An automated capsule compression machine for the cosmetics and home-care market — precise, compact, and designed for small-batch production at point of sale.
Design a compact, reliable capsule compression mechanism capable of consistent dosing across a range of cosmetic powder formulations, with a minimal footprint suitable for retail or point-of-sale deployment.
Full mechanical design of the compression mechanism, powder feed system, and housing. Prototype build, iteration, and DFM review for small-batch manufacturing.
Working machine prototype with validated compression consistency across target formulations. Design optimized for assembly in pilot production quantities.
Capsule Minimal is a beauty-tech venture built on the concept of on-demand, personalized cosmetics — the ability to compress custom powder formulations into capsule form at the point of sale or in the home. The machine needed to be small enough to fit on a retail counter, reliable enough to operate thousands of cycles without maintenance, and consistent enough to produce capsules that meet cosmetic product quality standards.
The powder compression mechanism was the core engineering challenge. Different formulations behave differently under compression — compressibility, flow characteristics, and adhesion vary significantly. The design had to accommodate this variability while delivering consistent capsule weight and hardness across the operating range.
We designed the fill and compression stages with adjustable parameters to accommodate different formulations, selected food-contact-grade materials throughout the powder path, and engineered the ejection mechanism for clean capsule release without contamination. The housing was designed for easy cleaning — critical for cosmetic applications where formulation changeover is frequent.