Advances in Continuous Coating

O'Hara Technologies is the industry leader in Continuous/Batch Tablet Processing, with new innovations comming out every year. The latest advances in continuous coating bring medium and small size continuous coaters, in addition to high-volume equipment, to better suit the needs of most pharma applications.

In 2005 O'Hara introduced FC C1200, the largest continuous coater in the industry. This innovation was highly welcomed in the industry because of its operational efficiencies. A single FC C1200 continuous coating machine can replace up to six 66" batch coating pans. With "0" waste operation this technology is the most advanced on the market. In addition, O'Hara's high-volume continuous coater can produce 250 kg of finished product at 3% weight gain in 15 minutes, which significantly reduced the exposure of thermo sensitive APIs to high temperatures. Due to reduction of bed depth product damage was eliminated and coating uniformity was dramatically improved, opening new opportunities in drug development.

O'Hara's continuous coating pans are stretched batch pans with loading and discharge openings at either end. Tablets are continuously fed at a highly controlled rate via weight-feeder; and the average weight gain of tablets is precisely controlled by tablet flow rate vs. solution flow rate times efficiency. Spray manifolds are also stretched to the length of the coater, varying from 16 up to 24 spray guns for each system. Residence amount, residence time, pan RPM, bed depth, are all independent of average tablet weight gain. In Fastcoat Continuous systems, the tablets move through the coater by natural migration, no baffles or vanes are used. The quicker the tablets are fed the quicker they move through. Tablet cooling, elevating and/or waxing can be added at the discharge end of the coater.

In order to address the needs of pharmaceutical companies with smaller production volumes, O'Hara Technologies Inc. introduced medium and low-volume continuous/batch coating systems, bringing down capacities to matches that of most tablet presses.