This invention relates to apparatus for and a method of sealing an article within an enclosure.

The invention was devised to enable pills to be crushed and dissolved lo enable the pill contents to be tested or verified. This testing or verification is carried out in the development of new pills and also in quality control procedures in the commercial production of pills. Currently, this is done manually by a pestle and mortar or by the use of a machine having a vessel in which the pills are comminuted or ground by a rotating blade in the presence of a suitable solvent, usually water. After the pill contents have been dissolved by such a manual or automatic method, the solution is sampled to verify or test pill composition.

The manual method, using a pestle and mortar, suffers from a number of disadvantages: some of the sample is inevitably lost; there is a risk of contamination between samples even with thorough cleaning of the parts brought into contact with the sample; the operation is slow, lacks control and consistency and the procedure is prone to error such as wrong pill, wrong solvent or spilt sample. Further, the manual method is not suitable for samples where the sample has to be stored for later analysis. The majority of these disadvantages are also present in the machine which, by its use of a blade rotating at high speed to comminute or ground the pill, is fairly crude in addition to being expensive.

The invention arose from the requirement to solubilise pills without loss or contamination. In the invention this requirement is met by sealing each pill within an enclosure, but it is thought that the invention may have wider applications to other fields where it is desired to seal an article, possibly in the presence of a fluid, within an enclosure.

According to one aspect the invention provides apparatus for sealing an article within an enclosure, comprising means for feeding sheet plastics material to a sealing station, sealing means at the sealing station for sealing the plastics material to form a pocket having an opening, and means for inserting the article into the pocket which is subsequently sealed to enclose the article, the apparatus being intermittently operable so that the apparatus is capable of accepting an intermittent supply of articles. The plastics material may be in the form of a single sheet which is folded and sealed to form the pocket, or split into two strips and sealed to form the pocket.

The opening preferably faces upwardly so that gravity causes or assists passage of the article into the pocket, and also assists retention of the article in the pocket prior to closure of the opening.

The invention also provides apparatus for sealing an article within an enclosure, the apparatus comprising guide means for guiding two strips of plastics material to an operating station, placement means at the operating station for placing the article between the two strips of plastics material, sealing means at the operating station for sealing facing portions of the strip together so as to form an enclosure enclosing the article and drive means for transporting the strips through the operating station, the drive means being operable intermittently at times corresponding to those when it is desired to enclose an article within an enclosure.

Preferably, the apparatus includes printing means for printing on the plastics material identifying matter such as time, date or identity of sample from which the article was taken. Also, the apparatus may comprise a cutter for cutting the strips, after they have been sealed, to form individual enclosures in the nature of sachets.

The sealing means may be operative first to seal the strips together to form a pocket with an opening through which the article is received and then to seal the opening in order to enclose the article completely. The environment within the sealed enclosure may be chosen to suit particular requirements. For example, if an inert environment is required within the enclosure nitrogen may be inserted into the pocket prior to the sealing of the

opening. Alternatively, a liquid solvent such as water or an organic solvent may be introduced into the pocket prior to sealing of the opening.

According to another aspect the invention provides a method of sealing an article together with a dose of fluid within an enclosure, comprising forming a pocket from sheet plastics material, the pocket having an opening, placing the article and the dose of fluid in the pocket with the opening facing upwardly and sealing the opening to form a sealed enclosure accommodating the article and the fluid.

According to another aspect there is provided apparatus for crushing pills, comprising means for supplying strips of material to a location in which facing surfaces of the strips are adjacent or touch, means for sealing the strips lo form a pocket between facing surfaces of the strips, the pocket having an opening, means for introducing a pill into the pocket through the opening, means for crushing the pill in the pocket and means for sealing the opening in the pocket to enclose the crushed pill.

Preferably, the apparatus include means for introducing a fluid into ihe pocket, the fluid being chosen in relation to Ihe material of the pill so that a desired result is achieved on crushing the material of the pill in the presence of the fluid. For example, the fluid may be a liquid which acts as a solvent for the complete pill or for a constituent of the pill. Alternatively, the fluid may be a gas, eg an inert gas such as nitrogen.

According to another aspect of the invention there is provided a method of crushing pills, comprising forming a pocket from a plastics sheet material, the pocket having an opening, introducing a pill into the pocket, crushing the pill in the pocket and sealing the pocket opening to form a sachet with the crushed pill therewithin. After crushing and before sealing, a fluid may be introduced into the pocket.

Apparatus according to the invention will now be described by way of example with reference to the accompanying drawing which is an isometric view of the apparatus, with parts cut away to show internal detail.

The apparatus has an outer casing 1 enclosing two reels 2 of laminated plastic film which is drawn off the reels in respective strips 3 and passed around two adjacent guide rollers 4. The rollers 4 bring surfaces of the strips 3 into contacting or close relationship and deliver the strips to a sealing station where the two strips 3 of film are fed between edge sealing heads 5 which seal the strips 3 of film together along respective edge seals 6. Transverse sealing heads 7 seal the strips 3 of film together along transverse seal lines which span the seals 6. Hence, the two lengths or strips of film are sealed together along a generally U-shaped seal line which causes the two strips of film to assume the nature of a pocket having an upwardly facing opening. Into the pocket thus formed is placed a pill 8. This can be placed on the upper surface of one of the strips of film (as shown in the drawing) but is preferably inserted between the two strips 3 as they enter the nip between the rollers 4.

Crushing means 10 are located beneath the transverse sealing heads 7. The crushing means 10 comprise two relatively moveable heads which are capable of undergoing a crushing movement in which the heads come together to squeeze the pocket and hence crush the pill therewithin. Having undertaken one or more crushing strokes each with an appropriate crushing force and time duration which may include a vibratory motion to promote easier crushing, a dose of a fluid, such as water, is injected into the pocket by means of an injection tube 9 which is capable of swinging between an operative position (shown in the drawing) and an inoperative position in which a discharge nozzle at the extremity of the tube 9 is clear of the nip between the rollers. The pocket opening is then closed by means of a transverse seal extending across the width of the film strips, this being effected by the transverse sealing heads 7. Hence, the crushed pill and the dose of water are now contained within what is, in effect, a sachet which is sealed around all four edges so as to prevent contamination and or degradation of the contents of the sachet.

The strips 3 of film are advanced by transport rollers 12 which, in the illustrated embodiment, comprise two pairs of rollers engaging respective edges of the strips 3. The transport rollers 12 are energised in such a way as to cause the two strips of film to move past the sealing heads 5 and 7 and the crushing means 10 in the required manner. For example, if the pocket is to have an edge seal longer than the length of the edge sealing

head 5, the strips of film can be indexed through the sealing head in a series of steps. Also, the transport rollers can be reversed, for example to move the strips upwardly towards the transverse sealing head for formation of the transverse seal closing the pocket. A cutter blade 13 cuts the film strips transversely to give individual sachets 14 which pass down a chute 15 into a collecting receptacle 16. They may pass a printing head at which the sachets are printed with identifying matter such as time, date, batch details, operator identity or the like.

Each operation involves synchronised operation of the drive rollers 12, the sealing heads 5 and 7, the crushing means 10, the swinging movement of the tube 9 and injection of the dose of fluid, the cutter blade 13 and the printing head, to yield one sachet 14 with crushed pill contents dissolved in water. The machine is then quiescent until a subsequent pill is placed in the machine.

The machine provides a convenient and compact laboratory-top unit which is electrically energised at intermittent times when a pill is required to be crushed and sealed. Articles other than pills can be enclosed in sachets, with or without dosages of fluid. For example, articles such as pastes or swabs can be enclosed.

The liquid injected into the sachet may be such as to act as a solvent for the crushed pill or a constituent of the crushed pill. Once sealed, the sachets can be agitated to mix the contents or subjected to any particular treatment, eg heated or cooled. Once the sachet is formed its contents are held in a sealed and sterile environment so the contents can be stored without deterioration. When it is desired to gain access to the sachet contents, a hyperdermic needle can be used to pierce the wall of the sachet and extract part or all of the contents for testing, product verification, quality control or any similar purpose.

In contrast to known methods, there is no loss of sample (ie pill and water in the example) no risk of contamination of samples and no cleaning of parts is necessary. The sachets enclosing the samples can be unambiguously marked and the sachet contents can be sampled immediately or stored.