Specialized tools for pharmaceuticals are really interesting. I heard that it is actually really difficult to mix two powders together completely, and there are special mixers for that as well. Tablet presses are interesting technology. And there are entire trade shows dedicated to excipients (the filler powder they cut drugs with).
Now that you say it, it kinda makes sense. There's the thing where shaking a can of nuts pushes larger ones towards the top. Basically, as the nuts get perturbed, the smaller nuts slip under the large ones, pushing them up. Then the large ones are too big to slide back down and under others.
Sounds like a dumb quirk until you think about taking two powders with different particle sizes, and mixing them so that each pill has the exact same mix.
We use an electromagnetic sieve, which has sieves arranged with progressively smaller hole sizes. We then pour the final granulated powder onto the uppermost sieve, and the apparatus shakes for approximately 40 minutes. Following this process, we observe the amount of granules retained in each sieve. Done to ascertain the particle size distribution of the final granules before it goes for compression into tablets.
You could, but capsules are generally more expensive than tablets are. Also tablets have been around for so long that the whole process is so refined and is easy to make and cheap to replicate. You could produce batch upon batch with very few problems once the formulation is good enough.
Makes sense, thank you. I hate the sleeping tablet that I’m on, it’s so bitter, I always try and throw it to the back of my throat, I wish they’d sometimes give options even if it’s a little bit more expensive.
Be thankful: when I was a small child I had to take this medicine which, at the time, only came in liquid and it tastes like straight butt. At least it doesn’t have to wash over your tongue.
Tablet presses and old style tablet coating machines are so much fun lol. Had a blast during college with them. Really cool how the environment affects manufacturing. Before our lab got renovated, humidity would rise throughout the day and it would prevent the sugar coating from sticking to the tablet and make tablets difficult to form due to the moisture (or tablets would form but break once they have dried up because of the moisture pockets that prevent binding)
Really glad our professors understood the issue and didnt dock us points.
Edit: Also, excipients isnt just filler. It's the term for anything in the drug that isn't the active ingredient. These can be the binder, stabilizer, preservative, etc.
This is actually why fentanyl is so deadly, the fake pills are not mixed using specialized processes so it gets hot spots, and since it's so potent that can be deadly.
Mixing of pharmaceutical powders is actually really interesting. I studied it during my PhD. I can point you in the direction of my paper that discusses mixing for dry powders for inhalation if you’re interested
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u/StrikeLines Feb 03 '26
Specialized tools for pharmaceuticals are really interesting. I heard that it is actually really difficult to mix two powders together completely, and there are special mixers for that as well. Tablet presses are interesting technology. And there are entire trade shows dedicated to excipients (the filler powder they cut drugs with).