News and articles from the powder processing industry

Added 7/12/05

Interesting blog post on the history of pills, tablets and capsules that surveys the earliest "coating pans" used by pharmacists to mix and package powdered medicine in their shops, to the first attempts at automation via tablet presses, and on to the high speed rotary tablet presses and capsule filling machines of today. Here's an excerpt:

Pharmacists faced a real problem over a century ago when relatively pure new drugs became available since most of these were powders. Patients would complain that swallowing a dose of powder could be just plain difficult. As a result the pharmacist would combine the powder with some innocuous stuff that would cause the powder to stick together. He would then roll that into a little ball that could be easily swallowed.the first pill.

Added 7/12/05

Ask Joe offers a pithy primer on bulk powder conveying by guest commentator Henk Colijn. Coljin takes us back to the classroom - don't worry, this isn't grad school - for some background on the physics and chemistry of powders and the machines used to process them in modern industrial settings. The basic types of conveying technology - belt conveyors, screw conveyors, vibratory conveyors - are all described, and Coljin also reviews the important physical characteristics of powders that can have an impact of the effectiveness of various conveyor systems.