Product tear down
Pill organizer disassembly
Product teardown is one of the most useful exercises that young industrial designers should do regularly. Looking at a product's inner parts allows us to understand the thought process that led to its creation.
My dog, Zorro, an Australian Shepherd, is my biggest inspiration and helper. While I was working on a dog treat dispenser design for him, I needed to come up with a mechanism that would release treats and simultaneously produce a loud click. I decided to disassemble several products, including a pill organizer, to find out if I can adapt an existing mechanism to my product idea. I also wanted to learn how to design a plastic enclosure that can be assembled without adhesives or hardware. This pill organizer is a great example of design for disassembly because it easily breaks down into components and can be put back together.
Here is the deconstructed product and each component.
Compression springs are one of the leading components in applications of all scales as they are found in thousands of everyday products from pens to cars. In order for a mechanism to work, a compression spring should be secured inside a product enclosure. In this pill organizer, the spring is fit over a shaft of a similar diameter that holds the spring upright.
The spring is capped by the large gear, which is one of the components for a rotating and clicking mechanism.
The shaft that holds the spring is also designed as a snap-fit fastener that locks gears in place. It creates an effective fast joint that is quick and easy to assemble and does not require screws or nuts. The top face of a large gear precisely fits the bottom face of a small gear with the same angle and number of teeth. This type of gear is called a face gear because its teeth are not located around the edge but on the face. Teeth on face gears do not “roll” like teeth on other types of gears.
Two symmetrical bumps inside the small circular inner part of the pill compartment wheel precisely fit into openings in the outer part of the large gear, thus linking the gear and the wheel and allowing them to rotate simultaneously.
The button of the pill organizer is a crown gear with teeth that project parallel to the axis of the shaft.
In this short video clip, you can see how the button (the crown gear) slides down the angled teeth of the large gear, producing the first clicking sound when their teeth hit each other. Due to this motion, the large gear slides down along the narrow part of the shaft and rotates, which initiates the rotation of the compartment wheel. When the button is released, the large gear returns back up, knocking the small gear and producing the second clicking sound.
The second reason why I wanted to tear down this product was to examine its plastic enclosure design. It was injection molded and assembled without any fasteners. The enclosure consists of four parts: the bottom part, the body, the side lid, and the top lid. A lip and groove fastening feature allows two main parts of the enclosure to fit together snugly.
The side lid is designed to be clamped between the bottom part of the enclosure and its body.
The top lid has a tab that fits the cavity of the enclosure and locks two parts on one side. On the opposite side, the lid snaps onto the enclosure. The closed side lid locks the top lid, preventing it from accidental opening.
This exercise allowed me to study a clicking and rotating gear mechanism. I realized that this is a variation of a retractable pen mechanism, which is undoubtedly a mechanical marvel. I also had a chance to look inside the injection molded plastic enclosure and analyze how it was designed to be assembled without screws and adhesives. I can now incorporate my findings to develop my product ideas!