Dental Grade Ceramics

CannaBusiness
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We’ve been testing a lot of different all-ceramic cartridges on the market for the past six months and because we are American cannabis guys that work and live in Shenzhen (since 2018), we have close proximity and 24/7 access to raw material supply chains since we own our factory. It really sucks being in China right now, as China has a ban on inbound foreigners into the country, so if we leave the country, we will not be able to re-enter, even though we have business visas and have permanent residences here.
The biggest trend has been sourcing a Yttria-Stabilized Zirconia (YSZ) that provides a nice blend of hardness, reduced fragility, and chemical inertness with high chemical stability throughout a wide range of temperatures. You have to be extremely careful who you’re using though as there is always a wide range of suppliers from super cheap to premium here and the costs can vary extensively.

The material cost of this material (if good) when compared to stainless steel or a RoHs-compliant lead-free copper is about 4-5x material cost. Because this is a material that isn’t commonly used within the vape industry (yet), the suppliers tend to be smaller and less sophisticated right now. We’ve seen a very high failure rate during our IQC (incoming quality control) process, which adds even more cost, as our labor to manually inspect each part before assembly is severe.

This instability in raw material supply chains is a big reason why AVD doesn’t have a current offering of All-Ceramics as we manufacture and produce several million cartridges per month and have a very low failure rate. In order for a small boutique raw material supplier to stabilize their processes, they need to produce a minimum of 500K units - allowing them to stabilize their jigs and processes to dramatically reduce the inconsistencies.

When it is all said and done, we believe that we should be able to produce a very reliable product that will hit the market for less than $2.10 to $2.50 per unit (including shipping, taxes, tariffs and product liability insurance). We expect our first release in about 30-45 days.

If you’re looking to distribute a brand of cartridges in Canada, you may want to hit up our channel sales director, who works with our current distributors (i.e., Greenlane, Marijuana Packaging, True Terpenes and BrandKing) because we don’t have a Canadian-based distributor yet. However, we do a lot of business in Canada - considering we have just been selected over Jupiter Research (CCELL) and the local Green Tank (Deep Union) for several major contracts up there. :grin:

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Check out their site and you will see the ecap model has 2 intake holes and a thin base. These ceramics do not. It’s another brand. I kinda feel like you were trying to just preface a rant.

And there it is. How come there are so many people who have done cubic zirconia right? Are you saying wolkenteks have subpar material? How very interesting.

Do you have a ceramic cartridge to put up against wolkentek right now? Even a protoype?

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We share information on this board based on our direct experience of living and being in the center of where vape devices are being manufactured. Not a lot of buyers have access at the raw material level as most factories are simply glorified assembly shops.

We never made any claim that cartridges besides **** were inferior because we haven’t done enough stress testing of other models, so you may be attempting to create an argument that wasn’t made. Let’s agree that there is no reason for such nonsense.

However, the limited testing we have done on other designs was helpful for us when looking how to design and engineer our own all-ceramic.

We do have working prototypes that we haven’t felt were ready for release, as we felt there was a slight modification needed to further stabilize without the use of any glues on the base unit.

We will be sure to let you know when final samples are ready, so you can test for yourself. We think it’s great that vape manufacturing standards are dramatically improving overall and healthy competition makes our industry better. Wouldn’t you agree?

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I don’t appreciate making digs at people who manufacture ceramics, coming from a company with no ceramics to field. Those general insults framed in flowered sales lingo are still insults.

I feel like the true reason larger companies don’t adapt quickly is because they can’t. Your statement was a prettier statement than @bulkcarts ceramic psa, but still had the same intent

It takes months for a company with a large corporate structure to make a transition. So hearing you and other companies virtue signal like everyone else is doing something wrong annoys the innovators, the ones whom

that you guys watch and copy.

Thats all I have to say.

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Thank you for this well thought out post.

There are two ceramic lines being discussed here, the V and X series respectively to our branding choices.

@avd710 is certainly correct about many of the things they are talking about. In fact, e-cap was for a long time a good supplier to us and until very recently still was. We have had issues with them as @avd710 has mentioned here, they are far from an ideal supplier if your primary concern is health and quality.

When I came here it was to post about and talk about the X-75 series. I am making no health claims for the V-series, they function well but there is a reason they are less expensive. Some people WANT that option, and they remain currently our best option for low viscosity oils.

But the X series is not e-cap. The quality is on a whole other level.

This is a big issue for sure. And something we have discovered for ourselves with many suppliers in the past. The X-series, thankfully, is not bottlenecked with that issue. There will be other scaling issues for sure, but thankfully not that one.

When considering the effort and thoroughness by which AVD has invested themselves in to securing quality materials, GMP facilities, compliance certificates, marketing, warehousing, etc etc…

There’s no question about AVD’s value in the market right now.

We are actually quite strong proponents of AVD internally. AVD is a well respected name! I have sampled their carts many times and I have never had a single issue with a single AVD cart.

But some cannaiseurs want inert substances as their housing units. We need a line of products such as the x-75 that is food-safe, 3-6 month shelf-stable, beats all lab result requirements, sub 1% no-fire, and has ZERO metal exposure.

AVD, unfortunately, can not hit that last point.

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It seems what you consider “digs” - we see as providing information based on our personal experiences. The industry and manufacturing landscape is quite large and so there may be sources that we have yet to discover. We certainly don’t know 100% of the entire supply chain in China, but we can share what we know. Therefore, there are manufacturers that have been focused on this area far longer may have well-established suppliers that are much more reliable than we have discovered to this point. That’s great if you have!

Just because we don’t have an “all ceramic” in the market today should not disqualify us from sharing what we have experienced and do know about all ceramics in general, right? If so, does that also prevent customers or potential customers from responding or sharing information as well? Be it positive or negative? Isn’t any or all feedback welcome if you’re a designer, manufacturer, distributor or representative of a vape hardware supplier?

You are correct. It takes larger companies a longer time to evaluate and develop solutions that are based on newer trends because we have many more factors to consider - such as a reliable supply chains because there is a significant difference in producing 100K pieces per month versus 1M pieces.

We look at the industry and our product development from a macro-level that does cause us to be slower than smaller operators. Additionally, our costs are often higher because of our brand is known and so we include additional costs such as product liability insurance and the necessary certifications and testing that far exceed smaller players. For example, we have developed our own localized testing that allows us to replicate California heavy metals testing right here in Shenzhen with CCIC, a state-governed environmental testing agency. Nobody does this as we have an exclusive contract with CCIC. This is the same group that is doing localized testing for Marlboro as well.

We also believe that open dialogue and discussion make us ALL better. Better and safer supply chains improve the entire vape industry and protect consumers as well. The last thing we want is VapeGate II. While we have our own factory, we also have weekly meetings teams from ALD, Deep Union (First Union), Vapeez and Joyetech - to discuss technology trends and commonly known issues that need to be solved within the industry. Why do we work with them? To help educate and teach them how to make more stable products that promote better practices for the entire cannabis industry and to offer the industry more selection. We also learn a ton from them as these factories have years of experience in manufacturing and the e-cig space that we lack.

We believe there is a ton of space in this growing industry for everyone to prosper. We are also incredibly confident that our team can contribute positively to this industry regardless of what competition exists in the market today.

As far as copying… well we don’t focus too much on external design and collaborate with brand partners. Nearly 90% of our customers are CCELL customers from Jupiter or Kush Bottles. Because they don’t want to change their packaging, filling and capping solutions, they often want a form factor that is identical to their former CCELL carts. This is more about making a product that is easier for transitioning their operations. As former owners and operators of state-licensed cultivation, extraction and vape cartridge brands ourselves, we take on a perspective that is slightly unique as a developer of vape hardware today.

We care more about what is inside of it. This is where our innovation lies. We spent over a year to develop our OWN ceramic formulation within our heating elements with a ceramics factory here and consider our overall flavor and user experience is preferred by many of the largest brands in the industry today - hence the migration from authentic CCELL to AVD by major brand partners such as Blue River Terpenes, Friendly Farms, Connected, Bloom Farms, NUG, Chemistry, Medipharm, Etc.

We’ve been working on a ceramic offering for the past six months and while we may be slow to market, we prefer to get it right the first time when bringing a new product to market. We often sit back and watch trends take form and see if they have lasting potential before we make focused investments on new product offerings. We don’t see this as not being able to react faster, it is simply a part of our business model of not being first to market, but also not being last to market. IBM made the first PC. Apple made the first PDA. MySpace was the first Social Media Platform, and Motorola made the first cellphone. When does first mover advantage work?

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Give us about 30 days and we will send you some samples for comparison purposes. We’re always happy to get feedback from groups that have chosen to focus on vapor hardware for the cannabis industry. :smiley:

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I am still reading your newest posts but I noted 3 things:

  1. I was wrong about the source that you were correct about
  2. I responded to your latest posts without reading the context
  3. I didn’t even properly read your posts. :man_facepalming:t2:You were talking about your supply issues

I apologize avd, I learned you guys are actually making the cart. I thought you were giving up and just chucking rocks at ceramics.

EDIT: I was right, this guy is a douchebag and was just reselling for AVID. He also came crawling to my factory later begging them to produce his ceramic line. I am always right in the end:

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It only works if the first mover can predict how the other players follow. There are more steps than just the first couple moves.

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Haha! We’ve all made that mistake and I can understand your instinct to defend your position.

To be honest, we were highly skeptical of all-ceramics for the longest time, but have become convinced that this is a trend that is going to last, as long as more stability and consistency can be developed on a larger scale.

We’ve also followed enough of your posts to know better than to incite any negativity. Your knowledge is respected.

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Damn, all those warm and fuzzies about innovation cooled down, ain’t it?

I don’t understand why yall will act friendly in one place and like dicks elsewhere. Lets be as with the shits on future as we are on reddit, ok

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He needs to keep that same energy…

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My bad, misread all the messages. I looked back, figured it out.

Durr.

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DAMMN DISRESPECTFUL… Look Plain n Simple… @qma the one you call a “trinket” seller … There is a very good reason why Cart Farm is number 1 amongst the community… give credit where credit is due… you may be a big operator and have all this bidness, but if you and I challenged each other to a 1 light grow duel… could you win? doubt it… my nugs will be the best you have ever smoked! or do you even use cannabis or just profit off it…?

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A little :salt::salt::salt: or should I send a runner for some haterade? It was 112f today in the dessert.

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Im cart.farm, the “trinket dealer”. Im just linking back the @avd710 rep to their crosspost on reddit for ceramic vape cartridge innovation seo breadcrumbs.

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My old brain, took a few rotations to click. It’s making sense now. :^)

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I got a sample pack and so far I’m really liking them.

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Glad to hear it :smiley:

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Tested a cart out over the past week/end.

100% 93% distillate, zero Terps, zero cut.

I dropped ot twice on concrete sidewalk. Still worked, little wobble at the contact.

Hit pretty well. Didnt notice any “burnt” hits. With thick distillate, I’m guessing 2 good rips, then a 5 mins wait to allow the coil to be resaturated with distillate.

I did refill it with .5g more last night. I had a little extra from filling a couple other personal carts.

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