Automatic pill dispenser

[Osnabruecker1]

Hey,
I am currently building a small project. I have one question: How do I make sure that in an automatic pill dispenser only one pill falls down at the same time?
You can see my idea in the attachment. I just use a roll with indentations. There is only room in each indentation for one pill at the same time. When the roll rolls over, the dispenser is closed until the indentation is exactly underneath it. The problem in a real world situation is this: Every pill has a different size. Let´s say every roll can have three differently sized indentation, than we would have with three roles 9 sizes. We would have to place the fitting role underneath the dispenser. You can imagine the bloody mess when you have 200 dispenser, because you would need 600 rolls.
Maybe one of you guys has an good idea on how to solve this problem more effective

Thanks!

 

[BridgeSmith]

I suggest taking a look at how this is accomplished for coin sorters.

I also suggest moving this to the one of the mechanical engineering forums. Us structural guys don't really deal with the sort of thing you're asking about.

 

[JohnRBaker]

This IS a Mechanical Engineering forum.

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[IRstuff]

Perhaps you should start with what the use-case is for this dispenser, and what the requirements are.

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[BridgeSmith]

Sorry, I could have sworn it was in the Structural Engineering general discussion when I replied.

Edit: Now that I think about it, it had to be in the Structural forum, because the Mechanical engineering forum wasn't in my list, so I don't ever see it. Could the OP have moved it?

 

[EdStainless]

Often they use wheels with rubber flaps on them.
But for this you will likely need to use a couple in series.
You also need a realistic idea of the size range that you can work with.
I take 4 meds currently and the size range is about a factor of 25. I doubt that this will be attainable.

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[IRstuff]

Again, some operational concerns are associated with the specific use-case. For a single-user application, it's more likely that you'd have and need upwards of 20 different pills of varying sizes to be delivered once or twice a day, so the use-case is very important. In the single user case, it's also likely that the machine would be loaded manually, by a caregiver or the consumer, so compartmentalization would be more the expectation. For an institution, one might also go with compartments that can be randomly accessible, but still manually loaded.

The only case where I ever see pills in large quantities being dispensed is in a pharmacy, off of a pill counter, but that's mostly a shaker platform dispensing, I think, by weight, and not size.

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[IRstuff]

Could the OP have moved it

Not on their own. I don't know if moving the thread would result in your response from the SE forum to cause this forum to be added to your thread minder.

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[IRstuff]

see:

https://herohealth.com/our-product?utm_source=theseniorlist&utm_medium=referral

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[BridgeSmith]

"I don't know if moving the thread would result in your response from the SE forum to cause this forum to be added to your thread minder."

It did after I responded to it, but I wouldn't have seen it to begin with in the Mechanical forum, since it's not one that I follow or look at .

 

[CWB1]

I would recommend adding a closed loop control system. It could be something as simple as a photovoltaic setup or other dumb sensor or as complex as a camera and machine learning.