Knowledge Base

The Caleva MCD was originally designed for coating of very small batches of tablets. The original Mini Coater Drier was very efficient at this. However, as a response to several user comments and requests a new version was designed to allow users to also coat small samples of pellets over a range of industries. The original improved design specification that users were requesting was that batches...

Extrusion and spheronization is not always completely straightforward.  A formulation required for spheronization needs to go through the following processes and achieve the following properties.

Wet Granulation - Granules are formed by the addition of a granulation liquid onto a bed of powder under the influence of an impeller. This is typically carried out using a high-shear granulator or a simpler planetary mixer.

There are two main ways to make small pellets for drug delivery:

1. Drug layering onto inert starter (or seed) pellets that are bought commercially
2. Extrusion and spheronization binding the active material in the substrate of the pellet from the beginning

There is no right or wrong way to make pellets. The most appropriate method for your particular application will depend on what you are trying to...

Our general tablet coater literature describes the coating capability of a tablet size of up to 10 mm. However, this refers to a diameter rather than a capsule style design in length. The Mini Coater Drier is incredibly versatile and really the limiting factor is generally a weight issue as opposed to size. It’s important to consider weight/batch size to ensure a good coating motion within the...

We always offer our potential users the opportunity to test their formulation with us in our lab. This is to ensure that installing our machines would be the right decision for their formulation development, and/or their production environment.

This short article has been written from notes that Dr Steve Robinson made during trials with catalysts sent to us by a customer and we achieved some...

We have been asked by a manufacturer (interested in looking at the development of Omeprazole formulations) if it was really necessary to coat these pellets with an enteric coating. 

Product yields (the percentage of the spheroids produced in a batch that are within the size range required) will never be 100%.

We recently had a visitor from Asia who was trying to solve a problem with their cosmetic formulation. The investigator wished to have approximately 1 mm diameter pellets. The formulation presented was a tough, waxy material in irregular broken blocks that were up to about 10 mm in diameter and was unable to be spheronized into the required size or shape.

We are often asked if parameters used for film coating of materials in the Mini Coater Drier can be used for “scale up” to production. The desire for a process to be scalable is understandable but it is not always feasible or relevant. 

In some circumstances it is possible to omit the extrusion stage, but the results may not be what you need.

It is dependent on what you need to achieve with your result and what you want to do in the next phase of the project. Whether or not you decide to include the extrusion stage will depend on what you want to achieve with your project. 

At Caleva we are known for our expertise in helping our customers in the pharmaceutical industry with extrusion, spheronization, and making pellets.But we can also help with tabletting projects !The Caleva Mixer Torque Rheometer (MTR) is widely used to measure the characteristics of a wet granulation to establish the correct endpoint and mix time for any given formulation.The experiments and...

In many cases the main reason for the use of pellets in the manufacture of products is for its controlled release properties. However there are reasons to believe that pellets or spheroids in any case can offer a superior therapeutic effect even when modified release is not the prime objective.

Spheronization, marumerization, pelletization and micropelletization all mean the same thing. The manufacture of products in small spheres (spheroids) for use in pharmaceutical (pharma) and catalyst industries. Within each batch the spheroids are of regular shape and size and are quite dense. The products produced by these processes can be called spheroids, spheres, micro-spheres, pellets,...

High Viscosity Blade & Bowl set from the Caleva Multi Lab.  Mix and blend small quantities of difficult materials using the special high viscosity bowl and blade attachment set built for the Caleva Multi Lab.Our high viscosity mixing bowl and blade set is designed for mixing and blending of small quantities (10 to 50 g) of those more difficult and more viscous mixtures when the high shear standard...

The extruder attachment on the Caleva CML does not have a water jacket. Does it need one?

All extruders generate heat and screw extruders generate more than most other extruder types. For this reason, water jackets are generally an integral part of single or twin-screw extruders. 

• Given the small batch sizes (10 to 100 g) that are optimum for the CML extruder, a well formulated extrudate will...

Can trilobe and quadrilobe extruder dies provide benefits when working with catalysts or products for gas adsorption?

Can the equipment design help to increase the surface area to volume ratio (SA/V) in the extruded material (extrudate)?

The Caleva CML extruder attachment is the smallest in the family of screw driven extruders that can offer the operator the ability to extrude the material at high, medium high, medium low, or low density. By management of the extrudate density physical properties of the extruded material can be influenced. The most important of these are likely to be:

During the formulation development process, challenges related to final product performance have to be examined, exposed and overcome.

This is not always easy or straight-forward. However, if you have more options that you can investigate then there is likely to be an increased probability of a successful result. Different factors are considered as part of any formulation development and these...