Case Study 1

Tablet: Bupropion  

Problem: The customer was complaining of encountering sticking, abrasion and corrosion all at once when trying to compress their formulation.

Solution: Previously, a competitor had supplied tooling with their coating solution. The customer accepted this, as it alleviated the issue slightly, but didn’t solve the situation completely. They were still suffering from sticking and corrosion and the tools weren’t lasting very long. After I Holland was called to assist, we supplied samples of our CN+ and CX+ coatings. The customer was particularly impressed with the CN+ as they experienced no sticking. 

Success: CN+ worked very well against all three reported issues and the customer standardised it on I Holland tooling for all Bupropion products.  They reported the tooling running around 50% longer than their previous suppliers. A success for I Holland and the customer!

Case Study 2

Tablet: Bupropion Hydrochloride

Problem: The customer encountered significant sticking issues on the upper punches when transitioning a Bupropion Hydrochloride product from a D Type press to a B Type press. After experiencing difficulties, they decided to revert to the original press, achieving a stable output of 120,000 to 155,000 tablets per hour before sticking occurred, however they wanted to increase production. They recognised that the issue was dwell time-related, so they reached out to I Holland for support.

Solution: With dwell time and output being the main area of focus, it straight away pointed to using an eXtended Dwell Flat (XDF) head. This would allow the customer to run the press faster, improving the output, but not lose the required dwell time to successfully compress the tablet. Using knowledge from an experience with a previous customer manufacturing this product, we decided to try our CN+ coating which previously had solved the issues of sticking, corrosion and wear that are associated with Bupropion Hydrochloride. We also recommended our customer went with this solution to give the best chance of success against preventing any sticking and mentioned it may also allow them to run even faster with a quicker dwell time. They believed there would be a benefit from the upper tooling being the XDF design and they decided to proceed with 2 upper sets of tools from us with XDF and CN+ coating. 

Solution: : When we revisited the customer, they commented that the tools ran successfully from the first run. They have had no sticking or picking, no signs of corrosion and no obvious signs of wear.