Tablet press

A tablet press is a mechanical device that compresses powder into tablets of uniform size and weight. A tablet press can be used to produce tablets of a wide variety of materials, including pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, cleaning products, industrial pellets, and cosmetics. To make a tablet, the granular powder material is measured into a cavity formed by two punches and a die, and then the punches are pressed together with great force to fuse the material together.

A tablet is formed by the combined pressure of two punches and a die. In the first step of a typical operation, the bottom punch is lowered into the die to create a cavity into which the granular feedstock is fed. The exact depth of the bottom punch can be precisely controlled to measure the amount of powder that fills the cavity. The excess is scraped off the top of the die and the lower punch is pulled down and temporarily covered to prevent spillage. Then, the upper punch is brought into contact with the powder as the cover is removed. The compression force is delivered by high pressure compression rolls that compact the granular material into a solid tablet. After compression, the bottom punch is raised to eject the tablet.

Tablet tooling design is critical to ensuring a robust tablet compression process. Considerations when designing a pharmaceutical tablet compression tool include tooling set, head flat, top head angle, top head radius, head back angle, and punch shank. In addition to ensuring a single dose of medication, tablet tooling is also important to ensure tablet size, shape, embossing and other physical characteristics required for identification.

There are 2 types of tablet presses: single-punch and rotary tablet presses. Most high-speed tablet presses take the form of a rotating turret that holds any number of punches. As they rotate around the turret, the punches come into contact with cams that control the vertical position of the punches. Punches and dies are usually custom made for each application, and can be made in different shapes, sizes, and customized with manufacturer codes and scoring lines to make tablets easier to break. Depending on tablet size, shape, material and press configuration, a typical modern press can produce 250,000 to 1,700,000 tablets per hour.

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