Structure of Softgel Encapsulation Machine
A soft capsule is made by oil base material. Is a major pharmaceutical dosage form. Now softgel capsules is not only for medicine, but also for soft capsule cosmetics, soft capsule animal drugs, soft capsule suppository, soft capsule candy, soft capsule bath beads. Those new products are popular with consumers.
The industrial production of soft capsules requires the use of a roll-die soft capsule equipment.
It is softgel encapsulation machine. The main principle is to use two pieces of gelatin ribbon and inject material inside of pocket. After several hours drying, you can get final capsules.
Then we will talk about basic structure of softgel encapsulation machine.
Soft encapsulation machine can be divided into three parts according to the basic principle. The first part is the gelatin ribbon making part, the second part is the material injection part, and the third part is the soft encapsulation part. Let's go through them all
The first part: The gelatin ribbon making part.
This part is used to change the gelatin liquid into gelatin ribbon skin. Therefore, the main components of this part are gelatin spreader box and gelatin cooling drum.
Let us start from gelain spreader box. The main function of the gelatin box is to expand the gelatin liquid to form a gelatin line. To achieve this function, the gelatin box is designed with a hand wheel which can adjust the thickness of gelatin. High degree of automation was designed with automatic gelatin ribbon adjust system which no need to adjust ribbon by PLC program.
In order to keep the gelatin liquid flowing well in the gelatin box, the gelatin box needs to have the function of heating. Therefore, the material of gelatin spreader box is brass which has good thermal conductivity, and not easy to deformation.
At present, the design of gelatin spreader boxes are used to store a certain amount of space for gelatin solution. Therefore, the supplement design of gelatin liquid includes automatic control supplement gelatin liquid and manual control supplement gelatin liquid.
At present most sofgel machine in market is applied with gelatin liquid automatic feeding design. The automatic filling of liquid gelatin is designed with pneumatic control. The gelatin spreader box has the liquid level sensor at top. when the sensor detects the liquid level has reached a certain height, the sensor signal will control the pneumatic valve to control the gelatin box into the valve to close.
The function of the cooling drum is to quickly cool the gelatin out of the spreader box into solid gelatin. Therefore, the cooling effect is an important parameter to consider the cooling drum. Antifreeze is stored inside the cooling drum. External Cooling through the water cooler to control the temperature of the wheel hub. The cooling coil is designed in the cooling drum, and the cooling water is exchanged with the antifreeze liquid in the cooling drum to reduce the temperature. For more accurate hub temperature control. When the temperature is close to the control point, the speed of the water pump will be slow, which will be more convenient for precise control of the temperature.
The material of cooing drum is special steel material, suitable for working in cold water environment for a long time, and will not be distorted by working for a long time.
The second part: The Material Injection Part.
The material injection part of soft capsule machine is mainly composed of Hopper and material injection pump.
The Hopper is the part where the material is stored and is located at the top of the equipment. The Hopper can realize the function of automatically replenishing materials. When the hopper is full of material, the float sensor will inform software program to control the pressure valve, which opens and presses the material from the Compressed air into the hopper.
In order to make the material more even, there is a stirring paddle inside the hopper, the stirring paddle will keep stirring, this function is particularly useful for mixed materials. In addition, the hopper will be designed with heating function, heating design has heat conduction plate heating and jacket hot water heating, heating plate heating efficiency is fast, may not be uniform; jacket hot water heating efficiency is slow, but heating evenly. Because the material is not very sensitive to temperature, at present all the equipment are using heating plate heating or heating rod heating. The Hopper also has a sealed design, because the air oxidizes some medicines or materials, so some of these materials must be made in nitrogen soft capsule. Therefore, the hopper must have a good seal.
In addition is the hopper material, because the hopper must be in contact with the material, so the hopper material is food-grade contact material.
The injection pump is a very core part of the device, and it is the heart of the soft capsule machine. The material is transported to the mold section by this injection pump. The injection pump determines the accuracy and accuracy of soft capsules. Injection pump will decide the quality of softgel machine good or bad. The working principle of the injection pump is to push and pull the piston and switch the guide plate to achieve around the injection. Materials will be directly in contact with the injection pump, guide plate in the work will always switch back and forth. Therefore, a good injection pump not only have good wear-resistant materials, but also have good accuracy
At present our pump core material is 9Cr12Mo, this material has a good hardness, and wear resistance. At the same time, the accuracy and accuracy of the injection material can be guaranteed.
The third part: The encapsulation Part.
The soft capsule is in the form of two pieces of gelatin ribbon wrapped around a liquid material. Through the last two chapters we know the preparation of gelatin ribbon and the material delivery system. So in this chapter we will focus on how the capsule is used to wrap the liquid material.
The principle of soft capsule making is to use two die rollers to extrude gelatin ribbon, and at the same time, use a segment to inject material into the cavity of the die roller. The material injection process will stretch the capsule gelatin to the desired shape of the soft capsule. The die roller then continues to squeeze the top capsule to seal a complete capsule. The capsule will form. The whole process is dynamic. The die roller are rotated, the materials and gelatin are supplied, and a large number of soft capsules can be made.
The main core components in this area are the injection wedge, the die, and the mangle roller.
Injection wedge: injection wedge is also called segment. The injection wedge can disperse material onto the die. Therefore, the injection wedge is matched with this die roller. In order to achieve better material injection synchronization, the injection wedge may need to be specially designed. As shown in the image below
Besides the function of dispersing material, another important function of the injection wedge is heating. The gelatin ribbon should have good elasticity and plasticity between 38 ~ 45 °C at suitable temperature. In this way, the die roller form a good joint when extruding. The temperature control of injection wedge is very important for the quality of soft capsule. Therefore, there are several forms of temperature control of injection wedge
1. The heating rod is heated directly, the heating rod is heated quickly and the adjusting temperature is quick, but the heating rod may be heated unevenly because of the manufacturing quality problem. Large temperature difference between the front and back of the phenomenon.
2. Water Heating: Inection wedge designed into the pipeline form. The hot water circulates in the Injection wedge directly to the left and right of the wedge. The injection wedge in this way is complicated in design and time-consuming in processing. But the temperature of it is better and uniform. Therefore, for products with strict quality requirements, it is necessary to use water heating spray.
3. Heat conducting oil mode: the Heat conducting oil wedge is a combination of the advantages of heating rod and water heating mode. The injection wedge is directly heated by heating rod, and many heat conducting oil pipelines are designed in the injection wedge. This provides more uniform heating in the form of a heat conducting oil. At the same time, heating efficiency will not be affected.
The die roller is the core component of the soft capsule. We can see the market is soft capsules in different shapes, round, olive, oblong, animal, fruit shapes... ... and this is done primarily through die roller. The die roller can make various shapes of cavity through the machining center.
The die roller is made of food grade aviation aluminum. This material has good plasticity and wear resistance.
Die design is the main means to ensure the quality of soft capsule products. Die roller step, cavity size, cutting height, step height and so on very small craft will affect the soft capsule cutting effect, soft capsule seam effect... .
At present, our die roller after 20 years of experience and customer feedback, die roller design has excellent results and brief introduction.
For example, our die roller steps, a single step, two steps, three steps design.
We will be based on the customer’s soft capsule products to recommend the appropriate design.
Because of the many technical points of the mold, we will write a separate article to introduce.
