What Is Pharmaceutical Milling ?
Pharmaceutical Milling Definition | Pharmaceutical Milling is the process of using rotary cutters in pharmaceutical equipment machinery to remove materials from a workpiece by feeding in at an angle with the axis of the tool. Milling is used in pharmaceutical processing to break down and de-agglomorate powders and granules to a specific particle size range. The physical characteristics of the resulting powder can influence downstream processing steps such as blending and tablet compression and also in-vivo performance.
Typically the material to be filled is fed through a hopper, through gravity or vacuum feed, and passed through a milling chamber. The milling chamber consists of rotating sharp or blunt blades and a sizing screen. The type of blade, rotation speed and the dimensions of the pores of the sizing screen are all critical in producing a specific particle size for a product. The characteristics of the milled material are often critical to subsequent processing steps and are routinely tested in line or as an intermediate bulk. Increasingly, milling operation efficiency is being increased by the use of real time release testing (RTRT).