salt pill dispenser by tcornall

Last crawled date: 4 years ago

UPDATE- I finally field tested this and it didn't do so well. As a container, it's OK, but as a dispenser, not so great. Too often you get multiple pills popping out into your mouth. I'd look for a better design if I were you...
First, a disclaimer: I am suspicious of the efficacy of salt to relieve or prevent muscle-associated-cramps. Lack of a scientific explanation plus lots of unsubstantiated hoo-ha and sales-pitchery is what leads me to this suspicion.
Second, a testimony: The only time I have ever run more than a 50K trail-run WITHOUT serious muscle-cramping is when I dosed myself with salt pills every hour.
Then another disclaimer: I don't know how food-safe 3d-printer PLA is. Make up your own mind about it.
So, with all that in mind, I wanted a way to store and conveniently dispense up to 10 salt pills whilst running. This means it must be able to operate without me looking at it, without taking the lid completely off so that I didn't spill them all.
There is a commercial product (at least one) that does this, but I have never seen one and don't know how they work.
So I designed a pill-shaped slot in the cap of an appropriately sized tube and I found I could shake a pill into my mouth just by opening the cap a few turns. I can even hold the cap with my teeth whilst turning the tube with one hand and have the pill drop out onto my tongue.
This design works quite well, at least in the "laboratory". How well in the field is yet to be tested. Some tapping may be required to unstick a pill, but usually not much. NOTE: It isn't water-tight, so sweat and rain may cause problems.
I designed this using SolidPython, which generates OpenSCAD code. (Google them to get installation and programming procedures) It's designed for a pill of 10.4 mm diameter and 4.6 mm thickness, but I was generous in clearance so a slightly larger pill, or ones with more variation, could work too. (Hmm, I wonder if M&Ms fit...)