Industrial Factory Automation

Romaco has developed the Siebler Striptabs line for Indian contract manufacturer Ankur Drugs and Pharma. The system was created for the production and packaging of pharmaceutical film tablets. Taken orally, wafer-thin Striptabs dissolve on the tongue in seconds. This type of medication, which is based on a starch and polymer solution, is used in pain and hormone therapies and for treating erectile dysfunction. Striptabs are currently being considered as a carrier for more than 600 different APIs. Customised manufacturing and packaging processes are needed to handle the thumb-sized strip dosage forms, which are only 60-100 micrometres (um) thick. First, the active pharmaceutical ingredient suspension is prepared using a homogenising process on a vacuum-processing unit made by Romaco Frymakoruma. Directly blending in the APIs at the beginning of the process results in high dosing accuracy with extremely low active-ingredient tolerances. Using a complex coating process, the liquid is the...

Synrad 's sealed CO2 lasers are used in a variety of industrial processes including cutting, welding, drilling and marking. Because CO2 lasers have very consistent output power and the heating process is always non-contact, laser-formed seals will remain consistent over hours of operation. For this particular application, which required sealing 0.05mm-thick polyethylene film, a Synrad 50W laser was used in conjunction with an XY table and a cutting head outfitted with a 63.5mm focal length lens. This lens typically provides a 0.1mm focused spot size; however, for laser sealing operations, a larger spot size is often preferred. A larger spot size yields lower overall power density and leads to increased melting and less vaporisation of thin films. It also increases the weld line width, providing better weld strength. For these reasons, the lens was unfocused slightly by increasing the standoff distance to around 5mm between the surface of the film and the tip of the cutting head, to...