cb92
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Posts: 13
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Post by cb92 on Apr 26, 2008 20:43:22 GMT -5
Woody, good luck with this site. I've also been looking for a place where inventors can chat freely. I've been an inventor and fixer of things all my life. It's not made me rich, but it's been fun. It's amazing that whenever I propose a new idea to someone, all I get is flack and resistance. If it's not their idea, it's no good. I think that's human nature. When I contact a factory with a product that we all could make money on, I get the feeling that since it didn't come from their inside people, it's just not going to happen. Well, enough complaining. If anyone wants to knock an idea around, I love that. I especially like something that is challenging. My latest invention is a stair-climbing hand truck. It works fine, I use it all the time. It will handle an 18000 btu air conditioner single handed. You don't pull it up steps like all the others. No motors, belts, or goofy shaped wheels. I need it because I have a bad back. Wracked my back pulling a load of firewood up steps, said "there's gotta be a better way". Well, I hope this site works, there's plenty of us out there.
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Post by Woody Walker on Apr 26, 2008 21:03:37 GMT -5
Well thanks for dropping by cb92. You are right about human nature. It isn't very open to new things.
These are the realities. Another reality is that only about 5% of all patents make a profit for the inventor. So the odds are heavily against success.
On your hand-truck idea, we do have an aging population that will need more "prosthetic assistance" so to speak. You are thinking in the right market. On the otherhand, end user products are a tough sell, especially to an established company that doesn't want to leave their comfort zone.
That's one of the reasons I'm sticking with the manufacturing side where any kind of time savings computes to an automatic business case. In my experience a good business case sells itself.
I know of a man that became quite wealthy after several years as a bottling machine mechanic . He came up with a mechanism that greatly speeded up tool change-outs on bottle-capping machines. This increased throughput and productivity.
With a lathe and a milling machine in his basement he was getting about $800K a year in sales. His material cost was less than $50K/yr.
He tried to sell his business recently, but the bottle-capping market is going away. He did quite well with it for many many years.
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cb92
New Member
Posts: 13
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Post by cb92 on Apr 27, 2008 18:58:17 GMT -5
Woody- Yeah,' comfort zone' sounds about right. A patent is only as good as your lawyer, and your lawyer is only as good as your pocketbook. Anyway, how can I put my avatar up? I don't understand the url thing.
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Post by Woody Walker on Apr 27, 2008 21:35:23 GMT -5
For an avatar you go to your profile, then select to modify.
Go down to the line that asks for an avatar and either you can use one of those available, or you can copy/paste the address from another web-site into the address line.
To get an address just rightclick on whatever avatar you are wanting to use.
Your avatar can easily get cut off because it uses the other site's bandwidth.
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corus
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Post by corus on Apr 30, 2008 16:37:17 GMT -5
Again, good luck with the site as I think it's a good idea. I'm not too sure that many people will put really good ideas up though as they'd probably keep them to themselves rather than have them stolen, and let someone else possibly make money from them. Saying that, I would like to see a 'Brainstorming' section though that might just give someone the idea that they need. I've been in Brainstomin' sessions before where people put silly solutions to problems which can just turn out not to be so daft after all. As an example, I've always thought that lifejackets in airplanes were as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike, when the pilot has lost control over the Alps and you're all certain to crash. A better idea might be to have explosive bolts on the wings and tail plane to jettison them, while the passenger compartment fills up with helium and you gently float down to the ground, while the captain does Donald Duck impersonations. There must be a better way, surely?
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Post by Woody Walker on Apr 30, 2008 17:23:39 GMT -5
The reason I call this the "workplace innovation forum" is because some problems are best solved by the person working with them. I have enough of my own ideas to work on, and hopefully you have yours as well. I agree that nobody wants to show their design particulars, however this does not limit input, technical discussion, and valid output. I propose we can use a "black box" approach to discuss problems of a technical nature. It's a familiar concept in collaborative engineering. You need to know how to build a black box: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_boxExample: I have a torque socket idea that's self-aligning -- what industries would need one? What types of sockets? This statement tells you nothing about the design specifics, and there are plenty of designs already on the market. Each design has its strengths and weaknesses. We could talk about their weaknesses, and I can compare notes to my idea. Nobody knows exactly what I'm up to and my idea can change midstream just from the discussion. I feel comfortable divulging information this way. My idea stays in the "black box" and gets better. You'd have to see a drawing to figure it out, and I'm not going to show a drawing. The idea is real, and I'm not worried about you "stealing it." I approached a socket manufacturing company and asked them to make my socket for me so I could use it in our production process, and they turned me down. We were already making it in our plant machine shop and it was helping us tremendously -- but they didn't think of it, hence they aren't interested! This is real-life -- they're going to stay in their own comfort zone. When you go to a vendor and show them how to improve their product, their ego will probably be hurt about 9 times out of ten. They can't seem to get past that. In reality 95% of all patents fail to produce a profit for the same kind of reason. That means 95% of the people that were carefully protecting their idea would have been better off at least talking about it with somebody. I'm sure they felt it was the greatest thing since sliced bread when they patented the idea, but something went wrong. That's a hard way to learn a lesson. Things to ponder.....
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cb92
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Post by cb92 on May 2, 2008 21:56:50 GMT -5
Corus- I don't care if somebody steals my ideas. They aren't doing me any good if I can't produce them. If somebody wants to make my hand truck, fine. If they want to do the right thing and toss me some cash, fine too. If they don't, I'll still have the comfort of knowing my idea was worth developing. I e-mailed an old friend who has the machine shop I started in with an offer to have him produce the item, and he didn't even reply. When I was working in that shop the boss was always wanting to produce an original product. We used to make winches for the fishing industry out of old Ford rear ends. We made the best, and sold plenty. Corus, on your airplane idea, I know you're just joking, but that idea was considered using a parachute for the body. Not practical for big planes, but chutes are available for small planes. If I ever get my avatar up, you guys will see that I am an airship enthusiast. As far as new inventions go, there's a lot of room for improvement there. I've only seen one guy, Dan Nachbar, make anything recently. His unit is ok, but I want to go faster, farther, cheaper. I want to use plastic; but don't you know, I'm having one helluva time just getting a straight answer from plastic manufacturers and distributors on just exactly what is that stuff that is so popular for blister packaging. You can't tear it, no way. It's gotta be somewhere near reasonably priced, there is so much being used. I would need enough to make a prototype model about 15 feet long or so, just to check out my construction techniques. That much I can do in my shop. I can make a form for vacu-forming, and rig up heaters and suckers on that scale. All the panels would be the same, makes for easier construction. I just love the way they fold and weld the joints in that stuff. Woody- I like your pump. What does the little shaft on the red thing do? I've studied steam engines, don't quite get your thing; why does the main piston descend?
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Post by Woody Walker on May 4, 2008 15:11:26 GMT -5
If I ever get my avatar up, you guys will see that I am an airship enthusiast. I've looked for some good aircraft avatars. I'll probably have to go to military websites. If you find a good animation web-site let me know. This is possibly an early aircraft engine: I'm not quite clear on that rod thing myself. This is an invention from around the civil war era and it was used primarily to pump well water. ;D It latter became known as the Stirling engine. Here's a web-site that explains it a little better: engines.rustyiron.com/stable/ericsson.html
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cb92
New Member
Posts: 13
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Post by cb92 on May 5, 2008 18:04:19 GMT -5
Wow, Woody, that air engine is really cool, so's the site it came from. I'll check it out more later, looks like a good site for research. The air engine seems to use the vacuum stroke for the power stroke, like the first steam engines. I was watching a show on tv where a guy is using Sterling engines to make electricity from solar power. It was a great show, he's making a lot of juice, selling it to the grid.
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Post by Woody Walker on May 6, 2008 5:24:03 GMT -5
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cb92
New Member
Posts: 13
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Post by cb92 on May 6, 2008 21:56:10 GMT -5
Getting that hydrogen is going to be a tough part. I'm very interested in it (see avatar), but aware that making it in volume is not easy. What I have noticed is that if you google recycling, you see lots of catalytic converters, with platinum in them. Could that platinum be easily used to make hydrogen generators?
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Post by Woody Walker on May 7, 2008 4:46:47 GMT -5
Platinum is quite expensive. There are several cheaper materials that will work as well. One of the challenges is to to reduce the weight to power ratio and the volume to power ratio. A light weight material is needed to make this practical for vehicle applications. California already has a "hydrogen highway" infrastucture in place for fueling hydrogen powered cars.
One of the nice things about fuel cells is that they are so efficient. There are no mechanically moving parts in the engine for power losses, and no high temperatures to attain.
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cb92
New Member
Posts: 13
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Post by cb92 on May 21, 2008 16:15:09 GMT -5
Watching the Eco tech show on tv, see that plasma gasification, a waste recycling technique, has hydrogen as a major byproduct. Looks good to me, I presume the energy for the plasma comes from the process. It doesn't help if you have to use one energy to make another, like they are finding out with ethanol.
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Post by lawrephord3 on Dec 20, 2008 19:10:17 GMT -5
lawrephord3@hotmail.com let us reply in 2009 about what you have written here .
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Post by lawrephord3 on Dec 20, 2008 19:14:43 GMT -5
let us use this place for a link of links to more links about electric production ?
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