Mother creates 3D printed pill coater

For those suffering from Crohn's disease, a number of medications are needed on a daily basis in order to keep the conditions under control. These aren’t always easy to swallow - especially for young children - which can easily make an already stressful situation even more stressful.

“When my eleven year old son was diagnosed with a chronic disease, he needed to take a lot of medication. It was hard to swallow, by all means, so I was looking for ways to "sweeten the pill" for him.

The only trick I knew was the one passing from generation to generation: smash the pill between two teaspoons, and add a sweet substance to it. Well, it did not do the magic! It was my son's idea to cover the medication with chocolate”, Dully explained.

After talking to her pharmacist and gaining approval, Katzeff set about covering her son’s medications with a layer of chocolate one day in advance, which allowed the chocolate to cool and create a candy shell over the otherwise unappetizing medications.

Unsurprisingly, the idea to cover the medication in chocolate was her son’s idea, however Katzeff deserves the credit for “making it real”, which was able to happen thanks to 3D printing. To create the prototype for the Pill Coater, Katzeff worked with the MatterThings team to develop a product design that would be able to be printed and used for a Kickstarter campaign so that other parents might be able to find the same kind of success that she and her son had found with the chocolate-covered medications.

To print the different parts of the stackable Pill Coater assembly - which includes a melted chocolate base, a mesh for dipping, a pill keeper, a chocolate storage container and a containment lid - the MatterThings team used their MakerBot Replicator 1 & 2 models using PLA filament over the course of many hours. Among other reason, PLA was chosen to produce the parts due to its natural food-safe properties.

With her prototype in hand - and chocolate in the other - Katzeff is on a mission to raise just over $38,000 on Kickstarter to help bring her son’s product idea to life through more traditional manufacturing methods.

More info: http://www.pillcoater.com/

Adapted from: http://bit.ly/2czMkd7

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