The Half Decent Pharmaceutical Chemistry Blog

The answer to this huge question isn’t blowing in the wind, friend, but it’s locked inside these capsules.

As for cancer,  prevention is everything and, when it comes to flu, people look instinctively  at vitamin C. So, to show you how a manual capsule filling system works, I’ve chosen the making of a nice set of 100 capsules of ascorbic acid.

If my prediction is right, giving such a detailed description of how to prepare this kind of drug will cause the following results: the wise people will immediately contact a massive Chinese supplier and make an enormous order of this material before its price gets astronomic, once bird flu will have hit the Eastern world, of course. Number two: the aforementioned wise people will instantly cease whatever activity they were involved in and begin to live clandestinely, mass-producing these capsules and giving them for free for the benefit of mankind, while the governments (predictably corrupted by pharma companies) will try to arrest them.

Hmm, well, at least I’ve given you the idea for a novel or a film, haven’t I?

Ok, whatever you want to do with capsules, thing is they are incredibly easy to prepare. All you need, apart from the powder you’ll load them with, are the empty capsules (cheap) and the capsule filling machine. As you can see, the latter is rather simple and costs less than 15 €.
Let’s say you prepare 100 capsules of vitamin C, each containing approximately 0.5 mg. Certainly this quantity isn’t enough to completely charge them, so, plainly, you have to add a filler (such as spray-dried lactose).
To calculate how much of this filler it’s required, you place all the ascorbic acid in a graduated cylinder and add filler powder until you reach the required volume.
Finally you mix the two.
Meanwhile you place the capsules in the machine: to avoid contact with your dirty, wet hands, that would ruin the structural integrity of the gelatine envelop, you can use an “automatic charger": this useful thing allows you to charge the filling machine loading 50 empty capsules, placing them randomly (as shown) and then, pressing a button on a side, making them slide down in the holes in such a way that the long and slim halves goes down.
Sometimes, unfortunately, something goes wrong and you can see a capsule or two are oriented incorrectly, but that’s just “bad” luck: you remove the wrong ones and manually put them in the right way.

Since you load 50 capsules, you repeat the procedure, thanks to the two holes the loader can be plugged into that are present on the filling machine.

Time to open: two screws are regulated so that they block the bottom halves. At this point you close the upper glass, grab the upper part of the machine and quickly pull it.
Oooo! Nice!
Release the bottom layer: everything will slip down, revealing a sort of slide in the plastic layer that helps you to fill. This operation is carried out using a sort of thick, plastic card. Yeah, like a cocaine pusher.
Once all the powder has gone into the capsules, you place the upper part back on the machine. This is the tricky part: you must grab all putting your thumbs on top and you other fingers under the machine. Carefully you lift the bottom layer and “feel” the two-halves touching.
As you realise they match perfectly, you pull the said layer very rapidly: it’s easier to do than to describe, by the way.

If you were right and the halves really matched, you’ll instantly see the capsules “suspended” in a remarkably neat way. Otherwise you need more practice, lad, because your capsules have just crushed into each other, instead of being closed…
Now you can start your own illegal business! Enjoy!