With the arrival of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic I teamed up with Alen and Bor and we set out on rapid solution development to tackle the problem of spreading pathogens with banknotes. A couple of months later we founded a company and delivered the first batch of devices.
Visit the company website: cash-cleaner.com.
A banknote can change more than 10 owners per day and travel surprising distances. China began with money disinfection and even burning it, in USA cash coming from outside of the country was quarantined. While credit cards and smart devices are replacing cash, it remains the number one payment method and a health risk.
The solution was obvious, we disinfect banknotes. Cash Cleaner can be integrated in the cash handling process with very little disruption and high disinfection effectiveness. Through multiple tests on various currency banknotes we have proven the device is over 99% effective on a range of pathogens. You can read more here.
We developed the fastest banknote sanitization device on the market that disinfects up to 160 banknotes per minute using 66 W of power in the UV-C spectrum of light. It is also very precise as the Cleaner exposes every single banknote separately to the UV-C core.
Here you can see all the stepping stones from an idea to the final product and mass production with all the ups and downs we encountered on the way.
We started off by evaluating how serious the problem could be through analyzing articles and research papers. Once we’ve established the problem is indeed worth solving, we began to research as much as we could about the virus itself and about the approaches to it’s inactivation. We calculated the power of UV-C energy and banknote exposure time needed.
We started prototyping on day 3 by taking apart existing cash handling devices and learning how they work. We spent next 4 days putting together a minimum viable prototype that was able to disinfect money but it turned out we made a mistake. The UV-C power was too low and it turns out we made a mistake in our calculations. So we had to redesign the UV-C core and include additional sources of UV-C light for efficient money disinfection.
This is when the virus really hit our location and so we started doing as much as possible remotely. We wanted to understand the user experience and the benefit from perspectives of all stakeholders. Based on conclusions we put together a brief on device design.
We were approaching the process from 2 perspectives that formed the final design. One was from the standpoint of the user experience and the second was from the standpoint of laws of physics and solution performance. We had to get as much UV-C as possible onto 2 areas where we expose banknotes to it so we had to think through the geometry and materials. We wanted the user to get a real time update on the process so we decided to cover the device with a UV filtering transparent acrylic. As for the aesthetic properties, our goal was to depict the device as high quality medical tech product.
We have finalized the design of the device, made 3D models and renders and we were ready to show it to the world. We decided to do our market research by just going out and trying to sell our solution. For that purpose we created a sales deck, a simple one pager website and a specification booklet about our device.
It took us 6 days to find different elements that are actually available in the market at the moment and to solve all engineering problems. We ordered available parts and optimized the custom made parts to get them as quickly as possible from only two different manufacturers. Now we are waiting for the parts to arrive to assemble the first encased prototype.
We have finally received all the parts needed to assemble our money disinfection device. We were so lucky that there wasn’t a single part that wouldn’t fit as designed. It took 3 days to assemble the prototype and make all the electronic components work as intended as well as test the device out and perfect the software. We turned the device on for the first time at 4.30 in the morning.
Our prototype is working and we are ready to show the actual product to the world.
While finalizing the prototype we have put together a press release and got in contact with all major Slovenian online media outlets and The Slovenian Press Agency. Next day our story was published on 24ur.com, Siol.net, Slovenske Novice, Dnevnik, Delo, NeDelo, Nedeljski Dnevnik, Radio Aktual and others. Here is the article in English.
After getting the word about our solution into press we had to spend some time talking business with potential distributors, manufacturers and investors but also some people that just wanted to help us with advice or connections which we really appreciated. Since we seemed to be going in the right direction it was time for improvements and prototype #3.
Through the process of building the third version of the device we were having meetings and talks with potential end buyers and it turned out there is a lot of businesses that simply cannot afford spending this much time on disinfecting banknotes. So we developed a prototype with twice as powerful UV-C core and so introduced the second model – the Cash Cleaner Pro that is able to disinfect up to 160 banknotes per minute.
On day 78 we sold our first device to a potential distributor that needed a sample unit for presentation purposes.
Fast forward to three months after the beginning of the project. We found a production partner that was a an amazing fit for us and started working on the next iteration that will be mass-produced. Coming next prototyping and figuring out the best production methods to mass-produce our solution at high quality and reasonable costs. We encountered many challenges and learned a whole lot during this period.
Meanwhile the mass production prototyping phase was still going on were happy to receive the first batch order from a customer which meant we were able to cover some of the expenses we piled up over the last three months. We were pleased with the prototyping results so we made a decision to go into production and expected it to go smoothly since we’ve been really fast up to this point.
We were planning on finishing the production in 20 days. But instead we were heading into a 60-day of struggle with very long days, little food and sleepless nights.
First few days went great. Main parts were coming together and so it seemed like we were making great progress and keeping ahead of the schedule.
It was the first time with this project that parts wouldn’t go perfectly together. We got too confident since no mistakes happened before and didn’t double check everything. Who has time for that right? So we had to start improvising and the planned timeline started to change.
About 10 days in we realized there is a lot of small tasks that we just didn’t include the calculations of production time. We were also just starting to learn how to efficiently assemble this particular device on the go. The small stuff actually ended up taking about 60% of the time and it wasn’t rare that a task would literally take 3 instead of 1 day. By this point we started coming to the factory at 6 in the morning, getting out at 6 in the evening, taking home the work we could and coming in on weekends.
Finally we manage to assemble the devices into (almost) it’s final form and some of the lights don’t turn on, occasional buttons don’t work but this doesn’t worry us too much. Well, there is also another thing. Banknotes are not travelling through the system as they should be. This was not such a simple problem to solve and it took us three and engineers from the production company ending up watching slow motion videos of banknotes going through the device to find a solution.
Even though we spent most of our days in the factory and kept productive and efficient, we realized we won’t be able to make the whole batch in time. There were just so many things still to be tested and assembled, we also had to prepare the packaging, instructions and documentation. We agreed with our customer to deliver just four devices that they needed right away. So we started working on those four to have them ready the next day when the carrier arrives. We didn’t. So we ended up quickly putting everything together, pack the devices and drive them to the airport ourselves.
Now we bought ourselves some time and were happy to continue with the production under less stress and consequently be more precise and keep the quality high. We assembled all the machines to the point where we could test each and every one of them before we finish and put them into the casing.
