possible product, and regardless if the hose is made by us, we will analize any issue our customers will report us, trying to find the cause, and improve our products whenever possible.
Coordially,
Miflex Customer Service
