Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Your next question comes from the line of Mr. Casey Flavin of CJS Securities.
Casey Flavin - CJS Securities
Hi Marc Giles. Hi John. None of you dispelled the notion that the delayed time launch is due to the cationic in technology. Could you clarify for us if you have any of the units in field testing and what the response has been, if not can you review the fielding testing process and when you expect it to begin?
Marc Giles
There are two phases to our product testing process. There is design validation testing, which we do in house and that is where we run the equipment through its paces to make sure that there are not any designs faults that we need to correct. We go through that process and we are at the end of that process now.
The next phase is called manufactured validation testing and that is an external process. We make the products as they would be made in full production with the suppliers, not by engineers or anything like that. They are installed and ran by our service people. That is done externally and we are about to begin that phase now.
That phase will run for about four weeks. We will run in customer locations for the time period and depending on what if anything is found during that it may run longer. Usually our expectation would be once we complete the design validation testing, we are complete with design changes and we are just focusing on application changes.
Casey Flavin - CJS Securities
Thanks Marc Giles for that update. Are there any products in particular on Spandex that are selling better than others driving the performance there?
Marc Giles
The big change that has been occurring at Spandex from a product portfolio standpoint is what they call their digital line of consumable products. These are largely materials that are designed to be run on ink jet printing machines. That has been the high growth area frankly for the last couple of years within that business. I think for Spandex this year is growing at about 55% year over year. The total volume of that business is about in the area of maybe $35-40 million probably this year.
Within that group of materials what Spandex has done is put together a portfolio of its own branded products. Some of these products we make ourselves, others we source from third parties. They have been very, very successful in being able to drive sales of that product portfolio and we get much higher gross margins on those products than we do from the other digital products that we source.
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