Sponsor: Mr. Steven Hess, Goodman Fielder Ingredients
Faculty Coach: Dr. Mary Frecker, PhD
Design and Construction of a Flexible, Automated Laboratory-scale Pharmaceutical Gelatin Hard Capsule Manufacturing Machine
A Student Project for ME
415W at the Pennsylvania State University
Spring Semester, 2001
The Gel Cap Engineering Team
Sponsor: Mr. Steven Hess, Goodman
Fielder Ingredients
Faculty Coach: Dr.
Mary Frecker, PhD
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
This project is one of the senior capstone design projects for Mechanical Engineering 415W at Penn State University. The Gel-Cap Engineering team was asked by Goodman Fielder Ingredients to build a small scale machine to make gelatin hard capsules . The Gel-Cap team spent the semester designing, evaluating, and building the capsule machine, which will be presented at the Design Project Showcase on April 24, 2001.
The machine works by taking a matrix of gelatin mold pins and dipping them into a gelatin solution. The matrix is then removed from the solution, rotated to evenly coat the pins, and then moved into a drying chamber.
The machine consists of the pin matrix, a motor to rotate the pin matrix, air cylinders to move the matrix into the gelatin solution and drying chamber, and the drying chamber itself. A water bath maintains the gelatin solution at the proper temperature for the process.
The Gelatin Capsule Machine
The Gel Cap Engineering Team (from L to R):
Anastasia Thomas, Brian Pappas, Art Gay, Bryan Clarke, Bill Marshall (kneeling)
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