Ampoule/ampule, the Latin transliteration of ampulla, is a small glass container that can be sealed by melting, and is used to hold liquid medicine. Ampoules were first used to hold samples of the blood of the dead, and were used to be buried with them. They were mostly found in Roman tombs/Christian catacombs. At first, only the funeral of martyrs can enjoy this kind of treatment, but later it became a common custom.

Modern ampoules are fired with glass tubes. Most ampoules are colorless. They are widely used to hold injection preparations and high-purity chemicals that must be isolated from the air. For medicines that are sensitive to light, amber ampoules can also be used. Ampoules generally have a capacity of 1 ~ 25ml, and the specifications mainly used for production are 1ml, 2ml, 5ml, 7ml, 10ml, 20ml and 25ml. It is commonly used to store drugs or water for injection, vaccines, serum, etc., and also used for the packaging of oral liquid. There are two kinds of common types: straight neck and curved neck.

After the glass ampoule bottle is filled with liquid medicine, it needs to be sealed by high-temperature instant melting and cooling in the end, so a mound-shaped bulge will be formed at the top of the ampoule head and a negative pressure will be formed in the bottle. When the bottle neck is broken, it is usually accompanied by a “bang” or “pop” sound, which is the sound produced by the impact of the air flow at the moment when the air enters the bottle. Because of the negative pressure in the bottle, and the grinding wheel and sand bar will leave many micron-sized fine particles at the scratch when opening the ampoule, it is dangerous to open the ampoule with grinding wheel and sand bar.

It is difficult for users to open the ampoule and it is easy to cause accidents. (Defective ampoule or wrong operation may cause the bottle neck or even the bottle body to be broken when opening the ampoule, resulting in injuries to medical staff and possible glass falling fragments into the liquid medicine to cause pollution. Particles of glass and grinding wheel during ampoule opening can also cause contamination of the liquid medicine). It is not popular now, however, it has many irreplaceable advantages, such as:

• Colorless and transparent (except for special requirements);
• Small expansion coefficient and good heat resistance;
• It should have enough physical strength to withstand the high pressure difference during hot-pressing sterilization;
• Has high chemical stability and does not change the PH value of the solution;
• Low melting point and easy melting and sealing;
• No bubbles, pits and sand;

Therefore, it is still widely used in the current market and hospitals.

Glass ampoules are divided into ordinary ampoules and easy-to-break ampoules. Those with blue or white dots at the neck and dents at the bottom are easy-to-break ampoules, otherwise they are ordinary ampoules. Ordinary ampoules are generally made of low borosilicate glass or soda-lime glass, while easy-to-break ampoules are generally made of medium and high borosilicate glass. Compared with low borosilicate glass and soda-lime glass, medium and high borosilicate glass has better thermal and chemical stability. Ordinary ampoules can’t be broken directly by hand. They need to be scratched at the bottleneck with the help of bottle opening tools, and then broken along the opposite direction of the scratches. Before opening, cut a scratch on the bottle neck with a grinding wheel, sterilize the bottle neck, turn the bottle neck upwards, and make all the liquid medicine flow into the bottle body, and then break the bottle neck.

At present, most hospitals and clinics are using grinding wheels or sand strips to mark the bottleneck. However, as grinding wheels and sand strips are easy to be infected with bacteria and produce fine particles, which leads to the contamination of liquid medicine, all medical institutions have strict requirements for the disinfection and use of grinding wheels and sand strips.

The bottle neck of easy-to-break ampoule is sealed with open flame to isolate the air, and the bottle neck is marked, which will break when pressure is applied, so as to extract the liquid medicine. There is a dent under the blue or white dot at the bottle neck to mark the pre-cut part of the manufacturer. The ampoule head can be broken by applying force in the opposite direction of the scratch.
Due to the existence of glass stress, easy-to-break ampoules are often difficult to break. At this time, it is necessary to scratch the bottle neck with the opening tools, so as to destroy the glass stress and then open it easily. Remember, when the ampoule bottle is not easy to break, don’t use brute force, or you will prick your finger easily. It takes strength and skill to break the ampoule. It’s easy to break 3-5 easy-to-break ampoules in a row, but if you break dozens or hundreds of ampoules in a row, it will be suffering, especially for small-volume injections with more than 5ml. In many medical units, when nurses open the easy-to-break ampoules, they will still use bottle opening tools to mark them, so as to ensure no danger of anything going wrong.
According to the new national standard GB2637-1995, all ampoules used for water injection are easy-to-break ampoules with curved necks. In order to prevent glass chips and particles from entering ampoules to pollute the liquid medicine when the bottle neck of ampoules is broken, State Drug Administration (SDA) has forced the implementation of easy-to-break ampoules with curved necks. At the same time, colored dots, color rings or nicks should be painted on the top of the curved neck, which can be broken without a file, thus avoiding the pollution of liquid medicine by glass chips and making it easy to use. There are two kinds of easy-to-break ampoules: color ring and dot notch.

In the picture, you can find that there are blue dots (some are green dots or red dots) on the ampoules. This dot is indicative and all colors are the same. Put your finger in this position, and you can break the bottleneck with force. Generally, you can do this without grinding wheel, but be careful. You should break it with force, but you can’t grip it with force. Don’t use too much force, because it is easy to crush and may burst the bottle.

Hold the bottle body with your left hand, and hold the dot with your right hand. Apply force in the outward direction of the scratch because it won’t break off if the direction is reversed. If it’s right, it can be opened by gently breaking off. You can practice with gloves to feel the direction and strength of exertion. The action can be a little bigger, decisive and quick, otherwise it is easy to get hurt if you hesitate.
It is not a big problem to break small ampoules within 5ml with hands, but it is recommended to break them with gauze over 5ml. In order to prevent yourself from being scratched, the movement will be relatively large when breaking the big ampoule, and it feels like the two hands are separated far away immediately after breaking, but even so, there is no guarantee that the hand will not be scratched. And too much movement can also lead to spillage of liquid medicine, so it is better to have a gauze pad for protection. The movement will become smaller naturally, which is not easy to spill the liquid medicine. The color dot does not represent the direction of breaking. Any direction can be used.

About equipment:
Production of glass ampoules with glass tubes adopts horizontal ampoule machine production line, including neck pressing, wire drawing, fusing, undercut, etc. The main processes are: heating the whole tube in sections, wire drawing, dry cutting (cut into two parts in the middle), bottom cutting (cut into two parts in the middle), bottom molding, neck preheating, neck molding (pressing wheel), neck cutting and coloring points, annealing sintering furnace, cooling and packaging. Cutting pieces are mainly divided into fiber resin cutting pieces and diamond cutting pieces according to the material. Of course, there are a bunch of single production equipment, which can be said to realize the automation of the whole production line of this product:

• Ampoule molding production line
• Automatic ampoule sealing machine
• Ampoule melting sealing machine
• Ampoule melting machine
• Ampoule drawing machine
• Automatic purging and cleaning machine for ampoule hot-melt sealing
• Automatic ampoule lamp detector
• Automatic ampoule packaging production line
• Ampoule washing machine