Forgot to add
We are looking into a type of auto sampler tech that seems very promising. But that would be a ways out at this time.
The future of our technology is the D1, which will sample inline with the process and use AI to adjust your parameters for you, essentially automating distillation entirely.
Per month - it’s a subscription model? Or can it be purchased outright?
In 6 months you could have paid for a nice refurb UHPLC-MS. After month 7 you’ve covered your consumables for the 7 months. By month 8 you’ve got enough saved to cover any potential failures or maintenance. Month 9 to infinity you’re farther and farther ahead.
Waaaay less than 6 months if you want a regular HPLC-DAD (2-3 months) or GC-FID (~2 months).
Edit to add this interesting bit from Kwipped:
Currently just offering a subscription model.
Most operations in this current environment don’t have the ability to shell out for a few hundred thousand dollars for an analytical instrument.
We’ve found that it’s much easier for the customer (large scale, high volume operations) to operate with us on a subscription model. We provide all training, maintenance, and consumables so it’s mindless for them.
Additionally, we invoice AFTER 30 days. That means you have 30 days free to utilize the equipment, increase potency and yields, and make $100k+ in extra revenue that will more than cover the monthly cost of the equipment. That’s our goal, $100k+/mo additional revenue on the $7500/mo investment. And if it doesn’t, well you’re not stuck with a very expensive paperweight that you have to liquidate, you can just return it.
I don’t disagree on the ROI of the cost of an hplc or uplc-ms, but you forgot the factor in the ~80-100k/yr skilled chemist operator, downtime for maintenance and inevitable issues, etc.
And again, if you want to take samples and make changes while the distillation process is running, time is money. The D2 is quicker.
I understand the financials won’t make sense for everyone. We are looking to work with large volume manufacturers who have enough cannabinoid waste to make it worth it. And if setting up and operating analytical equipment was so simple, why are these companies still wasting upwards of 30% of their cannabinoids to over/under distillation?
You need an operator regardless. People with training sufficient to operate an HPLC go for closer to $50k-$60k here, unless you need them to do method development etc. Most vendors worth their salt can set you up with basic info and methods for a moderate fee.
HPLCs and their ilk are all available on service contracts. I’m pretty sure one company we had quote us on a used HPLC had a $1500-2000/mo parts+service contract offer to go with it if we wanted.
The person who runs our HPLC has zero scientific training, but just an eye for detail, and she picked it up in about a week. “Two simple dilutions” sounds a lot like our sample prep too.
A wook could probably run our system in a week and get damn good results out of it, because we’ve designed it to be tolerant to operator variance and error.
Is doing analytics right easy? No. Many people fail at it. More don’t understand the value of it.
You’re looking for a customer who wants a tool that is only really acceptable for optimizing distillate production? And has $7500/mo to do it with? Sorry, but I didn’t realize it’s still 2018.
The SRI GC method I posted here some time ago has a 7 minute run time. That’s a ~$12k machine, and could be run by someone with fuckall skills and training if what you need is a “about how many cannabioids do I have here” answer, which it seems is what your system does.
EDIT: Anybody who has $7500/mo and thinks this is a good idea, DM me and I’ll get you set up with an HPLC and wook-proof sample prep method for less than that. [actually, don’t. I hate consulting. Buy this thing instead.]
You do not need a devoted operator for the D2. You can be distilling and operating this instrument at the same time.
2000/mo rental + $5000/mo operator isn’t far off from $7500/mo, when you factor in consumables and downtime.
I’m glad you are able to make it work out so smoothly. We’ve found that most people and operations can’t, and managing analytics becomes a large headache. You should start consulting for setting up and streamlining people’s analytics, as we’ve seen there’s a big need.
Edit: lmao just saw your comment about hating consulting.
Our HPLC operator also runs our laser cutter, collects samples, works in extraction, and helps with everything else. The amount of time she spends on prep and analytics is certainly within the same order of magnitude required for the D2.
Consulting sucks, I keep raising my rates because it takes too much time to fix the messes that people have got themselves into, and I’ve got to keep my own thing rolling along. They’re now at “oh damn, they said yes” level, and I think I need to raise them again.
EDIT: we run 20-40 samples on a busy-ish day. Last time I did sample prep I clocked in at 8 samples start to finish in about 50 minutes, and I’m rusty as hell. I think our operator does close to 2x that.
What kind of volume are you operating at? Extraction, distillation, etc?
On an average day our fuge chews through 80kg/hr of dry biomass.
So maybe 50kg distillation per day?
8hr or 24hr?
If we had to distill every kilo that went through the facility, something like that. We get 4-10 lph of output on our stainless cherry bomb when we run it.
No disrespect, but at that volume you wouldn’t really be a great candidate for this instrument. You have the manpower per kg to pay closer attention to processes, don’t have an overloaded analytical lab, and the volume of cannabinoids that we could ideally help recover wouldn’t be enough to make the instrument worth it (unless you’re a high margin thc operation).
Regardless of scale, I guarantee there is nowhere in our processes that your system could find something we don’t already know. I can quantify exactly where every gram goes. I have to. This is a commodity market.
This shit isn’t exactly rocket appliances, but it sure is easy to do wrong. Not having reliable in-house analytics is the first big mistake that most companies make. Not knowing how to run them is #2.
I want to say that I have a hard time imagining anyone at that scale who is shitting 100k/mo on the floor and isn’t doing something about it, but having met the operators in this industry (and others) that is absolutely a lie.
I feel like the ones who would understand the value in this probably already listen to their chemists and analytics.
I would have to agree with @Lincoln20XX here. As you scale up, a lot of the equipment becomes more automated and requires less hands on, and just monitoring/fine tuning. So with that in mind, stepping aside for 2-3 min to do a quick sample prep to load a GC/MS or LC/MS really has no impact on workflow, or shouldn’t have any significant impact if everything is running how it should. If you have an operator skilled/trusted enough to handle your extraction and distillation process and have the ability to make modifications as they need to, then they are most likely capable to handle simple sample prep and pushing “start run” on whatever software is running the LC/MS or GC/MS.
Often times if you are going to be making changes to your distillation parameters based on real-time analytical data, it’s going to take more than 2 minute to realize those changes at the output of the distillation process. With that in mind, whether a method runs for 2min or for 7min, this run time is going to most likely be negligible for the vast majority of operators who would use this equipment; the limiting reagent in this case is not how fast the results are reported, but how long it takes for the system to equilibrate to the newly adjusted parameters and run long enough that you are able to pull another sample that is now representative of said adjusted parameters.
As a chemist, operator, lab builder, etc, I 100% agree with you that anyone operating at scale should have this covered.
But the fact of the matter is, they don’t.
I’ve seen companies drop $12mm on equipment that didn’t even work, and had a single Agilent 1100 from ionization labs (similar rental concept with all materials included) that broke nonstop and had a horrible method.
I currently see companies operating incredibly inefficiently, even with onsite analytics.
We spoke to a hemp company doing 6000kg/wk, they’re hplc is a couple miles off site, and their distillate potencies were only around 75-85%. These companies may have the means, but they aren’t operating efficiently and aren’t relying on analytics, and wonder why they have trouble finding buyers and making a buck.
I don’t disagree with you that there are a lot of people who don’t know where to begin or what they are doing. If you can sell them your equipment more power to you. It’s immoral to let a sucker keep his money as they say.
Having said that, I think the point of contention is that outside of said suckers who actually don’t know what they are doing or the direction they should be going, or how to properly evaluate analytical equipment to make an educated and financially sound decision, most competent operations are going to realize having access to significantly more granular data in essentially a negligible amount of time more (7min run time vs 2 min run time), is going to be much more valuable to them. This is especially true if a rental cost is $7500/month when it’s possible to own a used/refurbished instrument with more accuracy that would have been paid off in <1yr at the rate you rent for.
Nobody here is saying your instrument doesn’t provide results quickly, we just are trying to understand how it would be more beneficial than what is already available in the market.
Speed, ease of use, rugged design that doesn’t need a devoted lab space.
I think we’re also not comparing proper numbers. Our machine is sample prep to potency in as quick as 2.5min. Is the 7min time for another instrument the time of the method? Or is this sample prep, loading and programming your run, hitting go, running the method, and getting potency data? Because I’ve certainly never peeped a sample and gotten hplc data in a total of 7min.
Why doesn’t the airport run gc/Ms or uplc or hplc, and instead runs our instrument? Because it can handle abuse by unsophisticated operators, and it gets them data quickly. Other instruments could get the TSA sooo much more data too, sure, but TSA doesn’t need to know that much detail. Just like analyzing the cannabinoids in your heads fraction. Does it matter that you can see that your heads contains 27.5% Cbd, 2% thc, and 0.8% CBC? No, you just need to know that your heads has ~30% cannabinoids and you would be most efficient if it only had ~6%.
Again, I agree that the people getting into this space should understand all aspects of manufacturing, including QA/QC, and be well equip to handle them.
But I think we can both agree that MOST actually don’t understand, and aren’t equip. A lot of owners want to hire the cheapest help and think manufacturing should be simple and easy. I can’t say they’re right, but I’ve also learned that it’s nearly impossible to change their mind. So this is their simple and easy solution to analytics and process optimization.
I think its cool tech. Cant wait to see it at a demo
Lease only?!?!?!?!
