Mechanisms DVD

I'm trying to design a mechanism that is quite difficult to think
through so I'm looking in a mechanism book for some inspiration.
Sometimes it takes a while to work out the funtions from just diagrams
and I'm wondering if anyone has come across a DVD that shows animations
of random mechanisms?

 

No DVDs I,m afraid but a good old fashioned books ;-)


"Mechanisms & Mechanical Devices"
Mc Graw Hill - - might be of use


" Five Hundred & seven Mechanical Movements " -by Henry T Brown
Astragal Press


This is a paper back with alot of Victorian mechanisms and most is
still usefull stuff to inspire new thoughts.

Jonathan

 

ok cheers. I'm looking through the "Mechanisms & Mechanical Devices"
book now.

 

While at potential clients, the other day, they proudly showed me a
mechanism they had patented. I thought to myself how can you patent
something so simple and obvious, I'm sure given the same design criteria
most engineers would arrive at a very similar design. In this particular
case I believe someone somewhere is using a very similar mechanism to solve
the very same problem but haven't bothered to patent the idea.



When it comes right down to it, a patent is only as good as the money you
have to defend it - Just ask Gillette and Schick. In the case mentioned
above I believe the patent should never have been granted, if they ever have
to defend it some lawyer will be getting a new Porsche.



John Layne
www.solidengineering.co.nz

 

Your right John - but its more insidious than that. Its not just
about defending patents - its about also defending infringements of
badly awarded patents.

Say Company A get a patent on a damn obvious design solution.

Company B comes along later and thinks of the same thing and happens
to do a patent search which often is not the case - the whole project
is put in jepordy because Company B is smaller in size than Company
A. It has to make a commercial decision whether to carry on with the
design becuase it will cost it money and management time mearly to
defend its actions and overturn a plainly bad incorrectly granted
patent.

If no patent search is performed because Company B thought the idea so
obvious, .....then suddely one day a letter arrives asking them to
stop production and threatening legal action etc. It can just be a
real bummer as it costs so much in management time and legal fees
just to start to defend yourself, even before the lottery of a court
case. Its often cheaper to to just redesign and re-tool with a less
optimal design solution.

People will argue that Company A will not defend the patent once they
get legal advice from independant patent lawyers that their patent is
in defensible due to prior art, but that is just not the case, as the
their independant patent lawyers are the very people who probably
advised a patent was worth filing in the first place.

I have been through this and it pissed me off because the idea was so
simple a child could of solved the problem if it had been given the
problem - there was no 'innovative leap' required.


I think the root of the problem is that the Patent Offices in the US
and Europe are so badly understrength and funded that they just grant
anything with the view that the courts will sort it out later. This
just plays into the hands of those who have money and want to
constrict their smaller competitors by trying to introduce alot of
financial uncertainty int their competitors project analysis.


I really think the whole IP area needs re-thinking as it is a throttle
on development for so many projects.

The annual patent fees should be made very very high - or lets be
radical - perhaps an auction element where competitors can bid for it
on an annual basis. The original filer can either get a discount for
his bid - to reward the intial work and inventiveness.

This way only economic patents would survive and the dross that is
filed will just be thinned out.

Jonathan