Bobzchemist
Forum Replies Created
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That’s another thing you’ll have to determine for yourself - but I doubt that preservative will be soluble in glycerin, which will be a big problem, unless it is soluble in alcohol instead.
There is no substitute for a PET test.
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Don’t use Aloe at all. Keep as much water as possible out of your product. In fact, I think you should dump the glycerin also, and use an oil instead - you’ll have to experiment to find something soluble in Isopropanol.
Shelf life is something that you will have to determine for yourself, or have a lab determine for you.
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Please start a new discussion to get an answer
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Belinda Carli might be able to give you some leads as well:
INSTITUTE OF PERSONAL CARE SCIENCEPO Box 995Coolum Beach, QLD 4573 AustraliaOffice: +61 7 5446 4680 -
Palm oil, coconut oil, or tallow/lard (beef/pork fat). There aren’t any other choices, sorry - it’s just too cheap and easy to get it from Palm. I’m not sure you can even get any petroleum-derived fatty acids.
There’s a high percentage of Stearic Acid in Cocoa Butter, but I’d bet money that no one will ever use it for that - Cocoa Butter is way too expensive.
PETA forced the cosmetic/personal care industry to reject animal by-products, and the “natural” crowd demanded vegetable-based alternatives, but no synthetics, all of which led to wide spread cultivation of palm and coconut. Sorry about the environmental destruction, but folks have brought it upon themselves. It’s still amazing to me that folks will still eat a good steak, but then turn around and refuse to buy soap made from tallow.
Your only choice, if you can’t use animal by products, will be to use a different fatty acid. The anti-palm movement just isn’t strong enough for raw material makers to care yet.
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Pemulen TR-2
Good for sprayable emulsions:https://www.lubrizol.com/PersonalCare/Products/Pemulen/PemulenTR-2.html
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I’m going to point out one other thing, fwiw. These jobs exist because big corporations have decided that their very highly paid marketing people shouldn’t have to waste their time dealing with R&D chemists. It follows that the product development/product management jobs don’t pay as much as pure marketing jobs. If it turns out that you have to get a marketing degree anyway…
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Happy to help. If you want a job like this, you’re going to need to understand sales and marketing much better than most chemists do. Mike sounds like a great resource. Classes here might help, too:
https://www.fitnyc.edu/cfm/ -
OK, last tip, I promise.
Your pigment grind should be the consistency of soft butter. When you put it at a 45 degree angle, it should not flow. If it does, you need to increase the pigment the next time you make it. You should also be able to spread it with a spatula like it’s butter - if it spreads more like frosting, you need to increase the liquid. If it’s more of a stiff paste, like spackle, you really need to increase the liquid.
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Interesting (but mostly useless) fact:
Before Hoover came out with their automatic muller, all pigment companies used hand mullers to test their new batches of pigments. It turned out that they needed to keep track of when during the day the grinds were made, and only compare morning grinds to morning grinds, and afternoon grinds to afternoon grinds. Why? Because as the technicians who made the grinds got tired as the day went on, they didn’t grind the pigments as well, so the morning grinds had much smaller particle sizes than the afternoon grinds did.
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Just for completeness, a Hegman or Fineness Of Grind gauge can be found and explained here:
https://www.gardco.com/pages/dispersion/fg/finenessofgrind.cfm
You really don’t need one unless you are doing QC for a lipstick company, though. Testing by touch works fine unless/until you’re grinding pigments all day long.
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If you win the lottery, or own a pigment company, you can even buy a motorized automatic muller:
http://www.hoovercolor.com/products/muller/
(Normal cosmetic chemists would be better off buying a mini 3-roll mill http://exaktusa.com/dispersion-equipment/basic-models/)
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@Belassi, mullers are much better at grinding down hard particles in a fluid/semifluid base, primarily because you can put much more downward pressure on a muller. There’s a reason artists have used mullers to make paint for hundreds of years.
Mortar and pestle is just a muller and plate curved up so that the plate is a bowl (mortar), and the pestle is somewhat similar to a muller, but with the grinding surface extended up towards the handle. It’s designed that way, as far as I know, so that you can grind/crush larger quantities without them going all over the place, the way that they would if you were grinding on a plate. It does a poor job of grinding pigments in oil initially, because it’s harder to exert a lot of force with one, but you can get similar results if you work at it long enough. It takes 3 or 4 times longer with a mortar and pestle, though.
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Most large companies have positions that are essentially liaisons between Marketing and R&D. The job is to translate what Marketing wants into something R&D can do. Some of the larger contract manufacturers have similar positions. These jobs are not easy, and turnover can be high at times - they tend to be blamed when a product/product line doesn’t sell. They require an ability to deal with the corporate world that’s more than most chemists are comfortable with, and an ability to deal with chemists that’s more than most marketing MBA’s are comfortable with. It might work out for you.
When I was working in the NY area, the majority of these jobs were at the corporate HQ’s in Manhattan, and there was a lot of travel to R&D labs.
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If you already have a muller, you don’t need to buy pre-dispersed pigments. (Carmine is an exception because it costs so much)
Pigments (not talcs or micas, they’re different) need to be ground to below 4 microns before you can stop feeling them on your lips. You can determine this objectively by using a Hegman gauge, or empirically by rubbing a tiny drop of pigment dispersion on your lip.
Make a pre-mix with 40% pigment and 60% castor oil, then grind it with your muller on a thick piece of frosted glass plate. (Don’t skimp on the thickness - it isn’t fun to break one. Use a rubber mat under it to cushion and immobilize the plate) Depending on the size of your muller, you should be able to grind between 2-6 grams of pre-mix at a time. Grind by rubbing the premix between the muller and the frosted glass plate with a circular pattern while pressing down on the muller. If you can feel the muller rubbing dry on the plate, you haven’t used enough pre-mix - there should be just enough premix to keep that from happening, but not so much that you make a big mess. (You’ll know it when you see it) Stop mulling when you see most of the pigment dispersion in a built-up ring around the edge of your pattern. Scrape the pigment dispersion up with a flexible spatula, put it back in the center of your pattern, and repeat until you can’t feel the pigment on your lip anymore. Then the dispersion can be added to your formula. Left-over dispersion can be stored indefinitely, but should be mulled again before you use it if you haven’t used it after about a week.
An option to reduce your mulling time/effort is to make a dry pre-blend of some of your talc plus your pigments in a spice blender or something equivalent before you mull. This will require making at least 10-20 grams or so, more if you have a larger blender, so you might not want to do this until you are ready to make a fair amount of lipsticks.
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You need to calculate how much TEA you need for your carbomer, and then test to be sure you like the texture. Consider using a Pemulen/carbomer mix, it will help emulsification. “Swiss Cheese” is probably a sign that you’re using too much.
Second, you can add silicones during/a little after emulsification, but then you run the risk of having some of your internal phase only be silicone, so stability MIGHT be not as good. Testing is important.
Lastly, AMP and/or AMPD are neutralizers - aminomethyl propanol or aminomethyl propanediol. Using these avoids the MEA contamination issue that happens with TEA.
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Bill is also right about the drop point. You can’t emulsify solids, or even pastes very well. You might lose some of the silicone due to temperature, but your oil phase needs to be completely fluid when you emulsify it and for at least 10 minutes as the emulsion is cooling down.
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It’s interesting - you can get it either as a natural chemical or as a synthetic. Obviously, the natural stuff is 10x more expensive, but it is available.
Our customers objected to it because it left a lingering odor on the skin.
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Water
Stearic Acid
Glycerin
Sodium HydroxideThat’s all you need for a starting point.
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Find a fragrance or oil that’s already compatible with silicones.
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Why are you trying to make a “natural as can be” conditioner?
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What are you using to grind the pigments with?
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Phenethyl alcohol? Might even go good with bergamot.