All machines are tools, but not all tools are machines.

What do I mean by that?

A tool is something which helps a man get his work done. A machine does the work for the man.

A car a machine. It gets you from point A to point B dry and generally in the same condition you depart point A. You, as the operator, don’t have to do a whole lot. The machine does it for you.
A car is also a tool because in order for a person to get his work done, he has to use his car to get to work. The car gets you around so you can get your work done. You use the machine as a tool.  You can see examples of this all over the place.  In your home (dishwashers,  washer/dryer, vacuum cleaner),  the office (computers/phones).  I’m sure you can think of many instances of these distinctions if you think about it.

I bring this up because what everyone seems to want is a machine where you load up a hopper, punch some buttons on a PLC (Positive Logic Controller), walk away to go smoke a cigarette and wait for the machine to go *DING~!* and presto change, there’s 5# of trim or shredded flower all nicely and neatly rolled and in a package. What they don’t realize is, there ain’t no such machine. Doesn’t exist. Could well never exist for a variety of reasons ranging from the difficulties of the bio/mechanical interface to the simple economics of the market.

What we have is a tool … and a simple one at that. This tool will help you make and package pre-formed cone type joints. It won’t make them for you. We don’t have a PLC you can program because there is no need. We don’t believe in over-engineering the solution and when we see those things making those processes complicated just to make them complicated, we just shrug our shoulders and think, “so much gee whiz”.

Here’s the thing. If you are looking for a machine to do your pre-rolls for you, good luck. If you find such an animal, let me know. I’d love to see it operate.
If, instead you want to find a tool which will reduce your man hours from what we are told is about 25 hours/thousand to about 10 hours/thousand, then we’ve got a pretty good tool for you even though it doesn’t go *DING~!*

A thousand on the table in less than an hour ready for final QC and close off?

Not a problem.

Will we ever put a PLC on it?  (*DING~!*)

If we can ever figure out how.