Not quite a craft, but crafty medicine for me

Finished picture first.

I wouldn’t say its a craft per se but it is related to my work and my health. I redose pharma medications for myself because the concentration i need is not available commercially, and because i also cap traditional medicine (herbs and such) to dose it easier.

These are MY OWN medications and will not be given to anyone else, just to clarify why i work with my bare hands on my cluttered table. I keep hygiene but its not pharmaceutical-laboratory hygiene.

Also if anyone with pharma knowledge, math, etc a common question ive seen is how even would these medications come out to be. This is how ive seen a drug compounding pharmacy do it, with actual college graduates pharmacists doing it. So i just do it at home and save some bucks, but im a geek and would love to know more.

It starts with math. And pharmacy-bought pills at a higher concentration than what o use.

With the math, i know how many caps to use, so i take them out of their foil.

Always double count your caps. Set aside for now.

Take your bag of empty caps and separate 100 caps into body and top.

Then start placing tops on the respective plate…

…and bodies into the other plate-base set.
I do this manually since they can go in upside down if you try to “automatize” it. Not like the video from FP shows recently, this is a small and cheap setup (means more work).

Here you see all 100 tops in the top plate and all 100 bodies in the base plate.

Now its time to uncap the pharma caps and take out their insides! I keep the empty capsules in a different bag.

These contents are funny, its not powder but a loose and long tablet form inside the capsule. Weigh stuff for math.

Yes i did this on my lap. No tripod to hold phone.
Grind those captablets down into fine powder.

Weigh the powdered capsule contents and add a vehicle. In this casw i used corn starch.
Use a different container to mix vigorously.

I didnt take photos of the mixing and pouring onto the base plate, then you just use the paddle to spread it to the capsules. Here im saving the last three rows for an herbal supplement.

This is a different plate to show the tamping process, in which you take the tamper (pokey thing on top) and push down on the powder to make it tigher to fit more

After tamping you can add more powder and distribute it evenly again

Then you take the capping plate with an extra plate (the orange one) and place tops on top of bodies

Then you push down evenly until the caps start clicking.

Then remove the capping plate and your caps are ready!

TL;DR: i refill capsules for a lower dose for my medicines for personal use.