Why Does My Cartridge Not Look Full?

When shopping at a cannabis dispensary, you come to expect the best quality products and services. For that reason it can be really frustrating when it feels like a product is short. While it is easy enough to weigh out your own flower or concentrate, figuring out if your vape cartridge is properly filled is a bit more challenging.

Occasionally patients ask why their cartridges are not filled all the way to the top so we decided to share some information regarding our cart filling process and the nature of vape hardware that hopefully will help resolve any future concerns.

1. Cartridges are filled by weight, not volume. So depending on the viscosity and density of the live resin, rosin or distillate, the fill point can appear higher or lower in the chamber of the cartridge.
2. Understanding the physics of vaporization will help you understand why your cartridge may not appear full. Our current CCELL cartridges have a wick in the core of the hardware that will absorb fluid as it sits or as it is used. While the core absorbs some of the fluid, the chamber can appear to be lowered. This spontaneous flow of a liquid is known as “capillary action.” This is when a fluid goes into a narrow tube or porous material which occurs without the force of gravity. Kind of like the science experiment where you put a stalk of celery in food colored water and you can watch the stalk absorb the water. This happens all the time with cartridges. Using the cartridge and pulling on it accelerates capillary action.
3. Lastly, we now use a Vape-Jet Fully Automatic cartridge filler to fill all of our cartridges. This machine utilizes AI technology to fill carts at ±0.25% accuracy. That is over 99% accuracy guaranteed! In other words that is accuracy down to a .00125 gram variance on a half gram cart. The machine’s fluid handling system provides the most accurate and repeatable dispense on the market.

We hope this helps you understand why your cartridge may sometimes appear not filled all the way. You can always chat further about any of our products with your Patient Attendant at our Hilo, Kona and Waimea dispensaries.