Comparison of the Performance of Single Punch and Rotary Tablet Presses from Different Vendors

As tablets are the most common dosage form for drug delivery, many different rotary
presses are available on the market in order to produce tablets with a high throughput.
Single punch presses are used for pharmaceutical development or to simulate the
compaction process using small material quantities. In this study, 5 different rotary presses
and 4 single punch presses were utilized using 3 different model formulations. Tablet
masses and tensile strengths were investigated as a function of compaction force and
process time. The corresponding force-time profiles were analyzed as well. In general,
significant differences between the presses were observed even if the deviations were
rather small from a practical point of view. The lowest variations of tablet properties were
found using the plastically deforming formulation, while the elastic formulation was more
challenging. High throughput with comparable high tablet tensile strength can be achieved
by the brittle formulation. By analyzing representative force-time diagrams it was found
that dwell times varied considerably between the different machines.