The constituent elements of the tabletting process are the punches and dies. They affect the final appearance and the size of production, so it is necessary to design and produce the products with accuracy. During operation, these tools are exposed to high pressure and abrasive. They require high quality steel, proper heat treatment, and sometimes special coatings to prevent tools from wearing or adhesion.

At present, there are more than a dozen domestic pill manufacturers of tablet press punch die with uneven production scale and processing capacity, and the quality of the products is different. In addition, there are about 30 kinds of Punch Dies, specifications and models, and more than 50 tablet shapes, which brings difficulty to die selection for pharmaceutical companies. It is believed that the three elements that determine the quality of the mold are size, material and heat treatment.

In general, it is suggested that users use the standard punch dies, which have the advantages of timely delivery, low prices and low operating costs.

There are some notes about standard punch dies that may interest you.

(1) Standards of the ZP Type Standard Dies, referred to tablet tooling, issued by the Ministry of Health came into effect from the 1970s. Later it was revised as the national standard and then in 2004 as the industry standard till now. ZP type punch dies are well-known and popular in the domestic market and they are widely used. They are suitable for medium and low speed rotary tablet presses as well as sub-high speed rotary tablet press with lower operating costs.

(2) T series standard punch dies are made according to the regulations that are modified and adopted from the American Pharmaceutical Association 2005 Edition “Tablet Press Technical Specification Manual”. Different from the European EU tablet punch dies, T series standard punch dies were changed into TSM tablet punch dies from the former IPT tablet punch dies. This helps the domestic tablet presses and punch dies enter the United States market, but the operating cost is relatively high. B tooling and D tooling, strictly conforming to the EU and TSM international standard, are well accepted worldwide and applied on various tablet press machine, like ZP9 rotary tablet press.

(3) Standards of I series punch dies are modified and developed from the ISO18084: 2005 (E) “Tablet Punch Dies” (English version) issued by Technical Committee of International Organization for Standardization. This enables the domestic tablet presses and punch dies to fit better into the European market, but the operating cost is relatively high.

(4) The T series and the I series punch dies work well for the high speed rotary tablet presses, as well as the sub high speed and medium speed and low speed rotary tablet presses.