May 24,2022

Pharmaceutical processing involves several operations and capsule filling is one such important part of the process. This can be done either manually or using a capsule filling machine.

Capsule rectification

The capsules produced in a factory mostly have their caps and bodies joined and they need to be rectified before the filling process begins. For rectification, the capsules are fed into the capsule delivery plate with multiple circular channels inside to hold the capsules. The capsules are then allowed to fall on a horizontal fork that acts on the center of the capsule and then the vertical fork adjusts their direction of them. Capsule rectification is now complete and it is followed by separating the caps and bodies.

Separating capsule caps and bodies

After rectification, the capsule tray is moved to the capsule filling station and the caps and bodies of the capsule are separated using a vacuum divider. Once the capsule separation is done, the cap and the body are transferred to their respective stations.

Medication filling

The body of the capsule is transferred to the filling station where the active ingredients are filled into the capsule. It can be done by several different methods.

Tamping filling

The powder here is compacted with the help of a tamping punch. The powders are transferred from one tamping punch to the next to achieve a smooth finish.

Intermittent doctor filling

In this method, the empty dosage tubes are inserted into a dosage hopper and the dosage punch inside the tube crushes the ingredients into a fine powder.

Dosage cylinder filling

In this method, two dosage pistons under the hopper control the filling of ingredients. This type of filling is especially suitable for filling particle-sized ingredients.

Vacuum filling

This method directly pulls ingredients inside the dosage tube using a vacuum pull. Compressed air is then used to blow the powdered content into the capsule body.

Waste capsule rejection

When the filling process is carried out, sometimes some of the capsule bodies do not separate from the capsule caps and as such are wasted products. There are pins inside the machine that pulls such capsules out of the mold and blows them into a collecting bag. The capsule caps and bodies are then both transferred to the next station for locking.

Locking capsule

The two trays containing the capsule bodies and caps rotate in sync in the locking station and the baffle plate located above the capsule tray and the pin located under the tray move as well to lock the two parts of the capsule in place.

Capsule ejection

Once the capsule is locked in place an ejection device, which is quite similar to the capsule rejection device, ejects the locked capsules out of the capsule tray and sends them to the outlet.

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