QMills technology: the alternative to mechanical mills. Oval chamber mills (Loop mills or Q-Mills) were introduced in 1941, and FPS launched its custom series in 2006.
Interchangeable with spiral jet mills, QMill series is designed to be a pharmaceutical alternative to pin mills and hammer mills.
As spiral jet mill technology, the size reduction is achieved by Particle-to-Particle and Particle-to-Target collisions.
Target PSD is generally below 0.25 μm – contact parts and below 0.80 μm – non contact parts.
Q-milling does not use mechanical components, so without moving parts, but instead uses pressurized gas to create high particle velocity and high-energy impact between particles in an oval chamber.
Because of the prevalence of potent compounds, micronization is increasingly being performed under isolation. A mill can be enclosed inside a barrier isolator for processing highly potent drugs. In addition, loop mills can be operated in sterile conditions by integrating the mill in an isolator or a restricted access barrier system (RABS) as needed.
Some products are not considered potent, yet still require containment because of environmental, health, and safety (EHS) concerns because of the small particles created after the micronization process.
All connections of components have been done in order to be in compliance with cGMPs to assure quick and easy assembling and disassembling operations. The number of components has been reduced at minimum in order to make easier and faster also cleaning and validation activities.