[Herbnerd]

OMYA, I believe is a global company, but they may have distribution agents in some countries. https://www.omya.com/

[Herbnerd]

My favourite moustache firm hold product is just a mixture of acacia gum, water and perfume. It really does give a very firm, if somewhat crispy feel to your whiskers - but doesn’t droop in the tropical sun.

Whether you feel like adding some water and acacia gum along with emulsifiers, is up to you.

[Herbnerd]

I develop supplements as my main role. Sometimes things can be really unpredictable.

1. Check that the materials you are using for your trials are the same materials you are using in the scale-up/batch. It seems obvious but the amount of times I have heard of people using one material for trials thinking it is the same material in production only to get confused afterwards never fails to astound me. Do a side by side taste comparison of the raw materials. Someone I know was accidentally given a sample of sucrose rather than inulin. The scale up product was not what he intended. 

2. Check the quantities used in the trial are the same - I have seen stated that 0.01 g to be used in say a 30 g mix, but screw up the batch amount by adding 0.01 % in the final formula (especially where you are using high intensity sweeteners or flavours).

3. Check accuracy. Making a 30 g sample in the lab means you need a greater degree of accuracy than making 300 kg. Your 0.1 g in the lab could be up to 0.15 g (or your 0.2 g could only be 0.16 g)

4. Scale up your samples in the lab before going to production. Making a 100 g sample is different to making a 5 kg sample. It can iron out other problems

5. Check your calculations - Seriously, this gets overlooked. (both lab and production calculations). Transposition errors are common - ie 18-81, 17-71 etc. Check your material calculations too - Thiamine to Thiamine hydrochloride for example - You may be adding 100 mg of thiamine hydrochloride but the compounders may assume that to mean 100 mg of thiamine = 112 mg of Thiamine Hydrochloride.

6. Check units - have you mixed up metric and imperial measurements? It happens.

7. Hand blending and production blending are not the same. Hand blending usually means putting the samples in a bag and shaking, or stirring in a beaker. Machine blending, especially ribbon blenders generate heat.

Feel free to message me if you need any further assistance. 

[Herbnerd]

Our validation  for menthol is extremely simple (and SGS were happy to approve it)

Once cleaning has been complete, we collect the final rinse water and take it to the lab- and smell it.

Menthol is so strong it is detectable in quite small quantities and any residual menthol is detectable.

[Herbnerd]

I was involved with a similar fish attracting product; and after many iterations, the brand owner’s indecision, etc, after 10+ years it is still not commercial though we had something working.

One way would be to use a base of gelatin, glycerol & water to get something that is plastic and add your tuna oil into that. Once the gekatin mass has dried to about 10% moisture, you can cut into strips and bait your hook with that. The gelatin will swell in cold water and may only last an hour or so until you need to re-bait.

Another way, would be to melt beeswax into the oil - about 8-12% to get a viscous waxy-oily mass. There are other viscosity modifiers you could use too.

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@ozgirl I agree, the legal teams are overly cautious, but with a company the size of ours, the legal team feel that we would be unfairly targeted by any government agency wanting to make an example and cited a similar case where the company was fined millions.

[Herbnerd]

You can mix it in, but it is insoluble in oil and will precipitate over time. The best you can do is suspend it in oil using some viscosity modifiers.

[Herbnerd]

I was looking for a non-TiO2 opacifier recently. Talking with a colour chemist ultimately I was told we can reduce the TiO2 but it cannot be replaces easily. Kaolin nor calcium carbonate will do what we require of it.

[Herbnerd]

Just checked the material we buy for toothpaste - ours material is a grade designed for toothpaste and has a mean particle size of µm and is of agglomerated scalenohedral calcite crystals and is more of a toothpolish.

We use another grade also for toothpaste, this one is more abrasive, particle size is 90%  in 5-10 µm range.

[Herbnerd]

abrasiveness isn’t necessarily related to particle size, but more to the hardness of those particles. Calcium carbonate is a common ingredient in toothpaste and there are grades designed for toothpaste - check with your chemical supplier if your grade is suitable (Omya have some great grades for toothpaste).

The abrasiveness of the toothpaste will need to be tested separately. Ther eare a number of labs who offer this service. Though what surprised me, is that one testing lab reported results half the abrasiveness as reported by a different lab.

[Herbnerd]

sarahrobbins7 said:

It’s too soo it’s a little soon to tell, but it looks like the powdered ingredients might be starting to settle to the bottom while the oils are staying on top. It could be the ratios of liquid at room temp oil to hydrogenated oil I’m using. 

Powdered ingredients will settle if they are heavy enough, but it sounds like you need your powders milled finely as you possibly can. We used to use 200 mesh minerals or finer.

Possibly a bit more coconut/beeswax/hydrogenated vegetable oils/GMS. We used to use a beeswax/hydrogenated vegetable oil blend. The more viscous, the more it will hold the powders, the more oily it is, the quicker the powders will drop out.

[Herbnerd]

I have done these kinds of pet products many times and you are on the right track.

Take a soya oil and increase the viscosity melting glyceryl monostearate, beeswax, hydrogenated vegetable oil or coconut oil until you have a nice gel like consistency (10% GMS generally does this). Make sure the viscosity modifier has melted into it and mixed thoroughly, and cool slowly. Once cooled then you can suspend all your dry ingredients into this. 

However, as @EVchem says, you may need to mill this. The finer the dry ingredients, the better the dispersion and soy lecithin will help this. I’ve never used that amount of lecithin in this kind of formula 0.5% is sufficient unless you do require that amount of lecithin.

[Herbnerd]

@crillz this is totally what it is. This can be avoided by stirring and cooling at the same time. My guess is the melted oil has been poured into the jar and left to cool.

[Herbnerd]

I think anything that puts a shine over the tattoo in all honesty. I’m sure you would achieve the same using mineral oil.

[Herbnerd]

Sure you can - but it does take a practiced eye to discern the ingredients that make up that colour - especially if you are starting from scratch with a pantone colour chart.

It is interesting working with someone who works with colours and doing colour matching that they can look at a red colour and determine whether it red with a bit of yellow added to it, or a bit of blue, black, white etc. If you feel you can do this, go ahead.

When colour matching creams and the like, (and I’m by no means an expert at this) I tend to make up solutions of the dyes in say, 1% solutions and 0.1% solutions. Once you know what you need to add to get the right shade then you can calculate what you actually need to add.

[Herbnerd]

Perry said:

@AutumnBlum - we don’t have such a course but if we were to make one, what are some of the key subjects you would like to learn about?

It’s not a bad idea to put together a course of cGMP and perhaps cGLP too - or at least cover the basics from traceability, record keeping, plant design/layout (something I’m working on now), references (BP/USP if required), raw material records (QC/QA, spec sheets, MSDS, C of As, etc) finished product specifications, SOP writing etc. Perhaps covering HACCP, ISO, or other programs)
When you work with it, you learn it as you go and it is easy - when you are starting out, it seems insurmountable putting a program together. 

[Herbnerd]

VitalikButerin said:

Find a manual and follow it 

Seconded.

[Herbnerd]

Pharma said:

Microformulation said:

Arginine.

Unfortunately, most sold arginine is arginine HCl 

Arginine base is available, but it is produced in smaller quantities and you must specify arginine base from your supplier - otherwise, as you say, they will supply arginine HCl. 

[Herbnerd]

Pharma said:

Herbnerd said:

…to calculate the amount of capsicum to use…

Just to make sure: Capsicum = chili peppers = highly varying amounts of capsaicin between pods even from the same plant and also varying concentrations within different portions of a single pod.

Yep - this is why I suggested using an assayed level of capsaicin because of the wild variations in capsicum - from nothing in bell peppers to very high, but very variable amounts of capsaicin in capsicums such as naga or reapers.

[Herbnerd]

There is no point using capsicum extract unless you have an assayed level of capsaicin in it - and even then you would need to calculate the amount of capsicum to use. For example if the capsicum is 0.1% capsaicin you would need to use 2 g to get the claimable levels.

[Herbnerd]

You have to be sure of the company before buying - it really is buyer beware in China unless you have someone on the ground who knows what they are doing and the best companies to deal with. There is rarely any come back if there is a problem.

A company I worked for bought an in-line homogeniser for light work (incorporationg aloe powder into water), in which there was a hopper to pour the powder into. It didn’t do the job. The only way they could get it to work was to put another pump in-line to pump the liquid through the homogeniser first - which defeated the point of buying one in the first place.

The other thing to watch out for is the bolts - they tend to be mild steel and will shear off quickly. Best thing to do is replace all bolts beofre you start using it.

[Herbnerd]

Part of my job is developing gel-type soft gelatin capsules. We often suspend powders into oils prior to encapsulation.

The simplest way is to increase the viscosity of the oil by using something like beeswax, hydrogenated vegetable oils, coconut oil, glyceryl monostearate or one of the other options available to you. Melt the chosen ingredients into a small portion of the oil and then whilst hot, mix into the remainder of the oil. Then you can add the powdered/insoluble ingredients into the oil.

Be careful - hemp seed oil is unsaturated and will go rancid very quickly (with or without inclusions). You will need some antioxidant. Also, from experience you are unlikely to get much more than about 10% herb extract into the oil before it becomes and unusable oily dough.  This does very much depend on the extract - freeze dried powders tends to be worse and will seize the oil. Aqueous-Ethanolic extracts tend to be better - but there are so many variables that can go wrong. You will most likely need to use lecithin. Lecithin helps to “emulsify” the powder into the oil. It also improved taste too since I suspect you are intending this as an oral product rather than a topical product.

And as @Pharma says, you will very likely have a clogged pipette - no matter how finely you mill the powder

[Herbnerd]

@Belassi  Same here. Expecting 500 g of Kaolin, get a 25 kg sack delivered instead. 
 

[Herbnerd]

Not as a cosmetic formulator as such, but as someone who has developed raw materials for use in cosmetics and dietary supplements.
It is a fine balance between the pure research about an ingredient and trying to find the marketing angle that will generate some interest in your product and something that the brand owners and marketers can latch onto that will generate the sales of your product.

Research for research’s sake doesn’t generate an income. You can investigate all you want about an ingredient, or a process. At some point to pay the bills you will need to commercialise - and this is where some scientists fall down. They don’t want to see their research dumbed down into “sound-bites” or taken out of context to provide marketing content.

Marketing (or the “crayon crowd” as I have heard them called) need to get the product out there, but they also run the risk of making claims where there are none - but they don’t understand the science and so rely on the sound-bites.

Worst of all is the marketing type cosmetic research that the marketers love. “8 out of 10 women noticed fewer wrinkles after seven days*” and in the small print, “*five women, self-assessment only”

It is a fine balance to be able to do the research AND pay the bills AND be true to your scientific credentials.

[Herbnerd]

@Doreen, @ngarayeva001, I am sure @artaupoil is probably trying to formulate a shampoo for show dogs where these dogs are bathed, shampooed and conditioned, blow-dried and trimmed ready for showing. 

The average dog owner doesn’t worry so much; people who show dogs do.