This week, I focused on refining the mechanical dispensing system and updating several core design elements. I fleshed out our sliding door feature on the pill box. I came to two possible solutions that will be most reliable lead screw + nut design and timing belt design. After reevaluating our sliding door feature I wanted to pivot away from casing on average pill size. Originally we did this so a specific sliding door knew how much to retract based on the pill size contained in the compartment. Yet it would not account for all the possible pill sizes negating our use case, as well as I believe not being much more accurate as there is still variation in the pill sizes in each size group. Instead I proposed pulsing would be better fit for handling all the different pill sizes accurately.
Since we had gotten rid of the average pill size casing we now needed to accommodate all possible pill sizes, so the pill box size needed to be adjusted accordingly. An additional constraint that I added based on the feedback of the professors was to limit the size of the pill box based on the size of pill boxed currently on the market. The most valuable space that our pill box would take up is table top space, so I specifically limited the width of the box on the table based on market research.
Another piece of feedback we received was to account for humidity causing pills to stick together, to counteract this I added airtight compartments and silica gel packets in each compartment to the design.
Based on the design updates we made I updated the individual tasks in our schedule.
I also made our parts list along with specific vendor links.
Using the constraints on pill box size identified above I conducted a design trade study to identify the ideal height of the pill box. Illustrated in the graph below.
Finally for our design report I was responsible for writing the quantitative design requirements, design trade studies and project management sections. I reviewed and edited my partners sections before the final submission.
We are on schedule for everything except ordering parts. Now that I have accumulated the parts list I will start putting in the orders soon.
In the upcoming week I hope to make prototypes of each of the sliding door designs to identify the best solution to implement in our pill box.