Pharmaceutical Tablets

Tablet handling is less about moving a bulk solid and more about protecting a finished dosage form that has to arrive intact, clean and unambiguously identified.

Mechanical damage between press and blister

Chipping and edge wear come from impact and from tablet-on-tablet abrasion in long chutes.

• Spiral let-down tubes rather than straight vertical drops.
• Short, gently inclined transfers with no abrupt changes of direction.
• Controlled bed depth in containers, since weight on the lowest layer is itself a load.

Friability testing of the specific formulation tells you how much transfer the tablet can take, and that number should drive the layout rather than the available floor space.

Dedusting and dust removal

Fines released at the press stick to tablet surfaces and interfere with coating adhesion and with print quality.

Dedusters and metal detection sit directly after the press for that reason, and the extracted dust is product that may need reconciliation in the batch record.

Containment for potent compounds

Where the active ingredient is highly potent, the handling question changes from product protection to operator protection.

Contained transfer, split butterfly valves and closed sampling keep exposure within the occupational band assigned to the compound, and the containment performance has to be demonstrated rather than assumed.

Traceability and mix-up prevention

Physical segregation is the only robust defense against a mix-up: one product in one line, one batch in one container, with labelling applied before the container leaves the room.

Cleaning between products needs a documented and verified procedure, and the verification is swabbing and analysis rather than a visual check.

Dust explosion and static

Tablet dust and the granulate it comes from are combustible, and dry transfer generates static readily.

Equipotential bonding, grounded conductive components and controlled relative humidity are the usual measures, with collector protection assessed separately.

What to establish before buying equipment

• Friability and hardness of the real tablet, including the coated form.
• Occupational exposure band of the active ingredient.
• Required cleaning validation approach and changeover time.
• Humidity window for core and coating stability.

Tablets are a finished dosage form, so storage is about protecting a product that cannot be reworked.

They chip and abrade against each other, they take up moisture through the coating, and every unit is accountable. A broken tablet is not a yield loss in the usual sense; it is a deviation.

• Control humidity and temperature to the product specification, not to a general warehouse standard.
• Keep bed depths shallow; tablets at the bottom of a deep container carry the weight of everything above.
• Maintain batch segregation physically, not only by label.

Gentleness and traceability set the equipment.

Every transfer chips edges and generates dust, and tablet dust is both a loss and a cross-contamination risk. Vacuum transfer at low velocity with soft-landing receivers is the usual approach, and deduster and metal detection sit directly after the press.

• Low-velocity closed transfer with decelerating receivers.
• Dedusting immediately after the press, where the dust belongs to one product.
• Cleaning validation on every contact surface between products.

The dust is combustible and the main controls are containment and cross-contamination.

• Containment appropriate to the active ingredient, not to the tablet as an object.
• Explosion protection where dust accumulates, from measured values.
• Cleaning and changeover procedures that are validated, not merely documented.