As the industry is growing and there is more demand for products, scaling up is one of the biggest challenges for any shop or business. Relying purely on manual intervention makes the process of scaling hard. Pre-roll machines are a great addition to your arsenal if you are in the business of selling pre-rolled cones.
However, there are many pre-roll cone filling machines in the market, and identifying the best one is a task. Once you identify the best pre-roll machine that fits your need, there is still a bit to do to optimize the use of the machine to get the best efficiency.
Futurola Knockbox 3/100 is one of our best-selling products for pre-roll production that many of our customers rely on to scale up production in their dispensaries/shops. However, some of the most frequent questions we get asked are about whether Knockbox 3/100 will do or if they should go for a more advanced product if they are to scale exponentially. This blog will attempt to answer this question and also how your shop/dispensary can get the best results from using pre-roll machines and supercharge your cannabis business.
What is the Ideal Knockbox Size for Your Business?
Joint rolling machines are available in quite a few sizes in the market. You can choose the ones you want depending on your business needs and of course the budget. At Futurola, we have the Knockbox 3/100. Knockbox 3/300 and of course the Conemaster. All of these machines can handle increasing capacities.
The actual choice would ultimately depend on the size of your business. A small organization can do quite well with one or more Knockbox 3/100. If you handle a large quantity of cannabis production, you can opt for Knockbox 3/300 and the Conemaster is suited for larger enterprises.
However, the efficiency and scale that you can achieve with any product are also dependent on how you are using it and how many people are operating these machines. If you have one person operating the roll cone machine from start to finish including loading the pre-roll cone-lock tubes, filling the mix tray with the mix, releasing the mix into the filling device, and finally closing the joints with the new Dutch Crown Device. Some of our clients opt to have multiple people operating the different tasks and even have multiple machines operate simultaneously.
The next section will go into detail about how the same machine can handle different quantities of production capacity depending on the configuration you use.
How to be More Efficient Using Your Pre-roll Machine?
It’s often the case that getting a machine that can produce more per hour isn’t the ideal option. By optimizing the way you use the Knockbox 3/100 and some very nifty add-ons, you can get your production up! Here’s what we recommend.
One of the best options you have is to get more staff to handle the operations on one machine. Say you have one person responsible for loading the paper cones into the joint rolling machine and another person handling filling the product tray and another one handling closing the joints. This way, you get to reduce the time it takes to produce 100 joints significantly using even just one machine. However, there is an additional labor cost to consider. This option works great if you do not have an issue with staffing and you can hire as many workers as you want.
This may not be suitable for a startup or a smaller business looking to be more cost-effective in the long run. That’s where add-ons to the filling device come in handy. These are specially designed accessories that make the standard filling kit more efficient by reducing downtime.
The Dutch Crown Device
One of the best additions we recommend for the Knockbox 3/100 is the Dutch crown device. This device is a simple add-on that can close 100 filled cones in less than 10 seconds. While the packing machine can do the job of actually filling the raw cones faster, closing the joints is usually a manual process. If you are doing it by hand, closing each joint would take 5-10 seconds depending on the efficiency of the person handling it.
You may have to purchase a specific device for the different size cones. Say if you are using king-sized cones, then you may need the dutch crown device that is tailor-made for this. The dutch crown device can cut the downtime on each machine by 10 minutes per 100 cones.
Cone Loader
Loading the rolling paper cones to the joint filling machine is perhaps the task that takes the most time. A cone loader makes this task much easier. The cone loader can reduce the downtime of the machine by 5 minutes per 100 cones which is great if you are on the hunt for more efficiency!
Unloading Stations
Unloading stations are quite important in the overall process. Once the Knockbox 3/100 pre-roll machine completes its work of filling the cones with the mix, the top tray can be removed and the bottom filling assembly can be slid on top of the unloading station. The unloading station is where the joints can be taken out and closed either by hand or using the dutch crown device.
Each unloading station that you add increases the efficiency of the process. Each unloading station can be processed separately without having to wait for the station to get free before you fill more cones. This is a great way to crash the process, to use some project management jargon. Each additional station reduces your overall downtime by 10 minutes per 100 cones.
So, to sum up, a single operator machine would be quite good in itself but given the amount of work to be done, it would take quite some time to roll 100 joints. adding some accessories to the filling machine starter kit will significantly enhance the efficiency and push your production up by several hundred joints. Here’s how our calculations stack up for a single-person-operated Knockbox 3/100 machine.
Standard filling kit- Load 100 cones - 5 min
- First filling cycle - 90 seconds
- Second filling cycle - 90 seconds
- Close cones manually in unload station - 10 min
- Total time taken per 100 cones- 18 minutes.
Standard filling kit + Cone loader
- Fill cone loader while the machine is running filling cycles - Saves -5 min
- First filling cycle - 90 seconds
- Second filling cycle - 90 seconds
- Close cones manually in unload station - 10 min
- Total time taken per 100 cones - 13 minutes
Standard filling kit + Cone loader + Dutch Crown Device
- Fill cone loader while the machine is running filling cycles - Save 5 mins
- First filling cycle -90 seconds
- Second filling cycle - 90 seconds
- Close cones all at once in the dutch crown device - save 10 mins
- Total time taken per 100 cones - Less than 5 minutes
As these calculations indicate, you can use the same Knockbox 3/100 device to fill 300 cones per hour by using just the standard cone packer starter kit or crank the production of reefers up to two thousand per hour by using the accessories along with the kit.
Closing Thoughts
Getting the best value out of a pre-roll machine is all about tweaking the process and getting the necessary accessories to reduce the time that it takes to roll the joints. Hiring more people to run the operation may be feasible but for most businesses struggling with increasing costs and finding trained staff, it is often the right machines and accessories that help.
By using the right devices such as shredders and grinders as well in the process, you can produce high-quality joints consistently without having to worry about huge investments in automated pre-roll machines or other advanced equipment.
Most vibration pre-roll machines such as Knockbox 3/100 work quite well for your shop or dispensary. It is a versatile and scalable option that can amp up your production and also makes the process cost-effective.
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