It was 2016 when I found myself walking through a cannabis extraction lab. It was my first experience behind the scenes of the nascent legal cannabis industry, and I vividly recall my intense fascination surrounding the inner workings of this new world.

The science and technical aspects of the production process captivated me. The extraction company finished giving me their grand tour, and I’ll admit, I was left in a daze after all that I had seen. Of course, this made them even more proud of what they had accomplished.

However, remembering the purpose for my visit, I rose to my position and asked

“Why are there so many people working on filling these cartridges?”

Aside from the myriad of otherworldly devices that move concentrated liquid from one container to another, I noticed the multitude of workers doing the same monotonous job. Countless individuals were filling cartridges with a cannabis concentrate. Peering at each of them, you could see many different attitudes – some of which were making jokes while others looked entirely frustrated.

It was at that moment that I realized there was a glaring problem with this cannabis extraction facility. It was my job to find inefficiencies – and find them I did. My mind began to race, and I saw clearly that the nascent legal cannabis industry was still experiencing crucial growing pains. How could a multi-billion dollar industry even allow a handful of employees to hand-fill cartridges?

Immediately, I resolved that, as an individual that strives to create efficiency, that automation was the key. Without it, cannabis extraction facilities like this would be left behind as others would implement it.

It was from that moment that automation in the cannabis industry became my primary focal point.

The main idea behind automation is to increase efficiency while reducing manual labor time. Although it sounds simple, many companies in the legal cannabis sector have yet to implement it.

Filling cartridges by hand is highly difficult and incredibly expensive. It costs roughly $31,200 for a yearly employee that makes $15 per hour. Once you add payroll taxes (6.2% for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare), the total jumps to $33,586.80.

However, compare that to an automated cartridge filler, such as the Vape-Jet, which can fill approximately 4000 carts per day. Compared to an individual using a hand-held filler can reasonably fill just 1000 per day.

Yearly, the Vape-Jet can produce approximately 1,040,000 cartridges. An employee filling cartridges by hand can only complete 260,000 per year. This equates to a per cart cost of $0.002 for the Vape-Jet, versus $0.13 for human labor. That is a $0.12 cost per cart! The number of carts to breakeven here is approximately 250,000, and the return on investment is reached within 65 days.

In the case of the Vape-Jet, scalability is possible as well. A single person could reasonably operate up to 5 Vape-Jet automatic cartridge filling machines at once. Whereas with human labor, the scale is linear. This creates another problem, as many of the current solutions require a single operator working a single machine.

In the case of the Vape-Jet, due to its machine vision technology, the company employing a Vape-Jet can take the foam trays that cartridges are shipped in, and then directly put them on the machine. Other devices use jigs that need to be loaded, requiring human labor to remove each cartridge and put them in the jig. These are then removed from the jig and put back into the foam trays for safe transportation.

As you can see, this method is far less streamlined when compared to the Vape-Jet.

The primary consideration is the cost when deciding on manual labor or automated cartridge fillers.

In some cases, such as small companies, hand-filling is still optimal. However, as a company begins to grow, it’s far better to implement efficient operations sooner rather than later. However, industrial-size cannabis extraction facilities will increase their efficiency exponentially by utilizing an automated cartridge filler, such as the Vape-Jet.

Other key considerations are:

• Quality Assurance and Quality Control: Our auto-cartridge filler can sense if the cartridge is defective.
• Decrease Injury: Repetitive stress from hand filling can occur and does not when utilizing an auto-cartridge filler.
• Reduce Damage to the Product: Hand-held cartridge fillers with high-heat can cause damage to the final product.
• Reduce Down Time: Automated cartridge fillers do not experience downtime due to sickness or holiday.

As the cannabis industry matures, so will the technology that provides the backbone of the production process.

Automation in cartridge filling is the first step towards more efficiency, cost-savings, and quality standards.  For more information on automation technology for cartridge filling and the future of automation innovations – drop us a line.

The design and operating conditions of Vape-Jet 3.0 enable the reliable manufacture of high-quality vaporization cartridges which maintain the intended cannabinoid and terpene profiles until the point of consumption. No other automated filling solution has the degrees of freedom necessary to control dispensing accuracy whilst simultaneously preserving product integrity and quality.

Overview: Fluid Dynamics and Thermal Degradation

The problem of fluid dynamics is the primary obstacle to reliably filling a vaporization cartridge. The dynamics of cannabis derived fluids varies greatly from highly viscous to free-flowing, with every possibility in between depending primarily upon the concentration of cannabinoids (THC, CBD) relative to terpenes (linalool, myrcene, etc.). Fluid viscosity generally decreases with increasing temperature, and increases with decreasing temperature; i.e. warm fluids flow more easily than cool fluids.

The problem of thermal degradation is often an afterthought in the task of filling vaporization cartridges. Both cannabinoids and terpenes are susceptible to thermal degradation, with terpenes being especially vulnerable to heat in the presence of oxygen. McGraw, Hemingway, et al reported in a 1999 study of terpene thermal degradation that 23-37% of α-pinene is destroyed at temperatures between 90-120C, other terpenes exhibited degradation of as little as 7% or as much as 100% under the same conditions. Coffman and Gentner reported that THC degradation of 8-14% occurs at temperatures above 85C, with similar figures for CBD degradation; the result is a dramatically increased proportion of CBN, the oxidized product. By comparison, THC degradation at 65C resulted in only 3.4% loss, or 159% less degradation than 85C, or 300% less degradation than 105C.

Profile Preservation

The desire for ever increasing throughput has resulted in the adoption of extreme operating conditions by competing vaporization cartridge filling solutions. Competitors routinely make claims of filling 100 cartridges in as little as 2-5 minutes, which is completely achievable with operating temperatures in the neighborhood of 90C-120C. However, as has been illustrated, these temperatures will invariably result in thermal degradation of both cannabinoids and terpenes, resulting in a not-true-to-strain effect for the end user of vaporization cartridges filled in this manner. Not only is the profile different from the originating whole flower, the batch-to-batch and inter-batch variability will also be higher since these extreme temperatures create time-dependent changes in the overall profile. For example, the cartridges filled at Time-0 at 90C will be substantially different than the cartridges filled at the end of that batch.

Vape-Jet is designed to maintain strain specific profiles of cannabinoids and terpenes, whilst striking a balance in throughput via increased automation and gentler operating conditions. Vape-Jet is able to operate at 50C-70C due to the utilization of pressurized Modified Atmosphere Processing (MAP) techniques. With the assistance of pressurized nitrogen, mixed cannabinoids and terpenes are able to be accurately dispensed into vaporization cartridges with significantly reduced thermal degradation and oxidation products. The pressurized product line results in a modified fluid dynamic system, enabling reduced heating to create flow from reservoir to cartridge.

Quality Control and Assurance

The reduced operating temperature of Vape-Jet has the added manufacturing benefit of decreased cartridge leakage, since the product cools immediately upon filling, the atomizer doesn’t become over-saturated before the cap can be installed. Together with pre-fill inspection, Vape-Jet provides unrivaled reduction in waste and batchwise variability. Cartridges filled with Vape-Jet are more true to strain for the end user than any cartridge filled by a competing device. The filling accuracy of Vape-Jet, both in terms of quantity and quality, is unrivaled and assures that the customer receives exactly what was purchased, no more or less.

References:

G.W. McGraw, R.W. Hemingway, et al. United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service. Thermal Degradation of Terpenes: Camphene, Δ-Carene, Limonene, and α-Terpinene. Retrieved from: https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/1366

C.B. Coffman, W.A. Gentner. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Cannabis Sativa L.: Effect of Drying Time and Temperature on Cannabinoid Profile of Stored Leaf Tissue. Retrieved from: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1974-01-01_1_page006.html