New Pill Crusher uses Stainless
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Avoiding contaminated perscriptions through good hygeine is a key advantage
Nickel magazine, Sep. 01 -- A pill crusher made of stainless steel is being market tested at
hospitals and nursing homes across North America.
The GRX pill crusher consists of a tubular exterior shell made of
S30400 stainless steel and internal components machined from
S30300 stainless. The manufacturer, Canada's Lustre Products, chose S30400 for its commercial
availability in cylindrical form and S30300 for its machinability.
Because sterility is essential for hospital products, Lustre uses a #4 stainless steel satin brush finish to make the unit as smooth, non-porous and easy to sterilize as possible.
The pill crusher is unique because it crushes pills between two paper dispensing cups to prevent contamination of the next patient's medication. The operator removes the top cup to dispense the medication, then replaces the two cups for the next batch.
The crusher, known as "The Twist" in the United States, is easier to use than conventional crushers because it's quiet and doesn't require a repetitive hammering motion. Instead, the GRX has a handlebar that rotates the unit down to crush the pills in one motion.
"Conventional pill crushers use a stainless steel rod that crushes the pills into powder, but they are noisy and entail a certain degree of fatigue on the part of the operator, who has to repeat the motion several times," says George Radke, the industrial designer of the the Twist.
Radke was approached by a Vancouver hospital several years to design a better pill crusher, but it wasn't until Lustre Products installed a high-precision machining centre that the project became feasible.
Lustre has completed a pilot production run of about 200 units. Distributors in Canada and the United States are now selling those units.
Photo: LUSTRE PRODUCTS
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George Radke |
