the pill [cap]sule! a step by step visual production process

Our product is a handy, shapeable, and reusable "days-of-the-week" pill container. It is made entirely from reused plastic drink bottle caps and recyclable aluminum wire. The wire connecting each separate pill capsule is twisted firmly, holding the hinged caps on securely, while still allowing for flexibility into shape of the user's choice. This container can be used over and over for many years, and is easy to rinse and/or wash.
Partner: Heather Link

Our step by step process:

We began with trash paper sketches, drawing and writing everything that came to mind as an idea for re-using bottle caps.


After a lot of consideration of different ideas, we settled on the pill capsule idea. We used larger and heavier plastic drink caps for the bottoms, and softer and more translucent water bottle caps for the tops, so they would be easy to cut tabs, and slice them down to fit inside the bottoms.


Heather sands the ridges of the larger caps out to make the tops fit in better.


Some detail views of our first iteration:



From these views, you can see that the tops of the containers are not attached to the bottoms, which creates a problem is the capsule happened to be dropped. We need to figure out a way to better connect them all together (we "just" used hot glue for the first one, not very strong) as well as attach the tops on a hinge, making the whole product more effecient.





We then switched to wire, a stronger, more durable, and recyclable material for holding the whole thing together. We made a tab in the back as well as the front, to be able to hinge the tops. This is a view of our first test with wire.



Construction begins...



We cut, tabbed, and poked holes in all the caps beforehand, and afterwards, threaded everything together with a continuing piece of wire, cutting production time and materials.


Me blogging. :) ..........and the final product:


Here are a few images to illustrate the different ways the user can bend and shape our product into the shape they want.





Overall, we feel this product would be a very beneficial use for re-using bottlecaps. It would also reduce the manufacturing of new plastic to make existing pill containers. Our product is a new, simple, and practical idea for the standard pill container. It's also pretty fun to play with. :)