• What are positive displacement pumps?
• What is chemical injection and why do you need it?
• I can buy a cheap pump for a lot less. Why shouldn't I do that and just replace it more frequently?
• How can you say that your pumps won't ever need to be replaced?
• What about repair costs? Since your pumps are expensive, your parts must be too.
• I priced your packing and it's expensive. How can you justify that?
• Your literature and your sales reps keep talking about skids and packages. They are very pricy, and I don't need one.
• What is "PFE"? I Googled it, but not much luck.
• You keep saying your pumps are more reliable. How do I know it's not just marketing?
• I want to repair my own pumps or use a local repair service.
• The exchange program sounds good, but I'm still not convinced.
• Why are your pneumatic pumps so much more reliable?
• Why are your electric pumps so much more reliable?

What are positive displacement pumps?

• Positive displacement (PD) pumps are devices that maintain a constant flow without regard to pressure. PD pumps are used when the flow rate of a liquid must be closely controlled.
• PD pumps achieve constant flow by drawing in a fixed volume of fluid at a specific pressure into the low pressure region of the pump and forcefully transferring the fixed volume through the pump's high pressure region into a relatively high pressure receptacle such as a pipeline.
• PD pumps are different from the other primary type of pumps used in industry. These are referred to as centrifugal or rotating pumps. Centrifugal pumps are designed to maintain a constant output pressure without regard to flow rate. They are good for many applications where flow rate is not the primary consideration.
• CheckPoint only makes PD pumps; we are the positive displacement pump specialists. We are the largest independent specialist in this industry.
• CheckPoint pumps are referred to by many different names depending on the industry, including chemical pumps, injection pumps, process pumps, metering pumps, or dosing pumps.

Top

What is chemical injection and why do you need it?

• Chemical injection (CI) refers to a pump process where secondary chemical solutions are added to a primary process flow in order to improve the quality of the primary fluid or enable or enhance the flow of the primary fluid. It requires high accuracy as to flow rate, high reliability since it is normally a continuous process, and high resistance to corrosion and chemical attack since the chemicals and the environment are often harsh.
• CI in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries is necessary for a variety of reasons. To name just a few:
  • Internal corrosion prevention starting at the wellhead itself and continuing on all the way to the refinery
  • Hydrate inhibition to prevent freezing in gas production lines
  • Drag reduction, increasing production flow by decreasing friction inside pipelines
  • Gas well dewatering
  • Breaking crude oil/water emulsion bonds to enable separation
  • H2S scavenging, scale inhibition, and
  • Waste water sterilization
• CheckPoint specializes in chemical injection for the oil and gas industry. We do have customers in other industries where reliability is critical, but our roots, focus, and principal expertise lies in oil and gas production.

Top

I can buy a cheap pump for a lot less. Why shouldn't I do that and just replace it more frequently?

• Good question. The answer is that you get what you pay for. Our customers don't want to fool with their pumps every day. They recognize that those cheap pumps need more adjustments, repairs, and attention than our pumps. They also know that cheap pumps cannot maintain a consistent flow rate, so they are either wasting precious chemical or not pumping enough.
• The cost of waste, under-delivery, repair, downtime, and maintenance more than offsets the cost of our pumps. And besides, if you go buy a cheap pump every 3 years, how long does it really take to justify the cost of a single CheckPoint pump that will NEVER need to be replaced?

Top

How can you say that your pumps won't ever need to be replaced?

• Because it's true. CheckPoint pumps can be repaired over and over again, and with each properly performed repair you end up with the equivalent of a new pump. It is highly unlikely that a repair will ever be so expensive that it makes more sense to replace the entire pump. A complete overhaul usually takes less than two hours.
• Since 1990 we have had pumps in the field and we have never seen a case where our pump could not be repaired to factory specification for much less than its replacement cost.

Top

What about repair costs? Since your pumps are expensive, your parts must be too.

• CheckPoint makes 90% of its revenues on pump sales.
• Our competitors all make a large portion of their revenues off of parts sales. That's a fact. So when they sell you a pump they are counting on it failing and they are counting on you spending a lot of money in the future with them to maintain that pump.
• That's why CheckPoint has met with resistance in many situations, because third party shops don't want to sell our product when they know that the steady stream of repair work and parts isn't going to be there for them. That's also why you may not know about CheckPoint yet. No one besides us has a vested interest in pushing a product that's so reliable. No one, that is, except you, the customer.
• Try this experiment. Price out the cost of each part that is needed to build any of our competitors' pumps from scratch. Then try the same thing with CheckPoint. You will discover that you can build a complete CheckPoint pump for about the same price as the sum of all our parts. We don't gouge on parts because that is not our business. Selling you a better pump is.

Top

I priced your packing and it's expensive. How can you justify that?

• Leaking packing is an environmental problem, a pain to replace, and an ongoing maintenance expense. We use premium materials of construction and extremely precise manufacturing processes to make a seal that lasts much longer under more different conditions than any other seal design. Isn't it worth more to get a seal that can be used under any conditions and lasts longer? We think so.

Top

Your literature and your sales reps keep talking about skids and packages. They are very pricy, and I don't need one.

• Installing any positive-displacement metering pump means sourcing and connecting an air/gas filter/regulator, figuring out the best way to tube up the suction and discharge lines, getting a pressure relief valve and piping it in, making sure you size all the plumbing correctly, sourcing and installing a chemical filter, ball valves, and a non-return valve, figuring out where they all go, and then tubing it all up.
• Out in the field, when the installation actually happens, things don't always go according to plan. There are part substitutions and omissions, undersized or oversized pipework, dissimilar metals, poorly sealed joints, and incorrectly set relief valves.
• Getting it all right is not just a reliability issue, it's a safety and environmental issue as well. Our packages have been developed and refined over the years to contain the most reliable components, in the right places, properly sized, installed and tested to provide the best protection and the maximum reliability for our pumps.
• Using a CheckPoint package saves time and money while protecting your process equipment and assuring reliable chemical flow.

Top

What is "PFE"? I Googled it, but not much luck.

• PFE stands for "perfluoroelastomer" - it's our acronym. The industry standard acronym is FFKM.
• PFE refers to a rubber-like seal material in which all the hydrogen atoms have been replaced with fluorine. The resulting material is chemically inert, like PTFE (Teflon™) but with springy sealing properties. Unlike PTFE, PFE does not take a "compression set" and thus continues to seal over the long haul. Originally developed by Dupont under the trade name Kalrez^®, it is now sold under a variety of other brand names like Isolast^® and Chemraz^®.
• PFE is the most effective and expensive seal material in the world, and it is the only one that can effectively seal against the most aggressive chemicals. That's why it's our standard seal material.

Top

You keep saying your pumps are more reliable. How do I know it's not just marketing?

• We know our pumps are more reliable. Not just a tad better, a LOT better. We have field data provided by customers that prove, time after time, that our pumps cost less to operate than any other chemical injection pumps. How much less? Of course, it depends on the application. The more challenging the application, the more our pump will save you.
• We prepared a document to document hard data proving our product had a mean time between failure (MTBF) more than 8 TIMES LONGER and a maintenance cost LESS THAN 30% when compared to the two pump brands also being used in that field. This was a statistically significant result, involving an installed base of over 1200 pumps.

Top

I want to repair my own pumps or use a local repair service.

• These are the traditional ways to maintain your fleet of pumps. We think we have a better solution. Can we suggest using our exchange program?
  • An exchange plan takes all the hassle and unpredictability out of the maintenance cycle.
  • An exchange plan is very quick, and can even be done on consignment.
  • When we do your repair, we replace every wear component, not just the ones that wore out first.
  • We make sure your pump has all product improvements that have been made since the pump was first manufactured.
  • We do all this in advance. When you need a repair, we send out your exchange pump immediately, the same day. You don't have to do anything except replace your failed pump with the exchange and send it to us.
• We warrant all our repairs just like we did when your pump was new. So if it fails prematurely you are covered.

Top

The exchange program sounds good, but I'm still not convinced.

• Our motivation for doing these exchanges is really not about us making more money. It's about our pumps working like they were designed to work, day in and day out, forever. That makes us look good, and it makes you look even better. We hope that leads to you turning to us for all your pumping needs.
• We charge a flat fee for exchanges.
• We can offer consigned exchanges. That means your downtime can be cut to zero. It costs no more than the regular exchange program. You do have to pay for our labor, but this is a small price to pay for zero downtime and maximum runtime before your next outage.
• Isn't your valuable time better spent on more productive activities?

Top

Why are your pneumatic pumps so much more reliable?

• Fewer moving parts.
• No springs and no diaphragms.
• Double-acting motors, so the suction stroke is as strong as the discharge stroke.
• We only use the best materials.
• We continuously improve them based on extensive in-house testing, which we conduct 24/7/365, and data from our field installations, and we implement all our improvements as soon as we prove they are better.

Top

Why are your electric pumps so much more reliable?

• Same continuous improvement philosophy as our pneumatic pumps.
• Our MD pumps are proven to handle the nastiest, most difficult chemicals better due to the unique design.
• Our E and F Series pumps have the most bullet-proof, over-designed gearboxes in the world and make use of the same field proven chemical head used in our pneumatic line of pumps.

Top