Blister pack trial

The Sanofi-Aventis facility in St. Louis uses a new packaging line to produce blister-packed Ambien drugs. This product is a two-pack for doctors to distribute as sample products.


As the third largest pharmaceutical company in the world, Sanofi-Avent has factories in 100 countries around the world. Its factory in St. Louis, US is strictly a packaging company that primarily buys products from Sanofi's other companies or third parties for packaging. Its latest production line was installed and put into production in 2004. It mainly produces doctor's trials using blister packs. During the PD visit, the line was producing blister packs containing the new two-piece (6.25 mg) AmbienCR® sustained release tablets from Sanofi.

Their first packaging machine was the UPS4-MT intermittent motion blister packaging machine provided by Uhlmann Packaging Systems. The company's engineering director David Powell said: "We have other Uhlmann equipment in our factory. We are very satisfied with it. We always think that Uhlmann is Cadillac in the field of blister packaging machinery and it is our preferred partner."

Laminating and filling

This machine uses Klöckner Pentaplast's rolls of transparent 10 mil Pentapharm® polyvinyl chloride monolayer film to package the tablets. This is a single-layer film, but the film used in other products produced by this line also includes an Aclar® fluoropolymer film. The film was produced by Honeywell Specialty Materials and laminated to PVC. Ineos Films also supplies films for the production of blisters.

The film enters the packaging machine, first through a preheating zone and then through a forming zone where the compressed air forms 12 blisters on each part, with a certain pause between the two parts. After the blister is formed, the film enters the tablet loading section. This is a GFS II loader manufactured by Gemel Precision Tools. Each time this machine moves up and down, it can fill two of the 12 blisters. The tablets were transported upwards from a hopper on the floor next to the Uhlmann packer to a smaller hopper at the top of the loader. From there, tablets are fed through a vibrating plate to a bowl on the GFS II filling machine. The GFSII loader moves up and down, sending the tablets through 24 independent plastic tubes in the blisters. The loader has two lids that fit together during the filling process. Both lids have O-rings for capturing during tablet delivery. These O-rings can minimize the damage to the product and are one of the important features of the Gemel loader. During each rotation, the top cover is opened and one of the rows of tablets in each tube will fall onto the O-ring of the top cover. The lid is then closed along the tube and the O-ring holds the remaining tablets. Finally, the bottom lid is opened and the tablet is inserted along the plastic chute into the recess of the blister on the lower belt. This slit gate technology with an O-ring can minimize the removal time and make the product release process simple and peaceful.

A roll of transparent 10 mil vinyl film is installed at the inlet of the blister packer

After the blister has been formed, the film enters the tablet filling machine where the tablets are placed one by one in the blister

The lid enters the blister packer, passes through a flexo press, then moves down and is finally sealed to the top of the blister.

A rotary picking system picks up the outer box from the hopper and opens it.
Then put it on the protruding part of the conveyor belt.

The film will then pass under a Uhlmann VisioTec Visiochrom detection system. The system will check the position, size, slicing, shape, and color fidelity of the blisters. The result is displayed on the packaging machine's touch screen monitor. The monitor records the statistical information of each blister and archives all parameters and measurement results of the validity check. When the system detects a defective package, it sends a signal to the programmable logic controller to record the bubble in the shift memory. In this way, the defective blisters can be transported to the scrapped area under the punching area and removed.

Capping and inspection

After leaving the inspection system, the blister passes through a capping area. The material used for the lid is a roll of laminated film made of aluminum foil/polyethylene/paper. Aluminium foil is printed with Ambien's trademark and various colors. The bottom of the paper is printed with instructions on how to open the blisters and instructions on dosage. Cover suppliers include Alcoa, Alcan Packaging Pharma Center and Hueck Foils.

The capping material enters behind the packaging machine and is printed on top of the paper by a flexo type B12 from Adolph Gottscho. The material is then pulled onto the top of the packaging machine and the material is rotated through 90 degrees through a steering device to be parallel to the underlying forming material. The capping material then moves down and is then sealed to the molded material. There is also a printing registration system that searches for black rectangular marks on the capping material to ensure that it is aligned with the molded material.

The capping zone passes the material through the packaging machine at a rate of 12 blisters/shot and then immediately enters a single stroke process. Then an adjusting ring is used to transfer the material to the multi-stroke area of ​​the packaging machine, which is four times faster than the molding and packaging area. Sealed blisters pass through the next area. The perforations around the blister in this area will be perforated so that the patient can easily peel off the lidding material and take out the tablets. The blister then enters a multi-stroke process, advancing a row of blisters each time. Followed by a punched area, the three blister on this row will be cut from the material. The remaining material will be shredded and then placed in a large plastic bag.

After each blister pack is sheared, it is vacuum-pushed by a web-removal device and placed on a lateral conveyor. At this point, the blister found by the Visiochrom inspection system or other helium detection device will be removed. In addition, a defective product verification system will also conduct further inspections to determine the condition of the blisters on the conveyor belt after passing through the scrapped area to ensure that the package that should be scrapped has indeed been removed. If extra packages are detected, it closes the blister packer, avoids it and alerts you.

A Neslab HY300 cooler, manufactured by Thermo Electron, cools the water drawn from the blister packer. After the blisters have been molded and sealed, they can be cooled with these cooling waters.

Two sets of product descriptions and bar codes are printed on the box label. The labels are attached to the box along a corner so that they can be seen from both sides.

Transfer and Cartoning

A single row of blisters was moved along the conveyor belt from the Uhlmann packer up to an SC6 Cartopac cartoner by IWKA PacSystems. The blister is placed in a vertical hopper and then placed on a conveyor passing underneath by a vibratory loader. Subsequently, manufactured by RonTech AG, the IWKA PacSystems loader grabs the slug from a tilt hopper and places it on top of the blister in the conveyor belt. A detection device is installed underneath the interposer to check for missing blisters and/or inserts, while a bar code scanner checks to ensure that the inserted inserts are correct.

The blister and the insert then move to the cassette insertion area of ​​the packaging machine. The box was placed in a hopper, picked up by suction cups on three robot arms on a rotating picking system, and it was spread out and placed on a conveyor belt. As the carton passes over the conveyor belt, a molding wheel imprints the lot number and expiration date onto its main cap. The robot arm will blisters and inserts into the box, then the box will be covered. The packaging machine control system tracks the products that should be scrapped if they are erroneous, and there is also a scrapping verification scan equipment that checks all the cartons. Once any discrepancies are found, the packaging machine will be shut down. There is also a bar code scanning device that inspects the carton to ensure that the qualified carton on the packaging machine has been filled.

The box was then placed on a 1500 model scale produced by Boekels USA/IAI. Then, they were manually placed in trays and printed on the box via an Excel inkjet printer manufactured by Videojet Technologies.

The tray enters a SE-10 type bottom-loading automatic cartoner manufactured by Sabel Eng. A servo-driven finishing module stacks the product into four layers, each with four trays, which are then transferred to a lift table. The vacuum head removes a flat box from the hopper, opens it, places it directly above the lift table, and lifts the lift to place the product in the box. After the box is mounted, it is pushed away from the lifting platform, the bottom inner lid is folded, and the remaining lid is folded. The top and bottom of the box are sealed with 3M tape. Sabel's SE-10C model is very compact. It can be adjusted within 10 minutes without the use of tools.

The box is then transferred to a labeller produced by Quadrel Labeling Systems. The labeling machine is equipped with an M8485se print head manufactured by Sato America. Each label is printed with two sets of product descriptions and bar codes. The labels are attached to the box along a corner so that you can see them from both sides. Next, the box was passed through a Micromatic checkweigher produced by Mettler-Toledo Hi-Speed ​​to check whether the weight was in line with the standard. Finally, the workers put them on the pallet.

Source: Packaging Expo