The MeltPrep Mixer
Lossless Mixing with Milligrams
Mixing has never been this easy. Combine your API and excipients without solvents or material loss in just minutes, no matter if you’re working with large or small molecule drugs. The result is a perfectly homogeneous blend ready for VCM prototyping, using only the amount of material you actually need.
How the MeltPrep Mixer Works
Homogeneity in a Few Smooth Moves
Heat Your Formulation
Put a small amount of your formulation onto the glass plate and allow it to soften. The temperature should gently soften the material and is usually lower than the extrusion temperature.
If working with a powder, press it down with the spreader to initiate bonding or form it into a VCM sample before mixing.
Sheer Shearing to Mix
Once the material softens, use the shearing tool to draw a film across the plate. Since the shearing tool isn’t heated, your formulation will only adhere to the heated glass plate.
The shearing tool’s defined gap determines film thickness (0.1 mm here) and creates shear rates of 100–1000 s⁻¹, similar to hot melt extrusion.
Collect & Fold
Use the folding tool to collect the film in increments and fold it back together. Gathering the film bit by bit as well as splitting and rotating the material after folding further facilitates distributive mixing. Since the folding tool is not heated, your formulation will not stick to it.
Repeat the shearing and folding steps until the mixture becomes fully homogeneous. Each shear-and-fold cycle brings your formulation closer to homogeneity.
Shape with VCM
Now your material is losslessly mixed and ready for further processing. Ideal for mixing only the material you need for a VCM formulation prototype.
Comparing the MeltPrep Mixer
When Mixers Compete, MeltPrep Blends to Win
Various mixing methods can be applied during formulation development. For early research with limited material, the MeltPrep Mixer offers a fast, lossless, and solvent-free way to blend formulations.
The MeltPrep Mixer brings speed, precision, and solvent-free efficiency to early-stage formulation work. Perfect for testing ideas with just a few milligrams of material.
Controlled Shear Mixing at Milligram Scale
Demonstrating Homogeneous Blending with Minimal Material Loss
The “Will It Mix?” series demonstrates true milligram-scale mixing with the MeltPrep Mixer. Even as little as 1 mg can be blended homogeneously under controlled shear in a defined geometry.
All without solvents or additional processing steps — enabling simple, reproducible small-scale mixing for material characterization and early-stage formulation.
Will It Mix? | 1 mg Test | MeltPrep Mixer
Click the icon (☰) to browse all videos of the ‘Will It Mix?’ series.
Watch Various Pharma Polymers Mix in Minutes
From Heterogeneous Blends to Uniform Formulations, Fast and Lossless.
In these demonstrations, pharmaceutical-grade polymers are combined with pigments or colorants and processed through controlled shear-and-fold cycles. During mixing, pigments are finely dispersed within the polymer matrix while colorants dissolve into the polymer.
Within minutes, initially heterogeneous materials transform into uniform formulations, illustrating how efficient, lossless milligram-scale mixing can simplify and support early formulation development while preserving every milligram of the material.
Milligram-Scale Mixing with Kollidon® I MeltPrep Mixer
Curious what else you can mix? Click the icon (☰) to see Soluplus® get blended.
