Posted on 24th Feb 2020 @ 2:47:33 PM

With the advent of our dedicated push on remanufacturing we discovered that our process had a few bugs.  These started as minor niggles but soon highlighted more serious flaws in the procedures and equipment setup that we couldn't ignore. Naturally this then put a halt on the planned cartridge remanufacturing push.

We genuinely didn't think that a single small problem would require such a major overhaul but we discovered that our existing drying process was straining the retention clips/arms on our Canon cartridges such that they stopped springing back normally. This in turn meant that, unless resolved, we would not be able to re-use cartridges that we had cleaned previously. Small MacGyver style "fixes" did work in a fashion but the process lost effeciency, caused some physical back strain and we soon realised that we needed to look at the problem properly.

A week of developing ideas, prototyping, discounting ideas... cursing, breathing and then starting over, eventually resulted in a series of jig designs which are now being manufactured and we're also improving our equipment setup. This will speed up the process while fixing the "gripe list", including the issues that were causing physical discomfort.

In terms of expected delays, the new tools and equipment are already on order and we hope to get everything up and running within the first week of March (2020)

This does mean that our planned blitz on cartridge remanufacturing was unavoidably delayed but the net benefits will far outweigh the downtime and ultimately it means we'll be able to employ a new team member to focus on this product area and remove it as a bottleneck for the future.