My solution tp the patent problem

I'd prefer that we simply did away with patents. Does McDonald's need a patent to sell hamburgers? Does Toyota need to patent the idea of a hybrid to sell the Prius? Of course not! In a free market, the guy who best meets the customer's needs wins! A patent cannot do that; if anything, patents and the monopoly they enforce usually result in a customer being forced to pay way too much for something, or to not have any choices at all in a market...neither of which would happen in a truly free market.

But there is so much investment in this lunatic system that I'd never get my way. So as a compromise, this is what I propose:

1. First of all, there would be separate utility patent "sublclasses" for drugs/therapeutics, and for traditional utility patents. The reason for this is that drugs truly deserve special consideration as they are much harder/more expensive to develop.
2. Regular utility patents would work as follows: you get 10 years on the patent, not the ridiculous 20 they allow now. For the first 5 years, you and you alone can decide what to do with it; you can sit on it, or license it, or develop/manufacture/sell with it. If you haven't done anything within 5 years, it's revoked forever. On the DAY 5 years rolls around, you are now compelled to license it to anyone who makes a request, and you must license it for no more than 7% of revenues (or equivalent).
3. For drugs, the system is as follows: you get 4 years from the date of filing to request a phase I FDA trial, you get 5 years to complete trails, and the DAY you get FDA approval, you get 8 years to sell/license/do whatever. If you miss any of the milestones, your patent is gone. But, the time limits given are completely reasonable for anyone diligently trying to pursue a real drug. It also forces companies to do a little more front end work, so we don't end up with Vioxx type fiascos where the drug Co.s only realize their mistake late in the game and then scurry to hide it. It's better to be forced to figure out troubles early on that to waste money on human trials and then cover your ass when it all goes wrong.

I'm sure all the patent attorneys, corporatists, and other vermin would find these solutions absolutely shocking. They'd never be able to pay for their misdeeds if innovators had only 7 or 8 years to play the monopoly game. Prices would rise, they'd say. Well, of course they'd rise, that's what happens regardless when you're allowed a damned monopoly! But since the monopolistic period would be so short, monopolists would have an incentive to not overdo it with the price hikes because consumers would rapidly ditch them once and for all as soon as the artifical scarcity imposed by the monopoly is busted.

If instead, we truly found a way for people to exchange their innovations in a free marketplace, innovation, science, and technology would flourish like never before. And in that scenario, EVERYONE wins, not just hte monopolist. I invite your ideas here too...though I'm not interested in reading defenses of the current system (the literature is saturated with the self-serving apologists of the current system).

Anger management

Well, this is a letter of catharsis. It won't do any good. But maybe some of you dear readers may get some benefit, a chuckle perhaps, from hearing about my story and my motivation.

I am trying to start up a business that recycles printed circuit boards from electronic waste (e-waste). Now, there are some legitimate e-cyclers out there (most in the US aren't, sadly), but even these legitimate e-cyclers are not really extracting the full recyclable value from the boards.

You see, most PC boards, cables, CRT's, etc. are simply shredded, and the metals then recycled via various methods of separation and extraction. While this ensures that some value is extracted from this waste stream, it really doesn't garner all that much. Furthermore, from an energy efficiency standpoint, recycling just the metal content alone is really not all that great. That is, there is a lot of embodied energy spent in transforming metal and plastic into useful components; when you recycle only the raw materials, all of that embodied energy is "lost".

What I want to do is recycle the modules and components found in e-waste. Right now, this is only done on a very limited scale, and is done by hand. I intend to find a way to automate it.

The trouble I'm running into is the insane patent system in this country. Apparently, given enough money and lawyers, one can get a patent in pretty much anything, no matter how trivial and obvious.

Consider the following Us Patent (#6705509):

http://patimg1.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=06705509&homeurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO1%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526d%3DPALL%2526p%3D1%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsrchnum.htm%2526r%3D1%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526s1%3D6705509.PN.%2526OS%3DPN%2F6705509%2526RS%3DPN%2F6705509&PageNum=&Rtype=&SectionNum=&idkey=NONE&Input=View+first+page

These geniuses patented the very basic idea that you should sort pc boards by solder type, and then melt the solder off to recycle the solder. No, I'm not kidding. Now, maybe to some nontechnical folks that sounds like a reasonable basis for a patent. To anyone "in the art" however, it's totally, stupidly and ridiculously obvious. It's like patenting the idea to put cardboard in the cardboard bin and aluminum cans in the aluminum can bin. Solder recyclers already request that their customers do this separation, and it's standard practice not to mix solder types together whenever possible. You don't believe me? Read on:

http://www.pkaymetal.com/Reclamation.htm

Skip down to the "Processing and Testing" paragraph:

"When P. Kay Metal receives your material at its Los Angeles facility, it is weighed and analyzed via an ICP (Incductively [sic] Coupled Plasma) spectrometer. The resulting analysis details the metal compostion of the returned material. Alloys are segregated by compostion and form (dross or metal), assigned lot numbers and recycled."


Now my gripe is that these are dozens if not hundreds of patents (many of which are patents on pretty obvious/stupid stuff) that could apply to some, any, or all of the various aspects of my proposed operation. While I would not be brazenly copying their idea/patent, I would be using aspects of their designs that are sort of "givens", such as using a heat lamp to heat up solder, etc. That's the purpose of innovation: take what's out there already, and improve on it. It's nearly impossible to come up with a method that utilizes no "prior art" whatsoever; it's not like the laws of physics will bend to suit some legal system whims. And the trouble is, even if your new method is strikingly more efficient by incorporating truly innovative ideas, it would cost you a boatload of money to demonstrate something that's really just common sense, to either a judge or jury. I really need not be truly infringing on a patent for someone to be able to bog my business down (and likely into bankruptcy) with a patent fight blackmail.

Even more frustrating for me is that in certain cases, there really may be no way to improve on something. In that case, it's best just to license a technology, or buy someone's machine...a perfectly reasonable thing to do, you'd think. But no, many of the holders of IP, with their government-enforced monopoly, decide that they don't want to license to anyone without millions of dollars up front...an impossibility for any small business. What these patent trolls are doing is forcing the economy to become one where only bloated corporations can operate, where legal wrangling and arcane patent fights are just a "cost of doing business"...a cost of doing business, one might add, that is most certainly passed on to consumers!

I don't have the money to get a rock-solid legal opinion granting me a defense of non-infringement on dozens of patents. Heck, even a large corporation would be hard pressed to do so. So I'm left wondering what in the hell to do about it.

All I have to say is that I just hate the patent system. It is doing more to shut down innovation in both the private and public sector than any other factor. We, as a society, cannot afford to bear the costs of such an unreasonable system. There has to be a way to cooperate and allow people like me to be able to innovate and move the economy forward. I'm willing to pay someone if I indeed need their ideas and expertise to succeed. I'm not here to rip anyone off, steal ideas, or cheat my way to success. But I can't afford to hire a legion of lawyers just to be able to start a business, and nobody should have to anyway. WE NEED TRULY FREE MARKETS, AND PATENTS ARE A PARTICULARLY PERNICIOUS FORM OF MONOPOLISM!

I just hope, one day, that I can indeed operate sucessfully in my intended bsuiness, with some of the ideas I've shared here. If I cannot, then I hope someone else out there can! I just cannot stand the idea that we are going to continue to dump our wealth needlessly into landfills, ruining our economy, and poisoning our planet.

Belt sander through hole "desolderer"

So the idea for this is quite simple: you just sand away the underside and the parts are freed.

I've included two figures for some clarity. You allow the belt sander to pull the part along by friction, and you can control the rate of travel by adjusting friction, or by having some sort of indexing mechanism. A guide rail and guided carrier is used to control depth of "cut".

Figure 1: the basic idea

Figure 2: close up of side clamp. This would likely be made of brass or vespel. The guide into which it fitrs is likely high carbon steel, cast iron, or a tool steel (O-1).

Method to remove through hole components from board

This idea is a modification of a wave soldering system to desolder stuff and knock it loose.

A PC board with through-hole parts to be removed is placed in a carrier assembly. This carrier assembly consists of side clamps, and an overhead stiffener. The overhead stiffener is attached to the side clamps by studs/threaded rods that pass through ears on the sides of the clamps and stiffener. The overhead stiffener also has threaded holes to provision use of support dowels or studs that touch the pcb board once the clamps and stiffener are fastened together. See Figures 1 and 2:
Figure 1: The side clamps

Figure 2: the carrier assembly fully assembled with board attached

The stiffener also has ears to allow attachment to a robotic arm that will manipulate the carrier assembly inside a wave soldering machine.


The whole assembly of stiffener/board/clamps is loaded into the desoldering machine. Here, the carrier is reciprocated across the surface a wave solder pool/pot several times so as to melt the solder on the underside and melt the solder in all the layers/topside via conduction. Once the solder has had sufficient time to melt (1-2 seconds), it is rapidly lifted up or rotated up, and is translated sideways, and then slammed into a platen. This impact impacts sufficient force and impulse to displace the components and free (most or all of them) from the board. See figure 3:
Figure 3: the robotic arm assembly which operates inside wave desoldering machine/cell

The atmosphere inside this "flapjack" desoldering machine is controlled to prevent excessive oxidation. Thus, it is purged with Ar or N2 to reduce oxygen content below about 10 ppm (standard for most wave soldering machines). The gas temperature is also controlled to avoid thermal shock of components, thus it is held at nominally 80C.

The freed parts are then conveyed or wipered away to one of several holding cells; the holding cell has an airlock to prevent excessive loss of purge gas. The holding cell also allows parts to cool down to 30 C at a moderate pace (1 C/sec or less).

The spent board is then taken out through the entry/exit port, which also has an airlock.

"Air hockey" sorting table

The idea behind this is simple: only objects with a low mass/surface area ratio will be suspended, the rest will simply sit still. A table with thousands of tiny holes on say .1" spacing will act to levitate IC's. The table is inclined, so these IC's "float" their way to the end for collection. The other items will sit still once loaded onto the table (from a conveyor), and can be pulled off periodically by a wiper that reciprocates every 5-10 seconds to prevent excessive build up.

Notice further that very small objects (smaller than hole center spacing) will likely also not move. Thus, one could then do an immediate separation on stationary objects based on size quite easily.

An extension of this idea is to have variable spacing of holes to allow sorting by surface area. Thus, you will get a gradient of parts according to surface area by having a small inter-hole spacing at the beginning, and progressively large hole spacing going forward.

The best way to load such a table is likely with a gentle vibratory feed platen that is separated from the table itself by a small gap, spanned by a plastic apron/bridge.

More details on pcb desoldering centrifuge

So I did some more thinking about the pcb centrifuge. I've included some figures this time. The centrifuge rotor is a cup structure, likely made of high grade ductile (nodular) iron. There are 10-20 pcb compartments around the rotor. In each compartment, there is a clamp to hold the board in place, and the wall has blind stud/dowel holes for placement of "keeper" dowels or studs.On the wall there is stainless, brass, or copper gauze to act as both a part buffer and a sponge for dross/solder.

You put the board in, and then backfill the compartment with a low melting paraffin wax or a silicone oil. The wax or oil does 4 things:

1. Prevents most solder oxidation.
2. Acts as a viscous medium to slow part separation form board
3. Prevents rapid temperature cycling of parts thereby minimizing risk of thermal shock.
4. Acts as a heat transfer medium
   

See the figures:

And:

In the embodiment I'm thinking of, each compartment has an electrically resistive heater, either a potted into place heater or an element heater spot welded or brazed to the compartment walls.. Alternatively, you could circulate a heat transfer liquid through a "water jacket" machined/cast into the compartment housing.

Finger deflector

This little gadget does one thing and one thing only, it sorts parts falling off a conveyor based on weight. Heavy parts fall through to the secondary catch, lightweight parts will slide down the finger to the primary catch.

See the figure. The finger itself is made of HDPE, Teflon, or Nylon. It can have a metallic (or plastic) backer spring to increase stiffness as necessary.

As one can see at the bottom of the figure, there is an array of these fingers that span the end of a conveyor line. The fingers look a bit like these musical combs used in music boxes.

Method to rotate planar SMT ics into vertical

So this idea is for a method/device that will take planar SMT ICs on a conveyor, flip them to the vertical, and transport them up off the conveyor belt (to go onto another conveyor or down into a bin).

Figure 1 shows the "stiletto finger" that flips the IC up. There would be an array of these stilettos across the width of the conveyor. The bottom of the stiletto is perhaps 0.004" to 0.010" nominally above the face of the conveyor (so that it does not rub). In figure 2 you can see that there is a traction wheel at the end of the stiletto that kicks the IC up off the conveyor. One can then use external guides, conveyors, or other mechanisms to direct the IC elsewhere.

Figure 1: the top view is plan, the bottom a side view. I'm trying to show that the bottom part of the stiletto is radiused. I'm not a good artist, sorry.

Figure 2: here you see the soft (foam rubber or foam urethane) wheel kicker. The kicker wheels will likely all be chain driven as they will be part of an array across the width of the conveyor.

Anti-"White Ford Bronco" device

Look out all you crazy police chase loonies, I've got the perfect remedy to stop you.

The idea is this: a police cruiser is fitted with a fixed mount launching tube (about 8" long) to fire what is basically a magnetic grapple and parachute. The firing "charge" can be from an on-board 300 psi compressor and dump tank, a CO2 cylinder, or even a small Cordite gas generator. A cruiser gets close, fires the "bag" at the vehicle, it sticks thanks to some tenacious NdFeB magnets, and the parachute pops. Depending on the size of the chute, you'll be lucky to surpass 45 MPH after deployment. Now, instead of being able to kill dozens of people in your quest for glory, you're definitely caught and going to jail. So anticlimactic.

There are some important details needed here: the bag has the chute at one end, the magnets at the other. The magnets are little cubes of NdFeB and have rubber coating to prevent chipping. Each magnet is separated from the others in a series of mini-compartments like a cow's stomach. The bag itself is made of Cordura or Spectra. Around the periphery of the bag there are spring loaded "petals" with even more magnets in them. They deploy right after the bag first hits the vehicle. The chute then deploys perhaps 1-2 seconds after the petals are down.

The release of the parachute requires a mechanical setback and setforward, and electromag proximity sensor to allow release of the petals and 'chute deployment spring (thus you have a little ruggedized battery powered microcontroller unit in the mid section).

The bags should be reuseable, but even if not, they are likely only perhaps 1-2k replacement cost...far less expensive than new cars or trips to the hospital.

Demining ideas

So something that I want to do someday is to create demining machines. If any of you out there want to try my ideas, feel free.

1) A tower crane with a 1000 gallon forest fire helicopter-borne water dump bucket (like they use with the Chinooks). Yep, that simple. Fill 'er up, swing it out, and dump. Rinse and repeat. It should set off most antipersonnel mines. If you repeat the process several times per patch you should be able to make it relatively easy to do a manual survey for 100% clearance.

2) A waterjet on tracks. Basically, you have a modified Bobcat on tracks that pulls a water tender. You run a high pressure water pump off a PTO or hydraulic motor-water pump accessory to power a series of nozzles on a flexible fiberglass or Kevlar composite pole. You'd likely need to pulse the jets so that the jerk (dF/dt) sets off the mines; you can do this with high flow valves and an accumulator upstream. The nozzles would be angled about 45 deg. to the vertical and held maybe 10 inches off the ground. The nozzles themselves would be protected from frag by copper collars. The driver/operator cab of course would be armored and have portal windows, likely made from AlON (aluminum oxynitride).

Another way to sort components by size

Again ,this is to be applied to a conveyor with small parts on it.

Essentially, the way this works is that you have rows of size-exclusing fingers just above the conveyor. As the parts move down the conveyor, the parts too large to file past the fingers get caught and are held in place. At various intervals, the conveyor is stopped or slowed, and the finger assembly has a backer bar come in, push against the back of the caught part, lifts up, translates sideways, opens the backer bar and dumps the part onto another conveyor (or bin), and then recycles to the normal position. at this point, the conveyor accelrates back to normal speed and the overall cycle continues.

There would likely be dozens of rows of these catch finger arrays along the lenght of the separator.

See figures one and two below for an idea of what I'm talking about:

Beautiful, I know.

In figure two, you see the backer bar (with "soft jaw" foam) come in to clamp the component (in this case a transformer). The finger array and backer then lift up, and would then move laterally (into and out of xy plane) , and then the backer bar would release the component into the bin or next conveyor.

The drawings are lame, but the idea is simple.

More reasons to hate our patent system

As anyone with a lick of knowledge realizes, patent battles are costing human lives because the rule of the game now is to build a wall of patents around any and every scientific discovery these days:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7632318.stm

So if you'd like to see an AIDS vaccine, or a cure for cancer, it's time to either reform the patent system or nuke it away completely.

A friend of mine, Tom Carmona, has suggested that there be a central patent licensing clearinghouse in this country, a sort of Christie's auction house specifically for patents. Furthermore, he believes all new patents should by default be listed on this exchange, unless the patentee opts out (NOT opts in). If the patentee opts out, there should be a time limit (3 years?) for them to either begin production, find a licensee themselves, or initiate required government approval (if it's a pharmaceutical). Otherwise, the patent then goes back to the exchange for auction. There would be daily public announcement of patents to be auctioned in the future (say a month later). All potential buyers would be vetted financially and screened for conflict of interest, just like in any professional auction.

I agree with Tom's idea, although it doesn't quite go far enough. We, as a society, should allow innovators to profit from their ideas. But we should not allow people to block access to markets just because it will self-enrich them. This sort of government enforced destruction of free markets is financially, socially, and morally wrong and corrosive.

Method for deburring/dedrossing SMT's and IC's

My idea is along the lines of the old pneumatic spark plug media blaster. Instead, here you media blast or dry ice powder blast the leads on IC's or SMT's. The device is clamped down into a nozzle assembly, and the periphery allows the media to strike the little legs of the device. Thus, the body of the device is spared the scouring action, and only the leads get blasted. You'd have different nozzle assemblies to fit different device outlines (TSSOP, DIP, etc.).

You could also have a array of these nozzles to process devices coming down a conveyor. The motion of the conveyor would be discontinuous to allow row-by-row blasting.

One more "disclaimer"

Again, while all of my ideas are public domain, ALL of my writing is copyrighted. That is, I reserve all rights to the material I present. If any of you wish to use it for your own purposes, just contact me at quelisto (at) g.m.a.i.l dot com.

So, here in the public commons, while we gladly share, we have rules. You break the rules, and you get beat down. Slackers and parasites NOT allowed.

Reminder...

Now most folks are going to look at my posts and roll their eyes. And some folks are going to look at the ideas, maybe try them, or maybe build on them for something else.

So long as you don't try to use my ideas, or simple extensions of my ideas, as basis for your own patent, we're cool. Try and patent these now PUBLIC DOMAIN ideas, and I will absolutely bust your patent, and I might just wait until you've spent considerable money trying to do so first, just to teach you a lesson.

So, if you're honest, we're cool. If you're a schmuck, you're toast. Capeche paisano?

Idea for sorting electronic components on a conveyor.

I call this idea the "inverted cheese grater" concept. Basically, electronic components are on a conveyor. You then dump them unto a gently inclined (5 degree or less from horizontal) table. The first foot or two of table has no holes. Then, you have a series of holes that get progressively larger as you move toward the end of the long table. These holes are made to sort components based on their package outline. You are primarily going to sort SMTs at the begginning, and towards the end you'll sort larger discretes, relays, and power Ic's/transistors/diodes, etc.

Now, the whole works is supported by a carrier frame, and the carrier frame is essentially a linear or elliptical motion "classifier", except instead of using a screen, you're using custom perforated sheet (steel) metal panels. Each perforated panel corresponds to one sorting line, and parts fall through down to a soft catch system, or a soft conveyor to take to the next sort station. There will likely be 20-30 panels per sorter table. Each panel has anywhere from 20 (big) holes to possibly hundreds of holes for the smaller stuff. The holes can be circular, but most of them will be rectangular and sized just big enough to pass the component in question.

The panels I envision are about 2 foot long and 4 foot wide, but they can be smaller. thus the table is quite large, about 40-60 foot long and just a little over 4 foot wide.

The ellipitical motion is probably going at 1-1.5 Hertz, and has a maximum excursion of maybe 1-2 inches, but possibly more.

Method for depositing electrocatalyst for PEM fuel cell Membrane Electrode Assemblies

This is something I tried back at Texas A&M during my Master's research days.

You take your typical Nafion/nanoscopic Pt black/acetylene black "ink" and you mix it with anhydrous isopropyl alcohol, acetone, or butanone (MEK) at a mix of 1:20 to 1:40.

You then use an airbrush to spray it on your GDL (gas diffusion layer) carbon cloth. The carbon cloth is already "Teflonified" (hydrophobic). I used a crocheting hoop from Micahels to hold the cloth taut during spraying.

Warning...do the spraying in a hood AND wear a respirator! I found out the hard way that the ink is nasty stuff (and even then I was wearing a respirator...just not under a hood).

I would not try this if you plan to incorporate any transition or nobel metal oxides in with the Pt black as many of these oxides can be quite dangerous.

You can roll it after each coating (once it dries) to grind the electrocatalyst particles into the cloth.

This method is way more time and ink efficient than "painting" the damn stuff on.

More ideas on desoldering inside reflow ovens

So I've though of two other candidates for conveyors inside reflow ovens aside from metal screens or metal link chain (the latter is very common in reflow ovens):

1) A conveyor belt made from closed cell small or micro-pore silicone rubber that is filled with carbon black to make it conductive (antistatic). The belt has little hemispherical divots to allow the parts to nestle into and hold them as they travel along.

2) A metal belt made from shim-thickness steel (1045, 1080, 304/308/316 stainless) foil/sheet (0.002" - 0.010") that has a series of holes punched in it at regular spacing. The hole centers are based on a FCC (face centered closest packed) or hex pattern. On the outside you could have holes along the edges for traction (kind of like old greenbar printer paper they used for spreadsheets back in the day).

Chemical munitions disposal

So a lot of chemical munitions are still out there. For some goofy reason, the army thinks the best thing is to take them apart little by little, drain out propellant, and drain out nasties, and then process nasties (Mustard, Nitrogen mustard, GB, GC, VR, VX, etc.) with a multi-step low-temp process.

Nonsense.

All in one reactor:

For mortar and small rocket rounds, the reactor has inside diameter just about 1/2" larger than max ogive diameter. Cavity length is about triple that of the overall munition. The wall thickness is at least 12". Inconel 718 is used as the reactor material. The reactor is a two piece design, being such that it is like a blind gun barrel. The receiver end has tapered threads to accommodate a threaded plug (also Inconel 718) which has matching tapered threads. The thread profile is buttress or other suitable low friction thread designed to end large thrust loads. The nose of the plug has a recessed silicone rubber o-ring that mates to a rabbet machined into the receiver. The plug is at least 12" long. The plug has a hexagon (Allen) or Torx cavity on top to allow torquing of plug into place.

The plug has potted electrical feedthroughs that allow operation an incendiary squib ignitor. The potting is done by sintering in place of Molybdenum or Tungsten feedwires with either high purity alumina or TTZ (transformation toughed zirconia) green-state insulator powder. In the center, an approximately 0.002" diameter capillary hole is bored (via laser drilling or EDM), with a threaded needle valve assembly at top. The needle valve is nominally seated.

A sacrificial silicone rubber "condom" liner is used to prevent/reduce pitting and gouging of reactor during use. This is the first item installed prior to a run.

The reactor is then filled with a dry Al/NaOH (lye)/NaO2 (sodium peroxide) mixture. The Al/oxidizer ratio is varied with height, such that maximum Al concentration is at top, minimum at bottom. The sodium peroxide is, however, the primary ingredient. First, the bottom is filled, then the munition loaded, and then the remainder backfilled with mixture. An external vibrator is used to ensure dense packing of fill mixture.

Once loaded, a TiH or other suitable squib is affixed to the feed wires. An indentation is made in the mixture to accommodate the squib. The plug is then torqued down for firing.

Upon ignition, the Al reacts with the NaOH/NaO2 mixture, much like a thermite reaction. The intense heat ignites any munition propellant and bursting charge, and in short order ruptures the shell. The high temperature, and presence of reactive species (OH-, Oh radical, O2-, O radical, etc.) ensures destruction of ANY nerve or blistering agent. The rapid evolution of high pressure gases will serve to stir the reactor, ensuring efficient mixing of chemical munition and oxidizer. The pressure will easily exceed 200 ksi during the violent reaction, which should be allowed to proceed for approximately 30 minutes. At the end, the needle is slightly rotated to allow the gas to slowly vent, a period which takes perhaps 2-3 hours. The vented gases can be passed through an activated charcoal and hydrate lime filter. Once venting is complete, the plug is removed, and the ash may be disposed of safely in the ordinary landfill. The filter can be examined by gc/mass spec to ensure destruction of agent.

Desoldering ideas

Here's a list of ways to desolder stuff that I've thought up. The desoldering topic is one I'm pretty stoked about right now for some of my business plans:

1) Run your boards through a reflow oven, and then use a wiper/scraper system in the peak temp section to rub the parts off the board and onto a metal screen conveyor. The wiper is a silicone rubber (or woven metal wool) squee-gee and reciprocates with each board. You can even have an array of these squee-gees to work the boards in succession (first line does big stuff, and the subsequent lines knock off progressively smaller components. I'll post a hand drawing of this later.

2) Use an air knife to:

1. A cause preheating of downstream boards
2. Melt the solder and blow components off up-close board.

So in other words, you feed hot compressed air into an air knife, and use this hot air to knock components off (and into a catch bin or metal screen conveyor). You'd likely also have a preheat section that works in conjunction with spent hot air, but that hot air can do a lot of preheating by itself. mainly preheat lamps or elements just help to smooth out preheat/post heat temp gradients.

3) Use a centrifuge with convection heating. The boards go in with a metal mesh catch bag that fits over the boards. You circulate air that heats up progressively while you gently spool up the centrifuge. Each board/bag fits into a locking carrier. The carriers themselves latch into slots provided every n/360 degrees, where n is the number of boards to desolder per batch (I'm thinking n=10 to 20 for now). The centrifuge is about 3 foot in diameter, and spins up to such a speed as to give a maximum g acceleration of between 5-100 (g's) (or in other words 50-1000 m/s^2).

4) Use a reflow oven again like in #1, but this time you use a spinning sweeper, a lot like the sweepers used to clear snow on sidewalks. Except this booger uses music wire or other hardened steel wires instead of fiberglass/thermoplastic, and the diameter is smaller. The sweeper sweeps the components off into a bin or metal screen conveyor.

Why I created this blog

So I've had some bad experiences with the patent system. Ask anyone (other than a lawyer), and they'll tell you, the system is a joke.

I'm a big believer in innovation and the free market system. I'd like to believe that patents encourage innovation and reward inventors and innovators. But alas, such is not the case. The patent system is essentially another example of a lawyer boondoogle. Time and time again, honest, well meaning people get taken to the cleaners trying to file a patent, defend a patent, or just try and run a business based on a patent. The system doesn't work.

The worst problem, though, in my mind, is the fact that patents are no longer seen as the privilege to produce or license a product exclusively, thus rewarding the innovator. No, instead, patents have become a favored way for trolls sitting under bridges to maintain a monopoly, or even worse, to force a market or product to simply NOT exist! What good is a patent if someone has no intention of ever using for commerce? One need only look at the ridiculous nonsense surrounding Research in Motion (RIM...the makers of the Blackberry) to understand this "troll under the bridge" phenomenon. If it weren't for the fact that RIM had several years to enrich themselves prior to a bruising legal battle, the Blackberry would NEVER had existed.

So, I'm creating this blog not only to vent, but to start a new phenomenon. I'm going to put all of my good ideas out into the public domain, so that NOBODY can patent them.

Yes, that's right, I'm going to put my ideas into the public domain, and not patent them. You, the general public, are free to use them as you wish. I certainly plan to put some of them to use in my own business. Am I scared some of you might compete with me? Sure. But THAT'S WHAT FREE MARKETS ARE ALL ABOUT!

So use my ideas. All I ask for is that you cite me as your source. Yep, just minor celebrity. And if you think you can beat me with my own ideas...well, kudos to you, but it won't be easy!

I hope I inspire others out there to follow me down this path. Pffft the patent system! Let's have free markets!