The new product will be officially unveiled at this year's American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists annual meeting, to be held in Baltimore on 7-11 November.
The automated aeration accessory, for use in measuring the flow properties of aerated powders, will eliminate the need for operator intervention, and so remove the major source of measurement variation and error, according to UK-based Freeman.
The FT4 is widely used within the pharmaceutical industry, and has applications that range from the quality control of incoming raw materials through formulation, including the determination of granulation end-point and scale-up. One of its attractions is that it can handle very small quantities of material, which makes it useful for early assessment of the properties of developmental compounds that are in short supply.
The company promises that this is the first in a series of new 'plug and play' accessories designed to bring automation to FT4 powder testing processes.
The move has been made possible by the recent development at Freeman of a universal control card for the system, that provides an interface between the instrument, the accessory and the user.