If you have been in cannabis manufacturing long enough to remember hand syringes, silicone mats, and the 2 pm flavor of despair, you also know the drill. Vape carts are a game of chemistry, heat control, micro-mechanics, and patience. Operators want higher throughput. Consumers want better flavor and leak-free carts. Compliance wants its paper trail. Finance wants unit economics that don’t make the CFO cry. That used to mean compromise. It doesn’t have to anymore.
At MJBizCon 2025 in Las Vegas, we saw a clear inflection point. Automation stopped being a bolt-on afterthought and became the line itself. Xylem Robotics rolled out two pieces of kit that capture where vape production is heading right now and where it needs to go next. The AX is an AI-enabled, trayless autonomous vape filler that “sees” carts and fills them without jigs. The XCB is a fully automated cart manufacturing line that runs filling, capping, cleaning, and packaging as a continuous flow. If you missed the show, here’s what matters and why the old playbook is done.
How We Got Here
Early vape production looked like craft beer before the bottling line showed up. Hand filling introduced inconsistencies and ergonomic injuries, alongside leaks and oxidation. Semi-automatic hardware helped, but still depended on trays and manual alignment. You could scale bodies on a shift. You couldn’t scale consistency.
Meanwhile, the product mix kept exploding. Half-gram and one-gram glass carts. All-in-ones. Pods. Click caps, press caps, screw caps. Different viscosities across disty, live resin, rosin, and blends. Every new form factor and input stressed the same weak link in most facilities, the station where alignment and fill accuracy rely on human hands and temperamental fixtures. That is the choke point AI was built to crush.
The AX and Why AI Vision is a Turning Point
The AX is a tabletop autonomous filler that uses computer vision to identify injection points and fill carts without trays. Operators drop foam blocks of hardware onto the platform, and the system scans, recognizes, and fills across any format. The headline for busy teams is freedom from jigs and the ability to change form factors in minutes, not hours. The headline for the people paying the bills is unit economics and labor reallocation.
Let’s hit the key technical notes:
- Throughput up to 700 units per hour in a compact footprint.
- Operates at lower temperatures starting around 40 C to protect volatile compounds.
- Fully stainless contact path with a pressurized tank for GMP-minded workflows.
- Universal compatibility across 510 carts, pods, disposables, and AIOs, with simple training for new hardware. Xylem Technologies
This is what “AI where it belongs” looks like. You are not asking a black box to invent flavor notes. You are asking a vision system to do what humans do visually, only faster and repeatably, and to do it without the fragile setup overhead that drags lines down. In production terms, that means fewer stoppages, fewer rejects, and fewer people babysitting trays.
From Islands of Automation to a True Line
Most vape rooms were built as a set of islands filling here, hand capping there, someone wiping mouthpieces with IPA, someone else loading pouches and sealing. Every handoff is a chance to scuff, smear, oxidize, or mislabel. The XCB treats manufacturing as one motion instead of four departments that glare at each other.
XCB is a flow manufacturing line that sorts, fills, caps, cleans, and packages in sequence, designed to run with very lean staffing. Xylem positions it as the world’s first fully automated cart filling-to-packaging line, and the published specs back the claim on speed and cost efficiency. One operator can run 1500 to 1800 finished packages per hour at a cost of roughly 1.2 cents per completed unit, with an enclosed, compliance-ready design and no dependency on trays or jigs. That is the kind of math that flips the discussion from what can we afford to automate to what can we afford not to?
Under the hood, the XCB’s value is the way the modules hand carts off without breaking the chain of custody or the fit and finish
- Filling and capping at production speed with precision control and vacuum seal to mitigate oxidation.
- Automated cleaning that removes residue and prints using isopropyl alcohol and a purpose-built cleaning mechanism, delivering a showroom finish that your branding team will actually approve.
- Automated bagging that can run standard or child-resistant pouches with top or bottom seals, built to play nice with state-level label and compliance needs.
When you run a line this way, the usual pain points fall off a cliff. Leaks are less likely when caps go on immediately and consistently. Oxidation risk drops when your filling temperatures are low and carts aren’t sitting around uncapped. Cosmetic rejects shrink when you automate the cleanup. Operator fatigue and repetitive motion injuries go down because you have eliminated the worst jobs on the floor.
Modularity is the New Religion
Here’s the part many teams overlook. Modularity is not about buying smaller machines. It is about buying options. You can stage an AX in R&D or in a boutique SKU cell while your XCB handles the daily grind. You can run the cleaner and bagger inline with the X4 in one facility while another site uses the bagger standalone to finish co-packed inventory for different compliance regimes. You can meet a new state’s testing sequence without rebuilding your room. This is what continuous flow looks like in the real world where everything from packaging rules to SKU architecture changes quarter to quarter.
What This Means for Terp Integrity and Consumer Trust
Let’s talk product. Low and tightly controlled temperatures protect aroma and flavor. Accurate fills and immediate capping mean fewer leak complaints and better shelf appearance. Clean exterior surfaces and consistent pouches are not vanity; they signal quality to budtenders and end users who have been burned before. A system that checks center posts and rejects out-of-spec components upstream saves you from downstream disasters. And yes, all of that shows up in reviews and reorders.
The Labor and Compliance Angle
Everyone is short staffed. Everyone is under a microscope. Lines that run with one to two operators and publishable specs simplify SOPs, training, and audits. Stainless contact paths, enclosed designs, and documented cycle parameters do not just sound good in a pitch deck. They make CAPA plans shorter and inspections less theatrical. This is the unsexy side of automation that pays for itself first.
Where the Puck is Going
AI vision will not stop at cart filling. Expect smarter inline QC, automated rejection and rework loops, and deeper data logging tied to batch records. Expect baggers and boxers that read more label variants and talk to your ERP without middleware gymnastics. Expect more universal compatibility across pods and AIOs as hardware keeps fragmenting. Most of all, expect operators to push modular lines into smaller footprints so they can launch SKUs faster, adapt to regulatory jolts, and keep unit economics stable.
The bottom line, if you are still fighting jigs and chasing smears with microfiber, you are donating margin. The AX gives growing teams the freedom to run mixed hardware with precision and without the tray tax. The XCB turns the four most failure-prone stations in your room into one continuous motion with the numbers to prove it. That’s not hype. That’s where this industry has been trying to land since day one. Learn more about the AX and XCB by visiting Xylem Robotics website.
