Reclaiming tablets by milling them back down

Rather than discard the tablets, they can be reclaimed by milling the tablet back down to its powdered form. The product can then be re-worked for process re-introduction, significantly helping reduce waste and increase productivity.

Typical causes of off-specification tablets are; over-weight or under-weight, poor appearance, incorrect hardness and incorrect packaging. In fact, any condition which threatens to scrap a batch of valuable finished goods can be saved by using a conical screen mill to overcome the problem.

The hygienic and highly flexible design of the Uni-Mill is ideal for sanitary applications and a fully validated mill is the perfect way to ensure product integrity is maintained. It is possible to employ the same machine used for size reduction of pre-compression material as for the reclaim process. This provides a very cost effective solution for both the production of new material as well as re-worked material all performed on one machine.

A wide range of interchangeable tooling can be supplied with the Uni-Mill conical screen mill and special tooling can be used for particularly hard tablets. Tooling is also available to mill filled capsules. Hard Shell capsules can be loaded into the mill in the normal way and the capsules are then shredded and torn away from the contents. The resulting mix of broken capsules and powders can then be sieved to ensure the final powder is fully separated and can be safely re-used as required.

As production costs continue to rise, the case for reclaiming off-specification products gets increasingly stronger. Hanningfield is able to provide appropriate cost-effective solutions to make this process a viable and practical option.

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