People with hand disabilities may have difficulties pushing their medical pills out of blister packages. This bottom die helps.
How to use:
- Put the bottom die on a firm surface.
- Place the pill to be pushed out over the center of the bottom die (pill up).
- Push. The pill will break the aluminum foil and bend the needles immediately below, while the needles that are still upright support the adjacent cells of the blister package.
How to print:
It must be printed from an elastic material as e.g. TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane) with a Shore-hardness of about 90A (i.e. not too soft).
TPU is a fantastic material. But if TPU is new to you, then please note the following properties:
- TPU is an elastic material. It should be printed with a direct drive extruder (i.e. extruder flanged to the hotend). If your extruder is connected to the hotend via a bowden tube, then your printer may not be well-suited for printing TPU.
- Due to materiel properties TPU printing speed is significantly slower than e.g. with PLA. Printing the bottom die may take 60 minutes or more when using a layer height of 0.3 mm.
- TPU is very hygroscopic. If you don't dry it thoroughly before printing it may exhibit excessive stringing. Even when dried TPU may require a significant retraction distance (1 - 2 mm) to avoid excessive stringing. However, a little bit of stringing between the needles is almost inevitable, a purely aesthetic issue and will not impair the bottom die's function. You may burn (part of) the strings away by applying the flame of a storm lighter for a fraction of a second.
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Update 17 December 2025:
I added a cover to keep the bottom die clean e.g. when you will take it in a toilet bag.
You may print the cover out of TPU in the same print job. However, as it does not have to flex, you may as well print it out of PLA or PETG.
There should be some friction between bottom die and cover, but not too much. This friction depends on the friction coefficient between the materials (TPU-TPU, TPU-PLA, ...) and the extrusion properties of your printer. In order to give you a choice I am supplying covers of slightly different sizes. I suggest you start with the 0.1 mm gap version.
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As always I include the OpenSCAD source file for you to adapt and/or improve:
- Download and install OpenSCAD from https://www.openscad.org
- Launch OpenSCAD and open the enclosed OpenSCAD source file (/File/Open).
- Amend the parameters at the top of the file or even amend the code.
- Save your changes (/File/Save).
- Render the design (/Design/Render).
- Export the rendered design e.g. as a .stl file (/File/Export/Export as STL).
- Slice and print.
See my other designs at
https://www.thingiverse.com/thinger13/designs
Thinger13
