Pill Cutter / Guillotine / First metal mill Project

Hi all, after getting a good lesson from @Emerson on the manual mill, I started on my first project with it, a medication pill cutter/guillotine. A few photos and the drawing are below. The project was inspired by a family member who had to cut a bunch of medicine pills a while back. I have no intention of trying to commercialize this project, it’s just me having fun, and trying out steel dowel pins as an element on which other elements slid. I will post some video in the machine shop Slack channel. :slight_smile:


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Nice,!have you looked at commercial pill cutters sold at pharmacies? They usually have a wedge/funnel guide that holds a large range of pill sizes safely centered under the path of the cutting blade.

Have you considered adding a mechanical stop to prevent the blade from being pressed through the cork?

Thanks for taking the time to comment. :slight_smile: I have seen some, and my parents have used the smaller plastic ones with the metal insert blade and wedge guide. Having a wedge guide would be an improvement. A mechanical stop would be a good addition, I had not thought of that.

The only thing this pill cutter might have better than others is a really clean cut from the thin utility blade, and maybe a more satisfying cutting action. Otherwise it lags far behind all other cutters in usefulness (and is probably dangerous without a blade guard or similar).

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You could use springs to push the blade holder up and add the wedge as part of a drawer. The springs would also serve as a mechanical stop

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