JPH04352616A - Device for feeding medicine - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To reduce the height of a packaging machine to make handling thereof convenient and prevent breakage of medicine due to its falling to improve the quality thereof by a method wherein medicines in a medicine case are aligned and separated by means of holes of an aligning body and hole of a moving body so that pieces or blocks of medicine are delivered from the lower part of a structural part, one by one. CONSTITUTION:In a structural part 13 of a medicine case 12 for receiving medicines on its upper part, an opening 21 for receiving medicines and agitation protrusions 22 are provided on the upper end of the part 13 and an aligning hole 28 for medicine in communication with the opening 21 is provided in the part 13. A crank mechanism connected to a driver imparts reciprocating motion to an aligning body 19 in the vertical direction, while said mechanism imparts reciprocating motion to a moving body 20 in the horizontal direction, so that medicines stored in the case 12 are aligned and separated by the aligning holes of the body 19 and the hole of the body 20 and then the medicines are discharged from the lower part of the part 13, one by one. As a result, the aligning, separating and discharging action of the medicines can be performed by a simple structure without requiring a large space, so that the structure can be formed into a vertically elongated shape.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention]

0001

[Industrial Application Field] The present invention can be used in hospitals, pharmacies, etc.
Equipped with a drug packaging machine that automatically selects and packages one or several types of drugs based on different prescriptions for each patient.
The present invention relates to a drug supply device that appropriately extracts stored drugs and delivers them to a packaging mechanism.

0002

[Prior Art] Currently, there are several thousand types of tablets prescribed in hospitals and pharmacies, but only 80 tablets are actually used.
Limited to class 0. Therefore, in the past, about 25
One or more tablet packaging machines are used that can store 0 types of tablets and can automatically package tablets according to the prescription simply by inputting the desired prescription data into a controller such as a computer. .

[0003] The structure of such a tablet packaging machine is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 58-46962.
The drug storage part has a drug storage part that stores multiple rectangular parallelepiped tablet cases in the upper part, and a casing in which the packaging machine part is stored in the lower part via a funnel-shaped hopper and shutter. The tablet cases are stacked in several stages vertically and horizontally, and the tablet cases are driven by inputting a predetermined extraction signal to the controller, extracting the tablets, and introducing them into the hopper via the falling passage. , and is configured to discharge one package to the packaging machine section via a shutter.

[0004] The packaging machine section also includes a roller that can be thermally welded and wound with pre-folded wrapping paper, a tension roller, and a vertical heat sealer that vertically heat seals the wrapping paper to form continuous pouches. It consists of a mechanism, a lateral heat-sealing mechanism that seals the upper opening of the pouch into which the tablets are placed, and a feed roller.

[0005]The feed roller is driven intermittently to convey the wrapping paper, and when the conveyance is stopped, the vertical heat-sealing mechanism forms a pouch, the shutter is opened to insert tablets, and the horizontal heat-sealing mechanism seals the pouch. Ru.

[0006] Furthermore, a tablet case, that is, a tablet feeding device, which is equipped in such a tablet packaging machine and which extracts the stored tablets as appropriate and delivers them to the packaging machine section, is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 63-1, for example.
As disclosed in Publication No. 1253, a tablet case part,
reciprocating in the radial direction with a rotary plate disposed on one side facing the tablet case portion and a plurality of ribs disposed with appropriate gaps around the surface of the rotary plate facing the tablet case portion; A locking member is attached to the rotary plate corresponding to the gap so that the tablet can be locked and pushed out, and a locking member is installed between the rotary plate and the tablet case part and rotated so that the tablet enters the inside of the rib. a partition plate having an opening with a diameter smaller than that of the plate, and a fixed wall on a surface facing the rib that substantially fits the rib so that the rib is on the inside; and a partition plate formed on the fixed wall facing a predetermined tablet extraction position. an elastic plate that is attached to close the tablet outlet from the outside and opens when urged by the tablet pushed out by the locking device; a magnet and a reed switch; and an opening and closing of the elastic plate. a shielding plate that shields between the magnet and the reed switch in response to the operation;
The locking member is biased in the direction of the center axis of the rotary plate, and when the locking member reaches the tablet extraction position by rotation of the rotary plate, the locking member protrudes toward the tablet extraction port through the gap between the ribs. and a control member that controls the reciprocating movement of the locking member in conjunction with the rotation.

[0007]

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] According to the tablet feeding device, that is, the tablet case, tablets can be reliably picked out one by one by the rotating operation of the rotary plate, and it is easy to detect when tablets are being ejected. Although it has the advantage of speeding up the processing time, such a tablet case has a structure in which the drive mechanism including the rotating plate and the tablet case are integrally arranged side by side, so as mentioned above, the tablet case is shaped like a rectangular parallelepiped close to a cube. As a result, the bottom area inevitably becomes large, and when storing them in a tablet packaging machine, there is no other way but to stack them in several stages in the vertical direction, which poses the problem of increasing the height dimension of the tablet packaging machine.

[0008] This problem has resulted in the drawback that it is extremely difficult for short people to handle the tablet case, for example, when replenishing tablets to the upper tablet case.

[0009] Furthermore, due to the increased height of the drug packaging machine, when dropping tablets from a tablet case placed at a high position into a hopper via a drop passage, the tablets may be dropped when they are dropped. There was a problem in that the tablets were damaged by the large impact.

Furthermore, since the tablets extracted from the tablet cases fall into the hopper through a common falling passage for each tablet case, if one of the tablet cases is removed, the tablets will fall out of the empty space from which it was removed. There was a problem in that it was dangerous and it was impossible to replenish tablets into the tablet case while the tablet packaging machine was in operation.

[0011] The present invention has been made in view of the above, and enables the tablet case to be formed into a vertically elongated shape, so that when the tablet case is placed on a drug packaging machine,
The height dimension of the packaging machine is reduced to improve usability for users, and the quality is improved by preventing damage to the medicine due to tablets falling from the tablet case.Furthermore, it is possible to replenish the medicine even while the packaging machine is in operation. The purpose of this invention is to provide a possible drug supply device.

[0012] Another object of the present invention is to provide a drug supply device that can accommodate a mechanism section compactly even if the tablet case is formed elongated in the vertical direction, and that has a simple structure with a small number of parts.

[0013]

[Means for Solving the Problems] The drug supply device of the present invention includes a drug case section for storing a drug in the upper part, and a mechanism part in the lower part, and the mechanism part has an opening into which the drug enters and a protrusion for stirring at the upper end. and an alignment body that has a drug alignment hole formed in the interior and continuous with the opening, and that is reciprocated in the vertical direction by a crank mechanism connected to a drive device, and a lower side of the alignment body. and a movable body that reciprocates in the horizontal direction following the vertical movement of the alignment body, and has a hole that communicates with the alignment hole at a predetermined position. The medicines are arranged and separated by the alignment holes of the alignment body and the holes of the moving body, and are discharged one by one or in batches from the lower part of the mechanism part.

[0014]

[Function] With the above-described configuration, the drug supply device of the present invention can separate and discharge drugs with a simple mechanism of reciprocating movement of the aligning body and the movable body. This can be done using a displacing aligning body and a movable body that displaces in the horizontal direction by the amount that the holes deviate from the aligning holes, so the drug supply device can be formed into a vertically elongated shape with a small bottom area.

As a result, the elongated drug supply devices can be arranged side by side in a horizontal plane, and even if the drug storage capacity of the drug supply device and the number of drugs arranged are maintained at the same level as before, the height of the drug packaging machine can be maintained. The installation space can be greatly reduced.

[0016]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Examples of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

1 is a drug packaging machine. This packaging machine consists of a casing 4 having a drug storage section 2 at the top and a packaging machine section 3 at the bottom, and a casing 4 that is inserted into a grid-like partition plate 5 of the drug storage section 2 and arranged in a plane, elongated in the vertical direction. A plurality of formed tablet cases 6, a loading mechanism 7 that takes out a predetermined number of tablets from the lower part of a selected one of the tablet cases and puts them all at once into a packaging bag, and a tablet takeout operation and loading mechanism of the tablet case 6. 7 and a control device 8 for controlling the tablet loading operation etc., and the packaging bag into which the tablets are loaded is sealed and packaged.

The casing 4 has a sliding door 9 on the top surface.
is attached, and by sliding this door, the top surface is opened to expose the lattice-shaped partition plates 5 and the tops of the tablet cases 6 arranged between the partition plates. The partition plate has 12 columns in the depth direction, and is modularized with 10 rows as one unit. (However, these columns and rows are not limited to this.) Therefore, one module can accommodate 120 types of tablets, that is, 120 tablet cases 6, and multiple modules can be connected. Accordingly, 120,240,3
It can be configured to store 60,480 types. A stepped bottom plate 10 with a concave center is disposed below the grid-like partition plate 5, and an electrical connector 11 is attached to the portion of the bottom plate that contacts the tablet case 6.

The tablet case 6 is electrically connected to the control device 8 by being inserted into the electrical connector 11, and exchanges drive signals and detection signals.

Furthermore, since the bottom plate 10 is formed in a stepped shape, it can accommodate two types of tablet cases 6A and 6B having different lengths, as shown by the dashed line in FIG.
This makes it possible to store the appropriate number of tablets even with tablets of different sizes.

As mentioned above, the tablet case 6 is formed into a vertically elongated columnar shape (length 300 mm), and the transparent tablet case 12 is square cylinder shaped (φ46 mm) for storing tablets in the upper part, and the tablet case 12 is transparent in the lower part. A columnar mechanism section 13 is formed to be detachable.

The mechanism section 13 includes a pair of frames 14 and 15 that are divided into two parts in the vertical direction, an elongated hole 16 attached to the upper end of the frame, and a long hole 16 in the center through which the tip of an alignment body 19 (described later) is inserted. It is composed of a partition body 18 having an inclined surface 17 facing the elongated hole 16, an alignment body 19, a moving body 20, and a drive device 21.

[0023] The array body 19 has an opening 21 at the upper end into which the tablet is inserted.
and a stirring protrusion 22, and the frames 14, 15 on both sides.
The movable body 20 has a protrusion 24 that engages with the guide groove 23 of the movable body 20, and a protrusion 26 that is connected to the upper end of the transmission plate 25.
It has an annular portion 27 that guides the horizontal movement of the
The interior thereof has an alignment hole 28 that is continuous with and penetrates the opening 21 .

[0024] This arrayed body 19 has a motor 29,
It reciprocates in the vertical direction via the transmission plate 25 by a drive device 52 consisting of a gear reducer 50 and a crank mechanism 51.

At this time, at the top dead center, the stirring protrusion 22 of the alignment body 19 is in a position protruding from the elongated hole 16 (the position shown in FIG. 1), and at the bottom dead center, the stirring protrusion 22 is in the elongated hole 16. It becomes a housed position. The moving body 20 has a frame body 14 on both sides,
It has a protrusion 54 that engages with the fifteen inclined grooves 53, and has a hole 55 inside thereof that communicates with the alignment hole 28 at a predetermined position.

The movable body 20 is housed in the annular portion 27 of the alignment body 19, and reciprocates in the horizontal direction as the alignment body 19 reciprocates in the vertical direction.

At this time, the alignment hole 28 and the hole 55 of the movable body 20 match at the bottom dead center of the alignment body 19, and the alignment body 19
At the top dead center, the position of the hole 55 shifts forward in FIGS. 1 and 2.

As a result, the tablets separated by the forward movement of the movable body 20 fall from the hole 55, and the tablet discharge detector 5
6 and is discharged from the lower part of the mechanism section 13.

Note that 57 is attached to the lower surface of the alignment body 19,
This is a guide plate that guides the tablets that have fallen from the hole 25 of the moving body 20 downward.

Tablet case 6 configured as described above
According to the above, tablets can be aligned, separated, and ejected using a simple mechanism of vertical reciprocating motion of the aligning body 19 and accompanying horizontal reciprocating motion of the movable body 20. The body 19 is vertically displaced, and the moving body 20 is the hole 5.
As is clear from the figure, the displacement in the horizontal direction is as small as the displacement between the tablet case 6 and the alignment hole 28.
can be formed into a vertically elongated shape with a small base area.

As a result, a large number (120 tablets) of elongated tablet cases 6 can be arranged in a horizontal plane as shown in FIG. Even if it is secured, the height and installation space of the tablet packaging machine can be significantly reduced.

Next, a tablet packaging machine equipped with the tablet case 6 having such a structure will be explained.

Further, as shown in FIG. 4, reference numeral 35 denotes a hopper having a triangular cross section that is high at the front and back and low at the center, and the tablets discharged from the tablet case 6 are guided by this hopper 35 to the center of the hopper in the front and back direction. Ru. This hopper has a structure that is simply locked to the casing 4, and can be removed without using any special tools, making cleaning such as removing powder powder easy. 36 and 37 are hoppers 35
A pair of conveyors are installed at the bottom of the hopper 35, and transport the tablets dropped at the center of the hopper 35 in the front-rear direction to the center in the left-right direction.

The loading mechanism 7 is composed of a movable container 39 which can be moved in the front and back direction and whose bottom plate 38 is opened when the container is moved forward, and a paper opening device 40 which widens the entrance before the container is inserted into the medicine packet paper. and the conveyor 36
, 37, when a package of tablets has been collected in the movable container 39, the container is horizontally moved forward, the bottom plate 38 is opened, and the tablets are put into the medicine wrapper.

The packaging machine section 3 includes a roller 42 around which a packaging sheet 41 which can be thermally welded and which has been folded in half in advance is wound around, a tension arm 43, and a tension arm 43 that heat-seals the packaging sheet into a T-shape to form a continuous pouch. a T-shaped heat sealing mechanism 44, a printer device 45 that prints predetermined items such as prescription data on each package, a feed roller 46 that intermittently sends out sheet-shaped packages, and a sheet-shaped package that A conveyor 48 conveys the bag to a medicine package discharge port 47. Then, the feed roller 46 is intermittently driven by a drive motor (not shown) to feed the packaging sheet 41, and when the feeding is stopped, the heat sealing mechanism 44 heat-welds the compartment of each sachet and the lower half of the opening side. Then, a sachet with the upper half of the opening side opened is formed, and the opening of the sachet is expanded by the paper opening device 40, and a movable container is opened to accommodate one packet of tablets. 39 is inserted, the bottom plate 38 of the container is opened, and one package of tablets is put into the sachet. Thereafter, the opening of the upper half of the sachet is thermally welded by the operation of the heat sealing mechanism 44 accompanying the next sachet forming operation, and the sachet containing the tablets is sealed. Here, at the same time as the operation of inserting tablets into the sachets by the above-mentioned inserting mechanism 7,
The printer device 45 prints the prescription data on the sachet. Finally, the conveyor 48 delivers the sachets in a continuous sheet to the medicine package outlet 47 located above. It should be noted that the packaging sheet 41 passing through the feeding mechanism 7 is fed vertically downward with the fold line facing toward you, as shown in FIG.

As described above, the drug supply device of the present invention, that is, the tablet case 6, has a vertically elongated columnar shape and has a small bottom area. Therefore, when the drug supply device is mounted on the drug packaging machine 1, it is arranged in a plane. Therefore, the height of the drug packaging machine 1 can be significantly reduced even if the capacity and number of devices arranged are the same as in the past. As a result, usability for the user can be improved. In addition, since all of the drug discharge ports 31 of the tablet case 6 are located in a plane below the supply device, the drug discharged from the tablet case 6 to the hopper 35 is discharged from a considerably low position. , it is possible to significantly reduce damage caused by falling drugs, and also to shorten the falling time, contributing to faster packaging operations.

Furthermore, since the tablet cases 6 can be arranged in a flat plane, there is no need for a conventional drop path shared by each tablet case 6, and the cases 6 can be pulled out while the drug packaging machine 1 is in operation. There is no possibility that the medicine will jump out of the machine from this extraction part, and even if the medicine is not extracted, there is a medicine case part 12 on the top of the tablet case 6, so even when the medicine packaging machine is in operation, it will not flow out into the tablet case 6. drug replenishment can be easily carried out,
User's work efficiency can be improved.

[0038]

As described above, according to the drug supply device of the present invention, the operations of arranging, separating, and discharging drugs can be realized with a simple structure that does not take up space in the horizontal direction, and can be formed to be elongated in the vertical direction.

As a result, it is possible to arrange elongated tablet cases side by side in a horizontal plane, and the height of the drug packaging machine can be maintained even if the drug storage capacity of the drug supply device and the number of tablets arranged are the same as before. The installation space can be greatly reduced.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a tablet case showing an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an exploded perspective view of the tablet case.

FIG. 3 is a perspective view of a tablet packaging machine.

FIG. 4 is a perspective view showing the arrangement of tablet cases.

[Explanation of symbols]

6 Tablet case 12 Tablet case part 13 Mechanism section 19 Arrangement body 20 Mobile object 21 Opening 22 Stirring protrusion 28 Alignment hole 51 Crank mechanism 52 Drive device 55 holes

Claims (1)

[Claims] Claim 1: A medicine case part for storing a medicine in the upper part, and a mechanism part in the lower part, the mechanism part has an opening into which the medicine enters and a protrusion for stirring at the upper end, and an inner part that is continuous with the opening. an alignment body that has drug alignment holes formed in the above manner and is reciprocated in the vertical direction by a crank mechanism connected to a drive device; and an alignment body that is disposed below the alignment body and communicates with the alignment hole at a predetermined position. and a movable body that reciprocates in the horizontal direction following the up and down movement of the alignment body, the medicines stored in the medicine case part are moved through the alignment holes of the alignment body and the movable body. 1. A drug supply device characterized in that the drug supply device is configured such that the drugs are aligned and separated at the holes, and are discharged one by one or one group at a time from the lower part of the mechanism part.