The pharmaceuticals and medical industries employ MLT laser systems for very different applications. The various requirements in this sector are very high; process reliability and compliance with all statutory standards call for the development of quite specific solutions.
Since most laser systems in this sector are installed in clean room environments, the selection of the material for the machine structure and the housing parts and surfaces coming into direct contact with the product is very important, and the materials must be of a correspondingly high quality. Safe disposal of any process vapours and dusts also plays an important role. Contamination of the clean room is reliably avoided by the individual design of vapor extractors.
Many medications are marketed nowadays in so-called stick packs. This form of packaging allows higher throughputs per minute to be manufactured with reduced material consumption. For high-barrier foils such as OPP/AL/PE, laser scribing is highly suitable as an opening aid. For consumers, this means packaging can be opened easily and safely even in an emergency.
When manufacturing infusion bags, after sealing the bags they must be separated without any residues. Previously with mechanical stamping processes there was no way of ensuring that plastic threads continue to adhere at the cut edges. This can result in problems, especially with increasing tool wear.
With a laser cutting process, on the other hand, all the material at the cutting zone is vaporised. The result is that the laser process leaves clean and round melted edges – throughout the production process, as the system design is such that the quality of the laser cutting is not subject to wear.
A typical packaging for tablets is the combination of a deep drawn part and an aluminum covering foil.
The latest packaging dispenses with the aluminum and consists entirely of plastic.
With a targeted weak area in the covering foil created by laser technology, the tablets can be pushed out of the packaging just as easily as before.
