Probably I Can Invent It.
I’m an inventor with background in mechanical and electrical engineering. I have 2 patents, several patents applied for and about 300 ideas for new products and processes. I have prototyped a non-stick ice cube tray, a brushless synchronous alternator/motor, a simplified squirrel-cage motor with no “squirrel-cage,” and a free-gold separator. I already have the solutions to many product design problems, and many solutions to energy-saving appliances and equipment. And I can easily think of innovations or technical solutions to any product and process problem.
I have seen many of my ideas thought of also by appliance manufacturers, aircraft manufacturers, boat- and ship-builders. It bolsters my confidence that other people are thinking the way I do and are making technologically and commercially successful products. But it also establishes the fact that what one can invent on one side of the globe, another or others can also invent on the other side. Inventing and innovation all boils down to being the first to file a patent. If you don’t file a patent application early, others will and win!
I want to invite companies and individuals who want innovations in their products, product lines or processes to tell me what they want invented. Probably I can come up with a solution immediately. My email is inventready2000@yahoo.com. I’ll give my cellular phone number to any bona fide inquirer.
I like the way some groups handle an innovation idea. One group acts as intermediary between companies who need innovations and research laboratories, companies, researchers and inventors who provide the innovations. The group asks companies for innovations that they want with their products. The group then asks solution providers (including inventors) to send proposals to solve the problem (including a technical approach to solve the problem and what the solution can do), without touching on information or product feature that is of confidential nature. The group then receives proposals and turns over the proposals to the client company. Within three weeks the client company evaluates the proposals, and then contacts the solution providers that think they have the solutions. The client company and the solution provider then agree on the way the solution is submitted and paid for. In most cases a proof of concept or prototype has to be submitted to the client company.
Some of my innovations pertain to items in the following list:
1-2-man sub
Air/refrigerant compressor
Aircon saves 50% energy
Aircrafts
Aircraft propellers
Automotive alternator
Automotive tracks
Beds
Bicycle accessory
Boat, cheaper
Boat, fiberglass, aluminum, steel
Boat, quiet
Boat, safer
Boat, saves 50% fuel
Boiler, compact
Bottle cap
Bottles that sell their content
Brake, non-skid
Bridge
Brushless alternator/motor, compact
Brushless dc generator/motor, compact
Brushless generators for micro-turbines
Buildings, cheaper
Bus, quiet
Car drinks accessory, plastic
Car windshield accessory
Case for vaporub, shoe polish
Cellular phone
Chairs and sofas
Charcoal/wood stoves
Clothing accessory
Convenient ladies' jeans
Convenient panty
Dice toy
Dripper hose
Electric car, fast convenient charging
Electric fan
Electric iron, safe
Electric meter, allows time discounts
Electric plug
Electric switch
Electric transformer
Electric water heater
Exercise weights
Exerciser
Faucet, water saver
Fish cage, fish traps
Floating buildings and structures
Floating cottage
Free-gold separator
Gas turbine blade
Glass bottles
Glass plates
Heat exchanger
Helicopter
Helicopter, safer
Highway lamps
Houses and buildings, pre-fabricated
Hovercraft, more energy efficient
Ice bag
Ice cube tray, non-stick
Ice-making equipment
Kerosene stove
Kerosene wick lamp
Knife
Ladies' fan
Ladies’ jeans, convenient
Long life automotive battery
Long life incandescent lamp
Mixer
Motorcycle accessory
New PVC sheet product
New rubber sheet product
Nuclear reactor design, prevents meltdown
Oil expeller, no barrel bars
Outdoor poster sign
Oven
Packaging, stronger
Packaging that sell their content
Panty, convenient
Passenger bus, quiet
Pen accessory
Plastic bottles
Plastic cap for carbonated drinks bottles
Plastic container for chilled drinks
Plastic containers
Plastic flashlights
Plastic outdoor signs
Plastic promo items
Plastic sheet/plate
Plastic toilet
Poster sign, changing picture
Power kite
Projection screen
Puncture-resistant tire
Refrigerant compressor
Refrigeration, air-conditioning, energy-saving configurations
Roller wheels
Roof or canopy
Safer nuclear sub
Sailboats and sail cats
Scuba tank, streamlined
Sea electric generating power plants
Shoe accessory
Shoes, rubber and leather
Simplified squirrel-cage motor
Skirt, ladies’
Software, B2B
Software, secure chat, email
Software, voice translator
Solar panel, more energy absorption
Solar water heater
Structural beam
Structural supports
Stun gun, multi-shot
Sub for tourists and sports
Sub, deep-sea
Sub, quiet
Sub, safer
Sub, simplified
Sub, stealth
Submarines, submersibles
Method of building ships and subs w/o specialized equipment
Supermarket/store rack
Surface effect vehicles
Swimming pool for resorts
T-shirt
Umbrella
Vacuum cleaner, cleans better
Vacuum packing machine
Ventilated building
Washable engine air cleaner
Washing machine, energy saving
Water propellers
Water tank
Water turbines
Wind turbines
How I Invent Things. Or How I Create Innovations.
To companies, researchers, students or those who just love to tinker with things, I’ll tell you some of the ways I come up with innovations. I have prepared a PDF guide—50 or so guides on how to invent or innovate. I plan to sell it to companies to shortcut their product development process and to make innovators out of their managers, engineers and scientists. Meanwhile, here are four of them—
1. Be dissatisfied with a process or product.
First, you have to be dissatisfied with the situation or with a product or process to be able to think up of ways to improve it. In some cases, the need for innovation is obvious. Maybe an activity or process is expensive or it’s difficult to do or it’s very inconvenient. Maybe the product is bulky, heavy or prone to breakdowns. Then you see that you really have to improve the situation or the product.
For example, the inconvenience I had experienced with ice cube trays made me thought of a new ice tray. Ice cubes were difficult to remove individually in the old ice trays. So I imagined a new ice tray which I could twist gently by holding the ends and then individually push an ice cube with my finger. It was not long before I finally thought of a semi-cylindrical ice cube that would slide along its semi-cylindrical bottom when pressed on one edge with the finger. But in actual practice, the first semi-cylindrical ice cubes stuck to their compartments. When the water froze into “cube,” it expanded and the vertical sides of the cube push against the compartment walls. So I redesigned the ice compartment to have semi-conical sides. When the water froze it would expand, and the semi-conical sides would push the ice outward of the compartment. When pressed on one end the semi-cylindrical ice could now slide freely along its side.
Right hand column: First Ice Tray Design, Second Ice Tray Design
So far so good, until I found out years later that a copy was being manufactured in
2. Imagine the solution to your dissatisfaction.
Maybe an activity or process is expensive or it’s difficult to do or it’s very inconvenient. Maybe the product is bulky, heavy or prone to breakdowns.
So you see that the abstract solution to your dissatisfaction is obvious. If an activity or process is expensive, then it might be cheaper to eliminate it, to avoid it, to do it some other way. If some items in the activity or process are expensive, then those items might be replaced or eliminated.
If an activity is difficult to do, then what makes it difficult?
If the product is bulky, then what can make it smaller? Or can one bulky product be made into several smaller items?
If the product is heavy, what can make it lighter? A change in material? Can it be made into smaller parts?
If a product is prone to breakdowns, what part(s) do break down? Can the part be improved? Can it be eliminated? Often eliminating a part can make a product simpler.
For example, I thought of inventing a brushless alternator because my car, a used one, already exhibited signs of not properly charging the batteries. I thought maybe the carbon brushes were worn out, so I thought of inventing an alternator without brush and slip-rings.
An alternator, a generator that produces alternating current, is made up basically of a rotating magnet (rotor) and a stationary copper winding (stator). When the alternator is running, voltage and then current is produced in the copper winding. The rotating magnet is commonly a cast iron that becomes a magnet when a coil wound around it has a current passing through it. Current is fed to the coil of the rotating magnet through a pair of carbon brushes that have sliding contact with a pair of slip rings. Through months of use, the carbon brushes wear thin, oftentimes accumulating carbon dust around. Carbon dust is conductive and sometimes leaks current away instead of passing the current to the coil of the rotating magnet. Sometimes, the contact between the worn out carbon brushes and the slip rings also becomes loose, so insufficient current is passed on to the rotating magnet.
Above left: Magnetic rotor with coil and slip rings
Above right: Stator with copper windings
(From http://www.4wdandsportutility.com/tech/0406_4wd_high_output_car_alternator/photo_07.html)
Drawing: My brushless alternator
Above: A commercial brushless alternator similar to my invention.
(From: http://www.electrodyne.com/images/op_pic_2.gif)
I studied diagrams and drawings of the rotating magnet and the stationary copper coil. I was looking for a way to make the rotating cast iron a magnet without putting its coil on it. (It’s called an exciting coil, that is, it excites the cast iron to become a magnet.)
I eventually found a way, and put the exciting coil 7 on the stator 6 instead of on the rotor, with the coil still winding around the core of the rotating magnet without actually touching it. Since the rotor coil is now fixed on the stator, there is no more need for carbon brushes and slip rings. The same parts are eliminated, and so is the problem of worn-out carbon brushes.
In recent years I found out that my invention apparently was already being manufactured in many countries. My brushless alternator is unipolar and has little hysteresis loss, so it can be operated at much higher speed than other alternators. This means it can be made small and light, ideal for directly attaching to micro-turbines, ideal for many military applications. But I had not applied for international patents, so my invention became public domain in most countries.
Anyway, you can see that the general solutions to most problems are really simple. If it’s expensive, eliminate it, avoid using it, do it another way. If an activity or process is difficult, find what is difficult and simplify it. If it’s heavy or bulky, make it lighter by changing material, breaking it down into smaller components, or simply by making it smaller. If a part is prone to breakdowns, improve it or eliminate it.
Also if a product is long, fold it, make it telescopic, break it down into segments. If it is flexible enough, roll it.
If it has too wide an area, fold it, roll it, compress it or cut it into segments.
3. Break down the events when each function is needed.
Sometimes, to get to the solution you have to break down the events when each function is needed.
In college, I had to wash and iron my clothes. Often the cord of the electric iron gets in the way on the ironing board. It was inconvenient. So I began to think how to get the cord out of the way.
Remove the cord? The electric iron won’t heat. You have to connect the cord to heat the electric iron. Only after the electric iron is heated can you unplug the cord from the iron. OK, you don’t need the cord when the iron is already hot. The cord need not be connected to the iron when the iron is already hot and ready for smoothing your shirt. So you imagine a cordless electric iron, and put it on the ironing stand to rest—that’s when the cord should be heating it! So you imagine a care-free method that the iron should just slide down to contact with the cord for heating. To slide means a slanting guide or a vertical guide to make the contact between electric iron and its former cord. So put the contact terminals at the rear of the iron so the pointed and streamlined front would stay. Now, the contacts have to be partially covered while the iron is in use so you can not accidentally touch them. That means the cord contacts have to be recessed or partially covered.
Take a look at the finished product below. It’s not mine, it’s a commercial product. Someone else eventually thought of my idea, patented it and had it manufactured. I had not patented my idea. I had and have lots of ideas, but I don’t have the resources to patent them in the
Above: Commercial cordless electric iron
(From http://www.haipengdq.com/ProductsAllZ.asp?id=394&Str=ELECTRICAL%20IRON)
4. If the problem seems unsolvable, change it!
There’s a web site indicating some product problems, some of top 500 companies, waiting to be solved. To me, an outsider, three or four of the problems published already have their solutions if the problems are modified!
Not that a problem should not be solved, but that sometimes a problem calls for a technology that is not yet commercialized or that has not yet gone down so far in price. So that when you scan your knowledge base, you come up with a blank if you consider the price constraints.
An example is a tile wanted by a company that can be removed on demand, that is, if a customer wants another color or theme. Or maybe, if certain tiles just have to be replaced more often because they are often treaded on. But the company wants the application cost to be the same as that of other ordinary tiles at present. So you see that the problem is not technologically unsolvable. It’s the price constraint that seems to make it unsolvable.
So what to do? Change the problem to some special tiles only that would be applied on the often-treaded paths, and the price constraint may be removed for these few tiles. And there, you have some tiles that can be removed and replaced on demand!
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