Equipment tablet compression machine

Commonly when a pharmaceutical industry purchases a new compression machine, a PQ is conducted. First, the company must select some of its well-known products and prepare them until the compression phase as usual. The product must be compressed by the new equipment using the same compression conditions, such as compression force and tablet output. The obtained tablets must meet all the specifications of that product. The parameters specified could be aspect, hardness, thickness, diameter, average mass and uniformity of mass, friability, and tablet output. If the tablets obtained comply with specifications, the compression machine is considered reliable to obtain a product with good quality and in a reproducible manner and the equipment is considered performance qualified. 

This article provides the basic information necessary to understand the general process of tablet formation. General machine design characteristics and tablet press nomenclature are presented. Tablet press control systems and process automation are discussed, followed by process and product troubleshooting on tablet compression equipment. 

In order to increase the production rate of rotary tableting machines, doublesided rotary machines were build which possess two pairs of compression wheels and two filling shoes. Thus during one rotation double the number of tablets are produced compared with a one-sided rotary machine. If these machines are equipped with precompression wheels one machine contains four pairs of wheels. 

Tablet presses equipped with single-tablet rejection capabilities reject tablets at the point of scrape-off Based on the compression force of the punch station, single tablets are sorted by using a compressed-air blow off or a mechanical fast gate. On single-sided machines (36 stations) both systems work well for both large and small tablets. However, double-sided, highspeed machines may present difficulties for large tablets at high press speeds.

Optimal manufacturing of tablets requires good equipment and materials. The equipment is only a tool to achieve the final goal of high quality tablets. However, if the materials have marginal flow and compressibility problems, machine flexibility allows the production of the highest quality product possible. 

A compaction simulator must be able to mimic the full compression cycle of the unit operation. Early attempts at compaction simulation utilized mechanical property testing equipment (e.g., Instron and Lloyd type machines) to compact powders into compacts. Although these machines were well suited to apply appropriate compression loads, they were not designed for the high velocities and accelerations necessary to simulate the double-ended compression cycle of a rotary tablet press (2). 

Compressed tablets are formed with a tablet machine. The LSD is diluted into sugar, binder and lubricants and punched into tablets. LSD in this form was most prevalent during the 1960 s thru 1980 s. The cost of tablet equipment, size and weight (tonnage) tends to make this form prohibitive for security reasons. Tablets take up space and can not be easily concealed. Transportation of large quantities of tablets is subject to discovery by law enforcement and breakdown of tablets. 

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