In the modern pharmaceutical, health care, and food industries, the demand for tablet diversity and functionality is increasing. Single-ingredient tablets are no longer able to meet the market's demand for differentiated taste, efficacy, and appearance. The emergence of three-color tablet presses provides an efficient solution for the large-scale production of multi-component, multi-color tablets. By precisely controlling the filling and compression processes of different materials, this equipment can press tablets with three colors or three ingredients in one go, increasing product added value while ensuring production efficiency and quality stability.
I. Application Areas: Product Innovation Across Multiple Industries
Three-color tablet presses have a wide range of applications, particularly for the production of products requiring functional layering, differentiated appearance, and ingredient isolation. Applications include:
- Pharmaceutical Industry: Used for the production of compound tablets, sustained-release tablets, and enteric-coated tablets.
- Health Products Industry: Used for the production of multivitamin tablets and collagen tablets.
- Food Industry: Used for the production of candies with fillings and nutritional tablets. For example, three-color fruit-flavored tablets can be pressed into separate layers of strawberry (red), orange (yellow), and blueberry (blue) flavors, enhancing the consumer experience through color and texture differences. In children's food, cartoon-shaped three-color tablets can add interest and attract children.
- Veterinary Industry: Used for the production of pet deworming tablets and livestock health tablets. To address animal resistance to medication, a bitter deworming ingredient can be used as the core, a sustained-release excipient added to the middle layer, and an outer layer coated with a meat-flavored attractant that animals enjoy. The three-color differentiation visually demonstrates the product structure and improves animal palatability.
II. Working Principle: Collaborative Multi-Material Tablet Compression Mechanism
Based on an upgrade of the traditional single-punch tablet press, this machine utilizes multiple hoppers for independent material feeding and multi-station collaborative compression to achieve the precise combination of three materials in the same tablet. The workflow is divided into the following key steps:
- First, the machine is equipped with three independent hoppers, each containing materials of different colors or compositions (such as active pharmaceutical ingredients, excipients, and flavorings). Each hopper is connected to an independent feeding device, which delivers the materials to different areas of the tablet pressing mold in a preset ratio via screw or vibratory feeding.
- Second, the mold system utilizes a specially designed modular die. The shapes of the punch and die hole are designed to match the structure of the three-color tablet (common types include layered, ring-core, and mosaic). As the turntable rotates the mold to different stations, the three hoppers are filled sequentially: the first hopper is filled with the bottom layer material, the second hopper with the middle layer material, and the third hopper with the top layer material. The filling amount of each layer is precisely controlled by a metering device to ensure a stable ratio of the tablet components.
- Finally, at the tableting station, upper and lower punches simultaneously apply pressure to the multiple layers of material within the die. Through the cohesive and adhesive forces between the particles, the three materials are compressed into a single tablet. After compression, a tablet ejector ejects the tablet from the die for subsequent screening and packaging.
The entire process is automated via a PLC control system, allowing precise adjustment of parameters such as feed speed, fill volume, pressing pressure, and turntable speed to ensure a balance between the quality of the three-color tablets and production efficiency.
