Abstract
The quality of the determination of punch separation in an eccentric tabletting machine equipped with two inductive displacement transducers was carefully investigated, since this tabletting machine is used as an `analytical instrument' for the evaluation of the compression behaviour of pharmaceutical materials. For a quasistatic calibration procedure using gauge blocks, the repeatability under standard conditions and the robustness against variations in machine settings, installation conditions, equipment and methods were examined. The readings during calibration can be easily influenced by machine parameters as a result of deficiencies in the construction of the machine and in the mode of instrumentation. The poor plane-parallelism of the punch faces has a further negative effect on the accuracy of punch separation. In addition, the response at loading to lower and higher forces as during calibration was investigated. While at loading up to 100 N, the response of the system to the gauge blocks is systematically influenced by punch separation, for slow manually applied punch-to-punch loading up to 16.5 kN at a broad range of penetration depths, no significant effects were observed in the region of interest for tabletting. To get an indication of the transferability of the calibration and the determination of punch deformation to normal operating conditions, the lateral tilting of the punches during dynamic idle runs, punch-to-punch loading, and compression of microcrystalline cellulose was analyzed. A transfer of the response derived from punch-to-punch compression to tabletting conditions seems to be possible, although this must be questioned on grounds of theoretical considerations. From all the experiments performed, a total error of about ±30 μm must be assessed for the determination of punch separation.
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