Tedious repetitive tasks inspire me. How can I reduce or eliminate them?
Twice a month, I must fill my two pill boxes with many pills. Here is a proof-of-concept tool that makes the job almost tolerable.
Rick
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Tedious repetitive tasks inspire me. How can I reduce or eliminate them?
Twice a month, I must fill my two pill boxes with many pills. Here is a proof-of-concept tool that makes the job almost tolerable.
Rick
Inquiring minds really want to know the answer to this! :-)
It is a bit hard to see, but click on the word Here.
The yellow "Here" is a link to a pdf. That is Rick's MO, which makes it easier to save articles for later use.Quote:
Originally Posted by toyman
"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.
I have pills that are large and very small, so I would have to make a couple different channels.
Thanks Rick for pointing that out. Weak eyes and small print made me miss the link! That's my story and I'm sticking to it...
If the combs are made using a 3D printer, making several with different size V's should be trivial.Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl_H
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
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.
<!-- BEGIN /var/www/html/homemadetools/protected/modules/zeus/views/tool/postUpdate.php -->
Thanks rgsparber! We've added your Pill Box Filler to our Storage and Organization category,
as well as to your builder page: rgsparber's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:
<div id="blocks"> <div class="block b1 pngfix"> <div class="bimg"> <div> <a href="https://www.homemadetools.net/homemade-pill-box-filler"> <img src="/uploads/277328/homemade-pill-box-filler.jpeg"/> </a> </div> </div> <div class="head pngfix"></div> <div class="left pngfix"></div> <div class="right pngfix"></div> <div class="blockover b1 pngfix"> <div class="title"> <a href="https://www.homemadetools.net/homemade-pill-box-filler">Pill Box Filler</a> <span> by <a href="https://www.homemadetools.net/builder/rgsparber">rgsparber</a></span> </div> <div class="tags">tags: <a href='https://www.homemadetools.net/tag/organizer'>organizer</a> </div> </div> </div> </div>
<!-- END /var/www/html/homemadetools/protected/modules/zeus/views/tool/postUpdate.php -->
Close but not quite what I had in mind.Quote:
Originally Posted by rgsparber
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.
Attachment 50743
Marv,Quote:
Originally Posted by mklotz
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by rgsparber
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.
Attachment 50745
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.
I know that this is contrary to the mission of this network, but here is a completely different approach:
I look forward to Sunday morning when I refill my pill boxes and usually do it while the coffee is brewing instead of looking at the front page.
I get a huge thrill when I dump exactly 14 pills ( for my twice a day meds ) or exactly 7 pills ( for my daily meds) into my hand before pinching one into each compartment.
When it works I give a holler and tell my wife "big thrills for little minds."
While it would be thrilling to get a contraption work, it seems after the initial joy, my little thrill would be gone forever. Not sure the trade is worth it.
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
Rick, you could try having 7 (I suggest slightly larger) holes equally spaced along the sheet of plastic so that sliding it under the tray allows them all to drop into the box at once. Yes, it's only a very slight improvement.
I can't find the most recent version with Marv's suggestion. Have you posted his idea?
Thanks for the suggestion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bony
You may need to do a reload of the link to get the newest version.
Rick
Asymmetric pill shapes (e.g., elliptical, capsule) cry out for a means of aligning them.
Think about providing some suitable grooves in the flat surface on which the pills are initially placed. Throw the pills on randomly, provide a little agitation and, voila, the pills are aligned with their major axis parallel to the groove.
The number of pills in each groove is not the same so a simple push with a comb won't work. I haven't gotten beyond this point yet so I'm just describing the grooved plate idea so others can run with it.
Scenario: Seven straight "grooves" in a plate, each with a different number of pills aligned in the groove.
Block all the grooves at one edge of the plate and agitate until pills are touching the block.
Make a separate tool with seven teeth spaced to match the groove spacing. When this tool is inserted between the pill touching the block and its immediate neighbor, all seven pills can be swept into the waiting pill box.
Again, one of my crude sketches may help visualization.
Attachment 50747
