Project Identity
Automated Medication Dispensing Device, RERC Project
Week #1 ending January 20, 2006
Jacquelyn Masse
Work Completed
During break, I was originally going to do the machine shop certification, but after talking with another group whose project was very mechanically oriented, we offered our group’s position to them.
During last week, we discussed ways to attach the USB hub to the PDA. Both have male connections. We decided that we would either have to find a converter or cut the cords to attach each of the 5 small wires individually.
I mainly worked on the layout and final design of the pill compartment. On the wooden base where the arm assembly is already mounted, we drew the layout of where the cutter, dispenser, and pill compartments would be in order to plan the size restrictions.
For the pill compartment:
Material: plastic, something nontoxic to the pills
Shape of each compartment: cone shaped, rounded, or with pitched bottom in 2 directions
edge extends under vacuum arm
arm tip reaches lowest point of compartment when fully down and does not
hit edge of neighboring compartment on the way back up (arm needs to be trimmed)
Overall dimensions:
4” radius
1” of horizontal movement of arm tip provides height change from 1” to 4”
will be set upon a lazy susan type rotating platform, setting bottom of
compartments at 1” above the base
will have a solid axis of 1” radius
12 compartments
outer circumference = pi*diameter =25.12 inches
inner circumference = 6.28 inches
Using these measurements, I fabricated each piece of the storage unit out of cardboard and put it together to see if it would be possible to assemble the unit with separate plastic pieces and to examine the volume. It turned out to be rather difficult to get even compartments. We discussed other options including,
1. Making 1 compartment mold out of clay and melting plastic over the mold 12 times to have 12 single compartments to piece together.
2. Making an entire mold out of clay and melting plastic to it’s shape.
3. Plaster method,
I did some research on pricing for Sculpey clay. It can be bought at JoAnns Fabric or AC Moore, both stores found in Manchester.
In lab, we also went over course logistics.
Future Work:
This coming week, I plan to finalize the plans with the storage unit. I will go buy the Sculpey clay on Monday to try the single compartment method. I will also need to buy plastic. A finished compartment will be finished by the end of the week. We will meet as a group on Tuesday to work on the cutter. Individually, we will be working on different aspects of the LabVIEW programming.
Project Review:
Considering this was the first week back from winter break, we are simply trying to get the ball rolling again. We have decided to meet for a couple hours as a group on Tuesdays so that we don’t have to go an entire week between Friday labs. Once we get the USB converter and the proper software for LabVIEW, we will have a lot of programming to do. Since Kevin completed the arm assembly over break, some of the tasks listed on the timeline have changed.
Hours worked:
7