Bobzchemist
Forum Replies Created
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@Pharma, NADES sound really cool to me, too - and we are all nerds here, so welcome.
If you are on LinkedIn, please connect with me - there are groups you need to join. If you need me to send you my email address, please send me a message on this forum.In fact, please consider this an open invitation for anyone on this forum to connect with me via LinkedIn. -
There are tests to quantify this…
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@Pharma, I love your explanations!
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If you’re just doing this for consumer concern, then cost will probably be a big issue. Mineral Oil is probably the cheapest oil on the planet, so you are going to have to be careful - most substitutes are at least 3 times the cost. I’d look in to other petrochemicals first - polyalphaolefins, polyisobutenes, hydrogenated polyisobutene, maybe even polybutylene glycol.
If you are trying to maintain the same skin feel as mineral oil, then CETYL ETHYLHEXANOATE (SCHERCEMOL™ CO) will not be a good choice. Oddly enough, it’s because that ester is a better ingredient - it has a much nicer, dryer, non-oily skin feel than mineral oil.If I were you, I would take this opportunity to pitch the idea of making a better, more elegant-feeling product while you have to change out the mineral oil anyway. It’s actually a much harder project to match the performance/feel of mineral oil than it is to improve the performance/feel of mineral oil. -
If you’re trying to make a solid stick, it would probably be easier to use Sodium Hydroxide and Stearic Acid. Heat your water/zemea mixture to no more than 85C, start stirring, add Stearic Acid, wait until it’s dissolved, add Sodium Hydroxide, mix 30 minutes while reaction completes, (it’s exothermic, so you will probably shoot up to 95C without heating further. If your starting water mixture is too hot, the extra heat from the reaction will make the batch boil - not a good thing) Add your other ingredients and cool down. Pour into sticks at about 60 - 70C
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to elaborate on braveheart’s tip - create a spreadsheet for your formula. Perry actually has a good one already done, or I can send one, or you can do it yourself.
Column A has ingredients - use 1 row for each ingredient.Column B has the weight(mass) of each ingredient that you used. Do not ever use volume.Column C will be for your % calculationsAt the bottom of column B, total the weight of all ingredients.For each row, in column C, put in the formula (Value in Column
*(100/(Total Weight) -
@Zink, I couldn’t say what is a reasonable or unreasonable deadline - each manufacturer is different and has a different schedule. What is reasonable, however, is for them to be able to give you fairly specific dates for when your product will be scheduled to be manufactured, and when it will be filled, and to be able to stick to those dates, or tell you why they can’t.
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I’m pretty sure that “soothes irritation” comes dangerously close to the OTC skin protectant category.
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Don’t forget Craigslist for lab equipment either
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LabX is great for used equipment, as is Ebay.
I’d suggest that a used name-brand stirrer is better than an cheaply-made new stirrer.. -
I think that those explanations at the bottom would be very confusing to most people. I’d try using a table underneath the LOI instead, since the FDA regs about what can be included in a LOI are very strict.
Also consider that consumers are being told that fewer ingredients are better, so you might want to include that in your questionare. -
Sometimes the fix is not to pull out an ingredient, but to add one (or two). One approach would be to add feel-improving powders - DryFlo starch, for example. The other would be to add a lighter oil, maybe Jojoba, since you seem to be trying to stay “natural”.
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The first question for you is why you want to stop using mineral oil? (If you want to stop using petrochemicals, for example, it would be silly for me to recomend a different petrochemical)
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@Nvaughn, I wasn’t talking about the type of equipment you had access to, I was talking about the level of detail. You can do this with almost any activity. For example:
Bad: I made some ice.Better: I filled an ice cube tray with water, put it in the freezer, and I used the ice after it was frozen.Best: Into a silicone rubber ice cube tray that has 12 square cavities arranged 2×6, I added 250 grams of Kansas City tap water. I then placed the filled tray into a Kenmore freezer operating at 10F for 3 hours. When the tray was removed from the freezer, the water had completely frozen into ice. -
If you’re doing this professionally, you will want to come as close as you can to simulating the processing equipment and conditions at the factory that will be making your products. Most private label companies will be willing to give prospective customers a tour of their processing floor - I strongly recomend at least one field trip.
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This is one of those occasions where a knockout experimental series really shines. In this case, for example, you have several ingredients that are probably making your formula sticky. Run the experiments and evaluate each for skin feel.
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My best guess is that using unmodified (“normal”) beeswax and castor oil would completely destroy the formula - but you “can” use anything you want to use - we’re not stopping you.
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Replace it for what use, exactly, and what quantities are you looking for? Rice starch for cosmetic use shouldn’t be that hard to find online.
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Gloss comes from the smooth, reflective film lipstick or lipgloss leaves on the lips. To matte this, you would want to add powders that are large enough to disrupt the surface of the film, so that it isn’t as reflective.
Where have you searched for formulas already? -
I haven’t tried it as an emulsifier. It’s not a very good surfactant for cleaning.
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Mark may not be on the forum anymore. Try LinkedIn.
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You need to talk to Mark Fuller @microformulations. He probably has the best handle of all of us on start-up costs. Or, you could talk to a private label/contract manufacturer or two and get price quotes.
However - my take on all of this is that your biggest hurdle is finding a way to sell your products, rather than finding a way to making them. Solve that problem, and there are half-a-dozen different options for creating a product. -
Forgive me for veering off into chemical engineering for a bit…
@Nick_Truman, what you are describing is actually a classic scale-up problem. What’s confused you is that a piece of information got left out of the info from the Japanese company - and that was the size of the batch that they typically make.Think about this - having to use a hand whisk, my educated guess is that you are making between 500 - 1,000 grams of butter, at most, stirring for about 10 minutes. So, what would you do if you had to make 500,000 grams? Well, one thing you could do is hire 1,000 people who each made a 500 gram batch with a hand whisk. That doesn’t seem like a cost-effective solution.Ideally, you’d want to make your 500,000 gram (500kg) batch all at once, and you are going to need a machine big enough and powerful enough to move a fairly large amount of material around. But…machines that big cost a whole lot of money, and the bigger they are, the more money they cost. If we were trying to exactly duplicate your lab process, we would have to buy a machine big and powerful enough to make a batch in 10 minutes - and this would be a very expensive machine. Fortunately, you can substitute faster mixing speed, and longer batch mixing times, to allow you to use a much smaller (and therefore cheaper) machine yet still get the same end result in your product. It sounds like overkill - until you realize the scale of the problem. -
One other thing - if you want to increase drag and tackiness, you should replace the ingredients that are designed to decrease drag and tackiness. For example, the mica coated with lauryl lysine - replacing that with uncoated mica will definitely increase the tackiness.
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Mostly, I don’t understand the purpose of it. There are several good starting formulas on the web if you feel compelled to try this, though.