Hello all!
My team is working on outlining a procedure for manufacturing infused pre-rolls that will be compliant with CDPH’s regs. In the old days it was simple, fill a cone, paint on some terpene/oil solution and roll in kief. But having to comply with the new regs We’re finding it challenging to come up with a methodology to ensure that specific and repeatable amounts of oil and keif are added to the outside of each cone.
This is important not only for continuity in the end product but because one need to be able to label the product with the specific milligrams of the added extracts.
Ideas We’re considering:
for the terpene/oil solution are, adding a specified amount of solution via syringe and spreading evenly somehow while tracking the added weight to ensure uniformity
for the kief, rolling each filled cone in a pre-weighed quantity of kief on PTFE or something until all keif is stuck to the cone.
These ideas arguably create more questions than they address when you consider the nuances and the fact that the procedure would need to be repeated many 1000’s of times a day.
I’ll shoot this over to a few of our STM RocketBox clients and see if anyone has any meaningful advice for you. I know that a few clients told me they were infusing the actual flower with oils and kief before placing it into our machine versus infusing externally due to the nuances you touched on. Of course, if they’re in your area, they may have to alter their infusion process now as well.
It likely sounds crazy because this is merely speculation - but I wonder if anyone has ever tried using a cartridge filling machine (or syringe filling machine?) to accurately measure oil dosages to apply to the outside of each joint. Virtually, if you can find a way to actually apply the oil using the dosed syringe/cartridge, that would be a neat way of at least measuring those dosages appropriately every time. In regards to Kief, I’m fresh out of ideas - will keep you posted there.
I do have a friend or two in engineering/automation companies. Cannot say if they an exact solution off the bat, and I don’t know how pricey it could be, but may be worth exploring if they could potentially build or alter a machine to automate any of those processes. Let me know if you’d like an introduction!
have employee put <1ml of oil solution with known calculated amount of dissolved extract (can be diluted with food grade ethanol for better flow.) into each channel containing pre-roll.
put measured quantity of kief in channels on top of pre-roll that has liquid added.
roll until coated, let dry.
position dram vials under each pre-roll well, tip and drop preroll and any kief remaining in each cell into dram vials.
now only known quantities at known concentrations of liquid extract is used. this also ensures a consistent way to measure out specific amounts of kief for specific value added products.
IMO, the only way to ensure your cust gets the same quantity of something like kief everytime, the amount of kief added needs to stay the same during all stage of the process, any case where the kief can fall off (like if they were all in a jar and not individually packaged will make your numbers go off. esp if you use the shake off kief for other products. if initially allocated for the product, the entirety of that allocation should be kept with the product, imo)
good luck! i personally have not seen a device on the market to make fancy pre-rolls. i hope you folks figure it out. PM me if you want anymore ad-hoc engineering advice!
Thanks for your thoughts! I think what you’re mentioning in the first paragraph could work with an extremely uniform mixing process but even with that I would love to be able to able to provide a product that is infused inside and out.
I think you’re right, ultimately automation will be key for this and so many other manufacturing operations that are still largely done by hand in our industry. Great to see some legit engineering and automation companies entering the space in recent years. It’s actually something I have been exploring but we will probably be starting out doing the cone infusing by hand due to the high cost. Ultimately it will make sense to automate once we are achieving success with our cone brands and I would very much appreciate the contact. Thanks!
