Tablet presses, also called tableting machines, range from small, inexpensive bench-top models that make one tablet at a time (single-station presses), with only around a half-ton pressure, to large, computerized, industrial models (multi-station rotary presses) that can make hundreds of thousands to millions of tablets an hour with much greater pressure. The tablet press is an essential piece of machinery for any pharmaceutical and nutraceutical manufacturer. Tablet presses must allow the operator to adjust the position of the lower and upper punches accurately, so that the tablet weight, thickness and density/hardness can each be controlled. This is achieved using a series of cams, rollers, or tracks that act on the tablet tooling (punches).  Mechanical systems are also incorporated for die filling, and for ejecting and removing the tablets from the press after compression.  Pharmaceutical tablet presses are required to be easy to clean and quick to reconfigure with different tooling, because they are usually used to manufacture many different products.
There are two main standards of tablet tooling used in pharmaceutical industry: American standard TSM and European standard EU. TSM and EU configurations are similar to each other but cannot be interchanged.
Modern tablet presses reach output volumes of up to 1,700,000 tablets per hour. These huge volumes require frequent in-process quality control for the tablet weight, thickness and hardness. Due to reduce rejects rates and machine down-time, automated tablet testing devices are used on-line with the tablet press or off-line in the IPC-labs.