Bobzchemist
Forum Replies Created
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The “Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer” could be Pemulen TR1 or 2.
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I agree with John. A few times it’s actually been more work, took longer, (and cost the client more money) to “finalize” an existing formula than it would have been for me to come up with an existing formula from scratch.
A number of potential clients were shocked to find out that my fees are the same for formulating from scratch as they are for “finishing” a formula. I regard “finishing” a formula as almost the same level of difficulty as creating a formula with an existing commercial prototype and a LOI, and on a par with copying an existing formula from a private label company where there’s an ingredient declaration listing ranges.
I’m really kind of happy that I don’t have to do that any more.
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Interesting.
Anyway. looking at formula 2, there are a couple of things I’d change.
First, Parabens need to be no more than 1% total.
Second, lower mag stearate to 3%
Q.S. with pigment (ground well) and you’ll be 95% there.
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What program did you use for this?
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I’m going to need specific formulas with percentages before I can help.
Alternatively, there are good starting formulations available on the web.
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I see a potential problem that you are going to need to settle in your mind before you work with a professional cosmetic chemist.
First, you need to decide if you want a “natural” product line, and what that means to you. Which natural standard will you follow?
Please also keep in mind that requiring a “natural” formula for liquid foundation both severely degrades the possible performance and substantially increases the cost of your product. Requiring “vegan” ingredients as well worsens this problem. A tinted moisturizer may very well be the best you can achieve.
The one possible way around this that I can see would be to sell a “vegan” but not a “natural” product. If you allow for the use of synthetic ingredients you can probably get a product you’d be proud of.
Also, please take what you see on the EWG site with a huge grain of salt. Very, very little of it has any credibility from a scientific point of view.
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That software, if it even exists, would be specialized specifically for the fragrance industry. I’d be very surprised if anyone here has used anything like it. Software that specialized probably costs $5-10,000 or more.
I think that using a fragrance house to custom-design fragrances for you would be a much wiser use for that money.
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I would very strongly suggest using one of the Pemulens as an emulsion stabilizer. It won’t take much.
Also, I agree with using colloidal oatmeal (the colloidal part is important, it’s easier to suspend) instead of oat oil. Your skin feel will improve dramatically.
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As an additional point, there’s a non-formulation reason that a great many professional-level formula’s have started to use high-shear mixing, even when it’s not needed - the increasing rise of dual- and triple-function mixing vessels in production facilities.
One of the formulating guidelines I was first taught when I started as a cosmetic chemist was “Just make it successfully/stably in the lab, and your job is done. It’s the production department’s job to figure out how to make it on a larger-scale.” Well, several spectacular failures later (both my own and those of co-workers), and I learned differently. As a professional cosmetic chemist, you MUST formulate/process with an eye towards scale-up and scale-down issues, or you run the risk of making a great product in the lab that cannot possibly be made on larger scale.
So, as a professional cosmetic chemist, you will be aware of the equipment that will be used to make your formulas in a pilot plant and in production, and the limitations/parameters of that equipment. You will be careful to restrict your procedures in the lab to parameters that scale up to your production facility. (Cooling small batches of an emulsion in an ice bath is the classic example of violating this guideline).
But now, if you already know that your formula will be made in (for example) a Lee Tri-Mix Turbo-Shear mixer, you will also know that that at least one or two of the reasons that Johnb cited for not using a high-shear mixer won’t apply. And there may be additional issues balancing the extra costs involved in running and cleaning the mixer, as well. Having spent quite a large chunk of capital equipment money on purchasing one of these mixers, your production department will be under a lot of pressure to justify the purchase - and they will likely put pressure on R&D to use the mixer whenever possible, even if the formulation doesn’t really need high shear.
So that’s some of the history behind this. But if you are formulating on a small-scale, or for a supplier making reference formulas, all you may hear is the “it’s really important to use a high-shear mixer” part, and not the “so Oscar the Production Manager doesn’t get in trouble for spending more money than a Tesla costs on new mixing equipment” part.
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Spill-over fear from alleged bad side effects due to ruptured breast implants that contained medical-grade silicone gel.
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Beware of CARB requirements, unless you don’t need to sell to California.
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Check with United Guardian about their Lubrajel products. For cosmetics it needs to go through Ashland, but I think they sell medical products directly.
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Johnb, usually, it’s called “Bag-on-valve”, to emphasize that there’s no connection between the can propellants (compressed air) and the interior product. Certainly, this is the technology I’d prefer to use - the nitrogen adds nothing to the performance of the product as far as I can tell.
Personally, I wonder if the target products are using the liquid nitrogen mixed with the water to make a frozen slurry, and filling that.
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Saying “silica is hard on the enamel so we won’t use it in our toothpaste” is just like saying “surfactants are hard on skin so we won’t use them in our cleansers”.
There is a reason why silica is so ubiquitous in toothpaste formulas, and it is because it’s possible to engineer amorphous/hydrated silica particles precisely enough that they will be just abrasive enough to remove plaque films efficiently, but not so abrasive as to harm the enamel. Toothpaste has to work in a very short time frame, not just be stable, taste good, and have good mouthfeel. If you ignore the fact that it’s the toothpaste that’s doing the majority of the job in removing plaque films, you’re not going to have many repeat customers.
Going into selling a product and ignoring the way the major players in that market niche formulate their products is very likely to invite failure. Thinking that you just know better than the thousands of formulators/scientists who’ve worked on a product category like toothpaste should be a major red flag that you likely have a fatal flaw in your business plan.
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In the US, 99.8% of all commercially sold toothpaste uses silica in one form or another. The technology to regulate the particle morphology and abrasivity of the silica is very advanced.
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Silica is commonly used for this purpose, and makes up about 60-70% of the average modern toothpaste formula used in the industrialized world. 3rd world countries use chalk instead, primarily due to cost concerns.
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I still think it’d be an awesome name for a punk rock band.
Ladies and gentlemen - introducing The Flaming Lipsticks!
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David, most probably not.
When writing generic formulations like that, “q.s.” as an amount for a category like anti-oxidant or fragrance really means “the amount of ingredient that you use in this category will depend on the required use level for the specific ingredient that you choose. Because it doesn’t matter to the formula which ingredient in the category you use, “q.s.” directs you to use whatever ingredient you want at the proper level for that specific ingredient.”
The writer assumes that you will deduct the q.s. amount used from the ingredient in the formula that’s used at the highest percentage.
Directions as to when in the process timing an ingredient is added is virtually never included in the body of the formula itself. If it’s needed, it will almost always be in separate manufacturing directions. For example, if an ingredient really needed to be added the next day, that would be spelled out very specifically.
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Try polybutylene glycol instead.
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The automatic flaming stations I’ve seen have the lipstick bullets moving point up individually on a conveyer belt. As they move along, they pass through two flame jets set up opposite each other. One I saw even spun the lipsticks as they passed between the jets.
On the other hand, I’ve also seen (at a fairly large company) a workstation that had four workers at it, where lipstick bullets were unmolded, inserted into cases, flamed, and then swivelled down and capped, all at a remarkable rate of speed. Their failure rate was actually lower than the automated line at other companies, because the operators had the ability to rework minor imperfections rather than just discard them as failures.
Just as a caution - you can only re-melt and re-pour lipsticks a few times before they start turning permanently to mush.
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Yes, there is a machine, but it’s usually attached to an automatic molding machine. Both are really expensive.
One option is to use silicone molds. Another is to hire someone - two or three weeks of full-time lipstick flaming makes anyone an expert.
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We still use Excel for all our formulation work - why mess with something that’s been working for years? I’ve recently switched to Google Sheets for my personal work, and that is virtually indistinguishable from Excel, at least for what I need.
What features are you looking for in formulation software that wouldn’t be available from Excel or Google Sheets?
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I agree with Elise.
Something left “on” the skin is sitting on the surface. Something left “in” the skin would have to be below the surface in some way.
For hair, it’s a little different. A conditioner, for example, could be put “on” your hair, meaning that it’s on top of your mass of hair, and then it would be worked “in” to your hair, meaning that it was distributed through-out the mass of hair strands. Describing something that’s actually below the surface of an individual strand of hair would require different terminology.
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There are at least half-a-dozen commercial raw materials being marketed as petrolatum and/or lanolin replacements. Have you even tried looking at any of them to see how they are doing it?
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If you want advice on how to solve specific problems with your formula, and your’re willing to divulge your formula, we’d be happy to suggest directions for your research, and new raw materials to try.
Otherwise, your best bet would probably be to contact the various cosmetic chemist master’s degree programs, and see if one of the students or staff would be willing to help you.