How Can I Get You Into This Teensy Weensy Little Thing?

March 10, 2017 2:04 PM

I have an herbal supplement in fine powder and I need to manually measure out a specific dosage in milligrams and get it into gel caps.

I haven’t located instructions online, perhaps I’m entering the wrong search criteria. I realize I may need to invest a few dollars for capsules, scoop or scale. I need a help determining what is needed and how to work with it efficiently.

posted by elf27 to Health & Fitness (8 answers total)

It's called a gel cap filler machine (even though it is manual) and you can pick them up at amazon, and probably health food stores that are well stocked, etc.. Be mindful of the size caps it fills, but the right size machine and corresponding capsules for your purposes.

These tiny Norpro Measuring Spoons are really useful for measuring powdered supplements. If you look in the comments, the corresponding english measures are listed by folks. Honestly, if you can just mix your supplement with water and shoot it down, this is SO much easier than filling capsules (ask me how I know!)

For sure there are scales that are sensitive enough to measure small amounts of fine powder, my OXO digital scale certainly can not do this. I'm not sure it's worth it to spend the $$ for something lab grade. Hope this helps!
posted by jbenben at 2:14 PM on March 10, 2017

If know nothing about this, but if you do end up needing a sensitive scale, there are affordable options on Amazon. For my home meth lab (ha ha, just kidding FBI, I mean my home soap making), I've found this one to be excellent for the price. It is accurate to 10mg, but it has a very low max weight (which includes the container you're measuring in) of 100g and has the potentially bad habit of powering off if it doesn't sense a weight change for like 5 seconds (ok, more like a minute). If you used that gel cap filler thing while on a scale, you'd need a scale with a higher max weight and probably more battery time before powering off (like one of these). If you need a scale sensitive to 1mg, your options are going to be much more limited.
posted by FiveSecondRule at 2:57 PM on March 10, 2017

If the scale of your operation is too small for any scale you can find, you can always scale everything up by cutting and then increasing the dose of the result.

Let's say you need to take half a gram, but your scale measures grams, and you aren't really sure how well it does 1 gram. How about taking 10 grams of the supplement, add 90 grams of powdered sugar, powdered milk, cornstarch, tapioca, any edible powder. Mix well, and then your new dose is 10x the old dose, 5g.

Well, obviously my selections won't work if those things are contrary to your dietary regimen, but maybe you can find something that'll work.

I don't have any particular reason to think that taking in 9 units of various powders will do anything bad to the effects of the 1 unit of herbal whatever, but I'm open to contrary information.
posted by Sunburnt at 3:55 PM on March 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

People who handload ammunition deal with precise powder measurements all the time.

While most gunpowder handling devices are designed to attach to larger pieces of equipment, some handloaders prefer to use scoops like these. Buy the set and the scale recommended above, and figure out which one gives you the dosage you need.

Or just start there and start clicking through the "other recommended products" on Amazon. You might find something else helpful.
posted by Hatashran at 3:59 PM on March 10, 2017

When measuring powders it is handy to weigh them out onto a creased piece of paper. Then use the crease as a spout to pour the powder into its final container.
posted by SLC Mom at 5:44 PM on March 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

I have this scale, which claims 1mg accuracy, but I greatly prefer the "volumetric dosing" method when dealing with measurements under 10mg.
posted by bradf at 6:29 PM on March 10, 2017

Lab scientist here. It is always easier to deal with small amounts of liquids than powder*. Your powder is likely to be water-soluble, if it is meant to be ingested as a powder.

Try dissolving it in a quantity of water that you can use to fill the capsules with an eyedropper. For instance, if you have 20 mg of powder that you need to put in 20 capsules, dissolve it in 100 ml of water and then each capsule gets 5 ml of solution. Much easier than 1 mg each.

*though we do have nifty tools for handling small amounts of liquid.
posted by Dashy at 7:41 PM on March 10, 2017

(Putting it in a liquid and then putting that in a water-soluble gelatin capsule = soggy mess)
posted by kmennie at 7:57 AM on March 11, 2017 [1 favorite]