What Happens Before an Ori Cattle Tag Reaches Your Herd?

We've officially entered the production process with Ori Cattle, and we want to give producers a better look at what actually happens between having a working prototype and a tag that's ready to deploy on cattle.

Building hardware isn't just designing a tag and pressing the PRODUCE button, unfortunately.

There are many steps between here and your ranch, and we're going through them for a reason.

1. Design for Manufacturing (DFM)
Our manufacturing team reviews the enclosure, electronics integration, assembly process and design to ensure the tag can be manufactured reliably and consistently at scale.

2. Production Design Adjustments
Any changes identified during DFM are incorporated into the production design before tooling begins.

3. Prototype Production
Updated enclosures are produced so fit, assembly and the complete design can be evaluated before committing to production tooling.

4. Machined Prototype Validation
More production-representative prototypes are manufactured for additional mechanical and enclosure testing.

5. Water & Ingress Testing
The enclosure is tested to identify potential water-entry points and sealing weaknesses. We've already learned firsthand why this step matters. If something fails, we fix it rather than knowingly send that design into the field.

6. Applicator, Pull & Mechanical Testing
Tags need to survive installation and life on an animal. The design goes through insertion, pull, drop and mechanical stress testing.

7. RF & Antenna Evaluation
The complete tag is evaluated with the enclosure because the enclosure, PCB and surrounding materials can affect wireless performance.

8. Injection Mold Tooling
Once the design reaches the appropriate validation point, production tooling is manufactured for the final enclosure.

9. First Molded Parts
The first parts produced from the mold are inspected and assembled so fit, sealing and manufacturing tolerances can be evaluated.

10. Final-Material Antenna Tuning
RF performance is evaluated and the antenna is tuned using the actual molded production material. This is important because final antenna tuning can't be properly completed using only early printed prototypes.

11. Mold Adjustments, If Required
If the first molded parts reveal a tolerance, sealing or other issue, the mold can be adjusted and another set of parts produced.

12. Production-Representative Validation
The updated molded parts are assembled and validated again before the design is locked.

13. Pilot Production
Once we're satisfied with the design, manufacturing moves into production of the pilot units.

14. Assembly, Quality Control & Packaging
Tags are assembled, inspected and tested before being prepared for deployment.

15. Field Deployment
Then they finally reach cattle.

And that's where another phase begins: real-world field validation across different cattle, ranches, climates and operating environments.

There are no shortcuts we're willing to take just to hit an arbitrary date.

We've had designs fail testing already. That's frustrating, but that's exactly why testing exists. We'd rather discover a weakness now, go back and fix it, and ultimately deliver something we're confident putting on thousands of animals.

We'll continue sharing progress as we move through these stages.

The Future of Ranching Starts Here.

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