Computer Interfaced Instrumentation of a Rotary Tablet Press

Abstract

A 25 Station Manesty X-Press rotary tablet press was interfaced to a Hewlett-Packard 9825/T desktop computer. The tablet press was instrumented with three pairs of strain gauges to monitor pre-compression, compression and ejection forces. The ejection cam is of a special design, and calibrated under static conditions, such that the analog output signals can be converted into force or pressure units. The interface to the computer can simultaneously monitor all three pairs of strain gauges so that any selected station can be monitored for all three forces. The interfacing permits storage of data which can be analyzed later. The rate of data acquisition can be varied continuously up to one signal every 30 micro-seconds. The system was validated for sensitivity and reproducibility. Compression and ejection curves generated were of high quality with a low signal to noise ratio.