Problem Definition Statement: Hospitals need a more cost-effective, environmentally friendly, sound-proof, and easy-to-use pill crusher that suits the needs of both hospital staff and patients.
Hello, welcome back! As you know, I’m currently working on an automatic pill crusher (as outlined in my statement above), and here is what I have in store so far:
The crusher works via a lead screw mechanism wherein a screw spins the crusher and pushes it down. By constricting the pressure plate from moving, I can also remove any rotational force that would’ve otherwise not made this project possible. I plan to spin the screw using a DC motor in the bottom compartment which is empty at the moment (due to time constraints. Please note that none of the compartments are supposed to be open, I just opened them up for a better visualisation.
Personally, the biggest struggle I had was time constraint along with the inquiry and justify stage of the design cycle. I spent too much time fine-tuning and brainstorming ideas about my project on the drawing board and that kept me back. Normally, the time I left myself would’ve been more than comfortable except for the fact that I broke my finger and somehow I had to get a cast on my arm. This made it a bit challenging to efficiently make my project. In the end, I wasn’t able to fully print out my prototype through a 3d printer.
Overall, this was a big learning experience for me as I’ve never had any major injuries in a long time that have inhibited me from doing my work. In the future, I will think more about time management and how I can optimise my workload throughout projects/assignments.
Eventually, I hope to fully print out my project annd hook up a DC motor to the screw to get my mechanism working. From there, I can add a 3D printed pushbutton to connect to the Arduino one (since it’s too small) so that the clients (hospital staff) can have ease of use.
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