salt pill dispenser

thingiverse

UPDATE- I finally got to put this through its paces and it didn't quite live up to expectations. As a container, it's passable, but as a dispenser, not so great. Too often you end up with multiple pills popping into your mouth at once. I'd look for a better design if I were you. First off, let me get one thing out of the way: I'm skeptical about the effectiveness of salt in preventing or relieving muscle cramps. The lack of scientific backing and all the unsubstantiated claims and sales pitches have me doubting its validity. On the other hand, I do want to share a personal anecdote: the only time I've ever completed a 50K trail run without experiencing severe muscle cramping is when I took salt pills every hour. Before I go any further, let me make one more thing clear: I'm not entirely sure 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 while running. This means it has to be able to operate without my having to look at it or take the lid completely off so that I don't spill them all. There is a commercial product out there that does this, but I've 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 discovered 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 while turning the tube with one hand and have the pill drop out onto my tongue. This design works quite well, at least in the lab. But how well it will work in the field remains to be seen. Some tapping may be required to unstick a pill, but usually not much. One thing to note is that it's not water-tight, so sweat and rain could cause problems. I designed this using SolidPython, which generates OpenSCAD code. (Google them for installation and programming procedures.) It's designed for a pill of 10.4 mm diameter and 4.6 mm thickness, but I was generous with clearance, so a slightly larger pill or ones with more variation could work too. (Hmm, I wonder if M&Ms would fit...)