Best Cone Filling Machines

This is a round up of the best and baddest cone filling machines in the industry as of the end of 2020. During our time building Custom Cones USA and helping thousands of pre-roll brands launch, grow, and scale up their pre-roll lines we have seen so many different cone filling machines and we’ve seen the pros and cons with each machine.

To start, we bring every machine we sell into our facility, test it with cannabis and make sure that it does the job. We don’t sell machines that we haven’t seen with our own eyes, working in a commercial environment and producing thousands to tens of thousands of pre-rolls consistently, safely and in compliance with regulations.

The selection of cone filling machines we offer individually accomplish something the other machines we offer cannot. That is the important piece to note. Each pre-roll machine offers a unique benefit which makes it the best pre-roll machine for that price point and in this round up we will cover those benefits. There are also videos of each machine so you can see how they work and you can see them in action.

Fast Fill 55 & 121 – The Cone Filling Machines for brands starting out

The Fast Fill is the perfect pre-roll machine for people who are just starting out and aren’t sure exactly how many pre-rolls they are going to sell at first. Customers who buy this machine tend to be one-store dispensaries, startups, and brands who were manufacturing other cannabis product and want to try out a pre-roll line.

The Fast Fill is a lower cost cone filling machine at under $1000 for a full set up + extra cartridges. This means you can get going on your pre-roll line with low capital investment and you can affordably upgrade the Fast Fill with additional cartridges to increase capacity.

The Fast Fill comes in 2 capacities, Fast Fill 55 for 55 pre-rolled cones and the Fast Fill 121 for 121 pre-rolled cones. The two sizes of cartridges make it easy to upgrade from 55 pre-rolled cones to 121 cones per run. Both cartridges use the same vibrating base so you only have to buy the new cartridge.

The Fast Fill operation is simple, you place the pre-rolled cones into the individual holes, spread the cannabis on top, run the vibration, tamp your cones, and finish them with a twist or folded top.

In our opinion the best part about the Fast Fill cone filling machine is that it is an affordable machine that will get your pre-roll line started. The fundamentals of how pre-rolls are made on the next two machines really aren’t that different. You still place the cones one at a time and you still have a vibrating motor. So the Fast Fill is a strong base to start on and when your ready to scale up your pre-roll production then you can look at the next two cone filling machines.

King Kone – The Cone Filling Machine for small to mid-sized brands

The King Kone pre-roll cone filling machine is perfect for small farms or companies just expanding into pre-rolls. Unlike its 3D printed counterpart, this metal King Kone machine is more solid and heavy duty, leading to better overall filling action. However, this model is still budget friendly, as well as extremely versatile and easy to use. 

This pre-roll machine comes with all the attachments, so it can pack half-gram 84mm pre rolled cones, 3/4 gram 98mm pre rolled cones, and 1 gram 109mm king sized pre-rolled cones. All you have to do is set up the proper cone filling trays, load the cones, and start filling the top tray with your ground flower. There is an adjustable knob, which will control how hard and fast the cone filling machine is packing. Once filled, just tamp to your desired pack and twist or fold the pre-roll closed! With a capacity of 169 cones, you'll be producing pre-rolls at scale in no time.

Made in the United States, the King Kone pre-rolled cone filling machine is design to work with all standard sizes right out of the box! This cone filling machine will work with the half gram 84mm pre rolled cone, the 3/4 gram 98mm pre rolled cone, and the full gram 109mm pre rolled cone. If you want to pack 98mm slim or reefer sized cones or mini cones, also known as dog walker pre-rolled cones, you will need to purchase additional cone filling trays.

Cone Packer 300 – The Cone Filling Machines for brands ready to level up

The Cone Packer 300 is an absolutely solid cone filling machine made from high-grade aerospace plastics. The Cone Packer 300 is for pre-roll brands ready to produce thousands of pre-rolls per week and they want a machine that will stand up to a cannabis production environment.

The great step up from the Fast Fill to the Cone Packer 300 is the overall durability of the machine. The Cone Packer 300 is made from very heavy duty plastic materials which are food-safe and easy to clean.

The other great step up on the Cone Packer as filling machine is that it uses a metering system. Instead of dumping all the cannabis into the cone at once as you do with the Fast Fill. The Cone Packer comes with a metering tray. The metering tray allows you to feed a pre-determined amount of cannabis based on volume.

If you dial in your grinding process and do control tests you will be able to fine-tune how much you meter into each cone and reduce the amount of rework you have to do on the back-end to weigh the final pre-rolls and ensure they are compliant.

The Cone Packer 300 by default comes with 2 holding trays – that means you can immediately be running the Cone Packer non-stop. As soon as the holding tray is pulled away with the filled cones waiting to be finished, you can place the second holding tray down and start the whole process again.

However, the best benefit of the Cone Packer 300 is the two adjustable features on the machines. You can adjust the amount of cannabis which is metered into the pre-roll using the metering plates included with the machine. This increases the volume of each hole which changes the amount of cannabis released into the cone.

Then you can also adjust the power of the motor with the controller included with the Cone Packer 300. The adjustable vibration allows you to control the final pack of your pre-roll and your preferred smoking experience.

By allowing you to control both the density of packing and the amount of volume used to fill the cone you can increase the output of your pre-roll production. You increase the output of your pre-roll production by reducing the amount of re-work needed to weight the pre-rolls. By controlling the density of pack, grind size of the cannabis and the amount of volume the metering trays allows you get a more accurate final weight for each pre-roll. More accurate weights mean less re-work. 

Sluice Box – The Cone Filling Machine for brands looking to produce quality at scale

The Sluice Box is the cone filling machine which enables you to not only automate the filling of the cones but the tamping and sifting as well! The Sluice Box includes 2 attachments designed for producing the best possible pre-roll at scale – the tamping attachment and the sifting attachment.

The tamping attachment helps to ensure a tight pack toward the bottom of the crutch – many pre-rolls in the market will be loose toward the bottom of the joint and this lead to a poor smoking experience. What pre-roll producers will often do is have teams of people take each pre-roll after it is filled and tamp down the flower with a metal stick. The tamping attachment automates that by having a single tool which tamps down all the pre-rolls at once. Different lengths can be purchased so you can tamp the cones when they are 25% filled and when they are 75% filled.

The sifting attachments reduces the amount of stems and seeds which make it into your pre-rolls. The sifting attachments sits on top of Sluice Box and uses a wire mesh to sift through your material and get rid of the stems and seeds. This is done in a separate run before you fill your pre-rolled cones.

The Sluice Box includes all the attachments that allow you to produce high quality pre-rolls at scale but at the same time is incredibly simple to use. And while the attachments help and an extra element of control over your pre-roll production, they are not essential to using the Sluice Box successfully.

The base Sluice Box is made of 4 parts – the vibrating base, the metal holding tray, the lower cartridge and the upper cartridge. The metal tray sits on the vibrating base. The lower cartridge goes on top of the tray, you load your pre-rolled cones into each individual slot, and you place the upper cartridge on top. You spread the cannabis across the upper cartridge and it falls into each individual cone. You run the vibration simultaneously to help pack the flower into the cones.

The upper cartridge helps to create some separation between the flower and the pre-rolled cones helping to break up the fall of the cannabis as it goes into cones. This creates a better pack as not all the cannabis is forced into the cannabis at once.

But really it is that simple to run the sluice box - place the metal tray down, lower cartridge on top, fill the cones, place upper cartridge on top, spread cannabis and run vibration. Tamp twice with tamping attachment. Remove the cones and fold or twist the tops.

It is crucial that any cone filling machine you purchase is simple to use. Customers have told us time and time again that the more expensive vibrating machines may do the job but they are complicated and become a headache for the owner.

Passing the knowledge of how to use the machine requires long training sessions and as we all know employee retention in cannabis is difficult, and in the tedious fine work of pre-roll manufacturing even more difficult.

You want to be able to train your new pre-roll staff how to use the cone filling machine quickly and so the simple operation in our opinion, beside its’ attachments, is the strongest feature of the Sluice Box pre-roll machine.

Pre Roll-ER - The Cone Filling Machine for brands looking to automate production

The Pre Roll-ER is the cone filling machine for those looking for total automation. The Pre Roll-ER can take 2 boxes of cones, 1 pound of cannabis and automatically fill, weigh, pack, tamp, twist, cut off excess twist and weigh the final joint.

The Pre Roll-ER produces between 1,000-2,000 pre-rolls per hour so that means the machine can operate autonomously for up to 45 minutes. This frees up the operator of the machine to package pre-rolls into individual packaging stopping only to feed additional cones or cannabis to the machine.

The Pre Roll-ER took an incredible amount of research and development hours to come to a commercially viable machine. This is because the process of how a pre-roll is made by hand is perfectly replicated by the machine. It takes each step from the tamping to the twisting and replicates the handmade process and so produces a quality smoking experience.

The Pre-Roll-ER is for brands who want to automate the entire process of pre-roll production – it is for those brands which are already established and need to increase their capacity in a scalable way. It is also for startups who know that the future of pre-roll production is automated pre-roll machines and want to stay one step ahead of other pre-roll manufacturers.

To help you compare and contrast these machines, we have create this handy cone-filling machine comparison chart. Enjoy!