The term “medical” signifies anything and everything related to medical science, including the entire pharmaceutical industry. On the other hand, the pharmaceuticals sector is primarily concerned with finding, developing, testing, approving, and improving various medicinal drugs, as well as other chemical compounds which either already have, or can potentially have a direct/indirect use in medical science. Keeping the focus on pharmaceutical equipment, let’s go through a few important manufacturing processes next to get a basic understanding of how medical products are manufactured.
Microhydraulic
Microhydraulic systems are small, fluid-powered systems that allow for a much higher force and torque output than their size would suggest. Microhydraulic systems are not just more powerful and energy-efficient, but these microfluid power systems can also operate within much smaller and more constricted space envelopes, as compared to electromechanical systems of similar size. As they can deliver a deceptively high force and torque output from even low power inputs, micro hydraulics is now the premier process of choice for manufacturing prosthetics, orthodontics, and human-assist lifts.
Die Casting
Magnesium and zinc-based die casting processes are used to manufacture both generic and customized mobility-assistance devices, as well as cooling cases (with built-in heatsinks) for medical electronics. Other than those, die casting is now extensively used to manufacture extremely detailed and intricate surgical tools too.
Tablet making is one of the oldest and most important uses of die casting within the pharmaceuticals industry. Both rotary tablet presses and single-punch tablet presses require die-casted tablet molds of various dimensions to manufacture tablets of different proportions with pinpoint accuracy and speed. In fact, die-casted molds are also used to manufacture gelatinous shell casings for drug encapsulating.
Encapsulation
Encapsulation is the process of making pharmaceutical capsules, and although it is a cluster term, at their core, all encapsulation methods involve capturing a specific amount of the concerned active chemical compound in fluid, liquid, or pellet form within the shell. Depending on the drug/chemical which needs to be encapsulated inside, the shell material will vary in its constituency, as will the encapsulation process itself. The following two processes are widely used across the globe for encapsulation of nearly all drugs.
Two-Piece Gel Encapsulation – The two-piece gel encapsulation process, also known as the hard-shell encapsulation process, utilizes a compressed slug method to encapsulate the active ingredients. The shells themselves are made by running gelatin through die-cast metal pins.
Single-Piece Gel Encapsulation– This is a much more complicated process, which would be difficult to explain within the limited scopes of this post here. Instead, check the process out in all its details by clicking here.
It should be noted that the few processes mentioned here do not always work in isolation with each other. In fact, it is possible that each of these will at times be used in various steps of manufacturing the same product or equipment. For example, we saw how die casting is necessary to create molds that can then be used to make encapsulation shells and tablets.
