Pill Box Filler

[mklotz]

"I hope you will suggest ways to improve this tool. Your ideas will be included in this article so we may all benefit. All of us are smarter than any one of us."

You sucked me in again, Rick. I found myself, sponge in hand, standing still in the shower thinking about this. At 85, I also have a seven day pill container to fill every week. I'll offer what I envisioned, not intending as an improvement to your method but rather another way to approach the problem.

Imagine a flat comb-like structure made of seven, evenly spaced, strips of flat material (wood, plastic, cardboard) held together with arches so that pills not caught on the V-shaped ends of these strips can pass between the strips as the strip "comb" sweeps through a cluster of pills scattered on a smooth, flat surface.

The edge of the flat surface lies over the open pill box. As the comb reaches the edge, the pills drop into the seven containers.

The other edges of the surface have low walls arranged into a funnel-like configuration so that, once the pill box is loaded, the surface can be tilted to funnel the remaining pills back into the container from which they came.

Adapting a pill counter, e.g....

https://www.amazon.com/Right-Hand-Pi...s%2C222&sr=8-6

to be the flat surface may save some fabrication time since it's already set up to funnel the excess pills back into their container.

[rgsparber]

Marv,

I did my best to translate your text into a rendering and have put it at the end of my article. How close did I get?

Rick

[Bony]

I think many of us older folk have the same boring job to do regularly. As drugs are usually dispensed in lots of 30 (well at least they are in Australia), I have 5 pill boxes and the chore of filling them is limited to a monthly excercise. This makes it much more tolerable.
It occurs to me that to make the depth of the V in Marv's comb idea adjustable will overcome the difficulty of sorting pills of different sizes, and save having to use several different trays. (Some of mine are oblong shaped which is another problem.)
The best way of picturing my suggestion is to consider two sets of combs, one on top of the other which are allowed to slide over each other. Think of this like the cutting surfaces of hair clippers, the Vs closing together to cut hair.
Why not use this principle of closing Vs to provide adjustment to accommodate sorting pills of different sizes.
That's my suggestion for part of the problem anyway.

[rgsparber]

I have updated the article with a model of Marv's tool in action.

None of the proposed tools work well with elliptical pills or capsules. I hope others will suggest ways to solve this problem.

Rick

[mklotz]

Marv,

I did my best to translate your text into a rendering and have put it at the end of my article. How close did I get?

Rick

Close but not quite what I had in mind.

The tines of the comb in my vision are narrow with parallel sides (picture a popsicle stick). At one end of each of these tines is a small V which captures a single pill. Seven of these are fastened into a comb in a way that allows any pill not captured in the V to remain in place. Once each V is filled, the comb is pushed over the edge of the plate and the pills drop out of the V's into the open pill boxes held just below the plate.

Maybe the attached crude sketch will help.

[rgsparber]

Close but not quite what I had in mind.

The tines of the comb in my vision are narrow with parallel sides (picture a popsicle stick). At one end of each of these tines is a small V which captures a single pill. Seven of these are fastened into a comb in a way that allows any pill not captured in the V to remain in place. Once each V is filled, the comb is pushed over the edge of the plate and the pills drop out of the V's into the open pill boxes held just below the plate.

Maybe the attached crude sketch will help.

Marv,

The picture makes ALL the difference. I'll make one and see how it works.

Thanks!

Rick

[mklotz]

Marv,

The picture makes ALL the difference. I'll make one and see how it works.

Thanks!

Rick

I would have supplied the sketch in my original note but I was deeply embroiled in a project for SWMBO. I'll look forward to hearing about your evaluation of the idea.

[Bony]

This is what I've come up with, it's very good for collecting together 7 pills and has been made to neatly fit and fill the days of a weekly pill box. After 7 pills have been collected the remaining ones are simply brushed aside, and the 7 can then be swiped into the pill box. I would like to add a simple mechanism for automatically collecting just 7 pills and discarding the rest, but that hasn't emerged from the depths of my mind yet. Maybe tonight.
Thanks for your ideas Rick & Marv.

[Bony]

I add that it's a simple tray made from aluminium sheet with V notches cut out. A useful addition which I will shortly make is another tray that this one slides on top of and that fits around the ends of the pill box so that a swipe of the top tray dispenses the pills accurately into their respective days without spillage.

[Frank S]

I don't trust any prescription meds that the big pharma owned drug pushing doctors my medical insurance insists I visit once a year say I need to take daily for the rest of my life I simply don't have the prescripts filled. If I have to visit a DR, for an injury and am prescribed a short-term med I have those filled and take them as directed. For everything else I research for alternatives to the long-term prescription meds this probably means I am taking a few more pills than pharma meds but at least what I take are not laced with unpronounceable chemicals and probably don't take those as regular as people think I should.
As far as a sorter goes, I have issues with the idea. It seems to be just another step. What's wrong with just dumping a hand full of pills in your hand then placing them ti the little dosage compartments then grabbing the next one and doing the same.