Friability

Injection moulding

Biology

Biomedical engineering

Materials science

Chromatography

Raw material

Inkwell

Ethyl cellulose

3D printing

SCALE-UP

Classical mechanics

Polymer

Physics

Organic chemistry

Bioinformatics

Plastics extrusion

3d printed

Composite material

Pharmaceutical manufacturing

Medicine

Chemistry

Dosage form

International Journal of Pharmaceutics

This paper reports a custom-built binder jet 3D printer for pilot-scale manufacturing of pharmaceutical tablets. The printer is equipped with high-throughput piezoelectric inkjet print heads and allows direct control of several key process parameters, including the build layer thickness, amount of jetted liquid binder, and powder spreading rate. The effects of these parameters on the properties of the as-printed tablets were studied using a powder mixture of lactose monohydrate and Kollidon® VA64 (KL) and an aqueous binder containing 5% of KL. The appropriate processing windows for two different powder spreading rates were identified, and the final properties of the printed samples were explained using a dimensionless “degree of overlap” parameter which is defined as the ratio between the penetrating depth of the binder into the powder and the build layer thickness. Lastly, 10% of indomethacin was added to the powder feedstock as a model drug. Drug-loaded tablets were produced at a rate of 32 tablets/min, having an average breaking force of 9.4 kgf, a friability of 2.5%, and an average disintegration time of 8 s. These properties are comparable to commercially available tablets and represent one of the best values reported in the literature of 3D printed tablets thus far.

Development of a pilot-scale HuskyJet binder jet 3D printer for additive manufacturing of pharmaceutical tablets