The 24/7 Profit Machine:
Why the Apollo Closed-Loop Hot Tank System is the Ultimate Workshop Asset
In the demanding environment of an industrial workshop, the wash bay is frequently viewed as a necessary but expensive bottleneck, characterised by high water consumption, frequent chemical replacement, and the constant burden of liquid waste disposal.
Traditional manual cleaning methods, such as the high pressure wash bay, represent a single, wasteful exercise that restricts your workflow; only one staff member can utilise it at a time, forcing skilled technicians to wait in line while they perform low-level manual scrubbing. This creates a drag on productivity and blows out labour costs. The Apollo Hot Tank completely eliminates this bottleneck by shifting the heavy lifting from the technician to the machine, allowing your team to focus on high-value rebuilds and repairs while the cleaning happens in the background.
A significant advantage of the Apollo Hot Tank is its ability to operate entirely without staff supervision. It is designed for "set-and-forget" autonomous operation, meaning it can work through the night or over the entire weekend while your workshop is closed. When your team arrives on Monday morning, the parts are clean, degreased, paint stripped, decarbonised and ready for the next stage of the remanufacturing process. By utilising these "dark hours," you effectively add extra shifts to your workshop’s capacity without the cost of additional wages or supervision, turning the cleaning process from a slow-moving queue into a seamless, overnight transition.
What truly sets this system apart is the integrated centrifuge, which creates a truly closed-loop chemical system. In standard tanks, the chemical bath quickly becomes saturated with grease and carbon, requiring the entire system to be dumped and refilled. The Apollo centrifuge prevents this by constantly pulling contaminants out of the solution while the machine is running, ensuring the chemical maintains its original cutting power for years rather than months. In fact, many Apollo customers have successfully used the same chemical bath for over nine years without a single discharge, saving tens of thousands of dollars in chemical purchases and expensive liquid waste disposal fees.
The final stage of this efficiency is the integrated rinse bay, which manages both part protection and water conservation in a totally closed loop. Once parts are removed from the high-temperature hot tank, often operating at 90°C, they are rinsed with a rust inhibitor that provides immediate rust protection for sensitive machined surfaces and internal galleries. Crucially, no chemical is discharged from the hot tank during this process; instead, it is recycled through the rinse bay. As the hot tank naturally loses water through evaporation, the system utilises the used rinse water as the top-up source. While this is a manual process to top up the tank, it ensures that every drop of water and chemical is utilised rather than costly wasted.
This design provides a triple-bottom-line benefit for modern facilities: it drastically reduces total water usage, maximises the ROI on chemicals, and significantly lowers the risk of environmental hazards. Built in Australia for over 30 years, these systems are engineered to be rugged, serviceable, and safe, adhering to the core TACT principle—Time, Action, Concentration, and Temperature—to deliver unmatched results. The Apollo hot tank system is the only way to effectively clean parts while simultaneously reducing operational costs, saving money in every way possible, and protecting your environmental footprint.