the garage engineering genius i met today

hello all. I had to share with you the customer I met this week.

A gentleman in his fifties came into the shop the other day. he was kind of run down but clean. he struck me as somewhat eccentric and excited at the same time. he had a steel disk, about 18" in diameter and 3/4" thick with a keyed coupler in the center that will take a 2.5" shaft with standard key. he brought with him four drawings and a good story. around the edge of this disk were three equal distance saw marks and some tapped holes on the rim. he wanted us to tap holes and cut slots that he had taken some pains to draft for us in his design. he also wanted 30 degree dovetail slots cut into the plate at the saw marks and wanted us to make three dovetail blocks that would fit them configured somewhat like a three jaw chuck would look. His last request was that we fabricate three odd looking brackets with tapped holes, through holes, and slots to his specifications. he had left out a few dimensions so I had to call him for additional details before we could program the mill to cut out his bracket plates. I did not take the job, so this was my first contact with him face to face as it were. he had trouble with the dimensions I needed but we muddled through and I got the impression that he did not understand the manufacturing process to well. We got the programming done and ran off the first plate for him. my foreman called me to the office and asked me to call the customer and let him know the estimated cost to build his pieces. it seems that this customer is building a perpetual motion machine and has been farming the various parts out to all the local machine shops so that no single machine shop has all the details of his creation. I called him up to follow through and make sure that he could afford all the work we were doing for him. and to make sure that he was happy with the parts. he was shocked that the total job may cost 2000.00 and has elected to pay for our day's labor and go elsewhere. I will be watching the local news with interest to see when this new, revolutionary technology hits the market. besides, with that big job gone I will have more time to work on my time machine.

you mean you weren't willing to do it for .000000000000001% share in his company? you'll be sorry when he renders gasoline and electricity obsolete

shane... your post is difficult to read with some paragraphs...

Years ago, I sold auto/truck parts, heavy hardware, logging supplies, and hydraulic hoses as well as the store I worked had a welding supply/repair shop and a fasteners store, so we saw "all kinds."

I don't remember the details, but some local yokel came up with some scheme for fuel mileage that somehow envolved air compressors. Boy am I glad that time waster is done!! We had all kinds of shade-tree, would-be engineers bothering us and buying little, all trying to figure out the "secret" (that didn't exist)

shaneboyd said:

it seems that this customer is building a perpetual motion machine and has been farming the various parts out to all the local machine shops so that no single machine shop has all the details of his creation.

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be glad he is gone. what he is doing is kinda like seeing different doctors to get multiple prescriptions. bad news for all involved.

if he could not work out details with you, imagine the nightmare when 'your part' did not work right with someone else's because the prints were wrong. these guys never make bad prints.- they only get bad parts from you!

The wanna be inventors are the worst walk ins possible. They have no idea what anything costs, and they are going to be able to sell there product for almost nothing, because they are so fantastic.

Last one, was approximately 15 different parts, he wanted it solid modeled, 2D prints, and a prototype, plus revisions to the design. Put the time in to make an accurate quote and gave him a price of $3700 for a one off with very signifigant price breaks up to 10 units. Find out his budget was around $300. He did pay us for our time and ideas, so it was kind of a waste, but we still lost, however there was no material bought and no lost machine time.

I also did some work for a guy coming up with a board game type thing. He actually had a clue, he knew machining wasn't cheap. I did some prototypes for him that, if everything worked out, would be made out of plastic. He was patient enough to wait until I had the right size jaws and a few feet of leftover material in the lathe to make his parts. He also knew that if I didn't have the extra material he was paying for anything that needed to be ordered.

The first thing I tell these people now is, "this is not going to be cheap". Give them a ballpark, and ask if this is in their budget. Some of it is very interesting, but mostly its a waste of your time.

I worked in a mold manufacturing shop a few years ago and we had a Dr. (of something or other I have no idea) He had designed this contraption to hooked to the brim of a ball cap.
This thing looked kinda like a level. The Idea I was told was that you wore this contraption and by keeping the bubble in between the lines the cut down on some sort of fatuige.
The molds were made but I have never seen one in use, niether can I understand just how this thing would have worked.
I for one first of all have never had a hat sit level on my head, and the second thing is I can see some fool breaking his neck watching this bubble instead of where he/she was going

*shrug* he paid his bill so oh well, takes all kinds

The perpetual motion inventors are the worst . Had a guy that had the same approach ; he could only show me part of the drawings , if I signed some papers .
Something about a hydro turbine that ran off the local water tower .
Tried to explain that his water bill would be outrageous , and that it took energy to pump that water up there in the first place .
" but HIS machine would have extra energy to pump it back up there " !

Also got a set of prints years ago that was missing every other page . My helper sez , hey that looks like a silencer . When the customer learned we figured it out , he took all the drawings and said forget he ever talked to us .
I never made copies , but I kind of remember the concept of how it works .

Why is it that the 100 mpg carburators always get accidently installed on some friends , cousins , uncles ,friends car instead of someone I actually know ?

I heard that the government bought them up and has them all tucked away in some big warehouse in the desert . ( the one next to the one that has all those UFO's )

I guess everyone needs a hobby, and if you aren't competent enough to do something useful, might as well occupy your time with something useless.

I had a guy like that come into my shop years ago, seemed like a nice enough fellow, he was working on some kind of pump, I think his name was Jarvik or something like that. I tried to be nice and told him I didn't have time to do one offs.

damn it speedsport, now I have to call him back and do it for free!

FlatBeltBob said:

The perpetual motion inventors are the worst . Had a guy that had the same approach ; he could only show me part of the drawings , if I signed some papers .
Something about a hydro turbine that ran off the local water tower .
Tried to explain that his water bill would be outrageous , and that it took energy to pump that water up there in the first place .
" but HIS machine would have extra energy to pump it back up there " !

Also got a set of prints years ago that was missing every other page . My helper sez , hey that looks like a silencer . When the customer learned we figured it out , he took all the drawings and said forget he ever talked to us .
I never made copies , but I kind of remember the concept of how it works .

Why is it that the 100 mpg carburators always get accidently installed on some friends , cousins , uncles ,friends car instead of someone I actually know ?

I heard that the government bought them up and has them all tucked away in some big warehouse in the desert . ( the one next to the one that has all those UFO's )

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Man, that idea is a my mechanic buddy to a "T"!

He's an excellent diesel mechanic, but he's calling me 10X a year on invention ideas. His last idea was to "capture" the energy of the water entering a home. He didn't like the fact when I explained that it would be just "capturing" the energy from some far-off pump, and just make more work for that pump, so no net gain. Also the fact I doubt there's 1/3hp of energy applied to provide adequate pressure to an average home.

speedsport said:

I had a guy like that come into my shop years ago, seemed like a nice enough fellow, he was working on some kind of pump, I think his name was Jarvik or something like that. I tried to be nice and told him I didn't have time to do one offs.

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I dunno, that guy on the commericals looks like a real grease ball. Find it hard to believe he invented anything....same with that Dyson guy claiming to invent brushless motors....to cut down on the "carbon emissions" of brushed motors! That guy definitely don't know sh*t from shinola...

Celebrity

Jarvik's name came to the forefront since the well-aired 1982 news coverage of the first artificial heart transplant. Starting in 2006, Jarvik has appeared in television commercials for Pfizer Pharmaceutical's cholesterol medication Lipitor. Two members of Congress began an investigation as to whether his television advertisements constitute medical advice given without a license to practice medicine.[7]

On 25 February 2008, Pfizer announced that it pulled Lipitor ads with Dr. Robert Jarvik based on the above allegations.

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Ya, something didn't seem right about all that...

Viva la Inventor.....

My brother set me up one time....sent me to a friend of his who was a machinist and into old vehicles like my brother. Said the guy had some stuff to show me and might need some machine work done.......


Get there...bunch of guys standing around listening to this guy as he describes his "air Motor" which is a tank mounted to the roof with a supply line running to the engine. Small air pistons mounted on each wheel to pump up the tank which then fills the cylinders with non polluting power!!!! Of course I have to say something and I end up in an argument with six or so guys. I'm wrong....why he even had some of the pieces built which just proved that I am a negative naysayer....

So I finally say,"guys...c'mon you are talking perpetual motion here....."

The guru says, "EXACTLY!!!!!"

I say, "Okeedokee....I'll talk to you boys later....." and I leave...


Go Home and call my bro and say," Did you get to see the airmotor?"

he just sarts laughing........

When I was about 12 I welded me up a minibike frame from 1" square tubing. A real deathtrap complete with a totally vertical steering neck made via putting a piece of 1-1/4" pipe thru a piece of 1-1/2" pipe.

Anyway, I'd already figured out that a car generator would run like a motor if you put power on it, so my idea was to motorize it with two generators I'd scrounged. Both were to be belted off the rear wheel. You'd push the thing to get it started, then jump on and the one acting as a generator would provide the power to run the one acting as a motor. Living in the mountains, I'd already figured out that this thing was gonna beat the hell out of that bicycle I was tired of pedaling.

Then along comes my dad to bust my bubble with a 5 minute explanation of how things (don't) work, and my first introduction to the term "perpetual motion". He then told me my thinking wasn't as far out to lunch as that of his older brother who swore as a late teenager that he could get twice the gas mileage out of their family car by avoiding brake use and gearing down to "store horsepower in the engine where it could be used again"

My grandfather's explanation to Tom was more along the line that he'd be better off to worry less about gas mileage, and more about how difficult it was going to be to navigate in a body cast if he tore the transmission out of the family ride

HMMM, reminds me of a hybrid car!!!

metlmunchr said:

When I was about 12 I welded me up a minibike frame from 1" square tubing. A real deathtrap complete with a totally vertical steering neck made via putting a piece of 1-1/4" pipe thru a piece of 1-1/2" pipe.

Anyway, I'd already figured out that a car generator would run like a motor if you put power on it, so my idea was to motorize it with two generators I'd scrounged. Both were to be belted off the rear wheel. You'd push the thing to get it started, then jump on and the one acting as a generator would provide the power to run the one acting as a motor. Living in the mountains, I'd already figured out that this thing was gonna beat the hell out of that bicycle I was tired of pedaling.

Then along comes my dad to bust my bubble with a 5 minute explanation of how things (don't) work, and my first introduction to the term "perpetual motion". He then told me my thinking wasn't as far out to lunch as that of his older brother who swore as a late teenager that he could get twice the gas mileage out of their family car by avoiding brake use and gearing down to "store horsepower in the engine where it could be used again"

My grandfather's explanation to Tom was more along the line that he'd be better off to worry less about gas mileage, and more about how difficult it was going to be to navigate in a body cast if he tore the transmission out of the family ride

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These hybrids are chasing their tails. I'm ASTOUNDED the public could swallow the horse pucky those are more "enviroMENTALLY friendly" than a gas powered car WITHOUT the GARBAGE the EPA imposes. To anybody with half a brain, it's common sense, but the public is CLUELESS as usual. Perpetual motion is a MYTH, you MUST harnes energy from SOMEWHERE! Livestock literally craps kilowatts! The motion of a car can ONLY come from the energy input. If you ONLY put gas in, that's your ONLY source of energy. So wasting it hauling around a TON of batteries, and trying to use them to store the energy you spent accelerating them is going to result in LOSSES!!!!! The hybrid car is the BIGGEST BRAINFART the auto industry EVER concocted!

JunkyardJ said:

If you ONLY put gas in, that's your ONLY source of energy. So wasting it hauling around a TON of batteries, and trying to use them to store the energy you spent accelerating them is going to result in LOSSES!!!!!

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You might want to search on "regenerative braking".

Steve.

"If you ONLY put gas in, that's your ONLY source of energy. So wasting it hauling around a TON of batteries, and trying to use them to store the energy you spent accelerating them is going to result in LOSSES!!!!! "

Toyota Prius proves a gas guzzler in a race with the BMW 520d!!!!

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/driving/used_car_reviews/article3552994.ece

That's MY POINT EXACTLY!

You MUST ACCELERATE before you can store ANY energy while braking!!! So, where does that energy come from, GASOLINE!!!! The BMW makes my point COMPLETELY. Allthough driving technique can have a LOT to do with fuel economy, but REALISTICALLY, you're BETTER OFF with a GAS MOTOR OPTOMIZED fore EFFICIENCY! Batteries, and a generator/motor contraption are a GIMIC. Regenerative (more like regurgitative) braking is nothing more than a WASTE OF GAS!

A fellow came in to Chase Brass and Copper, Boston, MASS in the late 1940's looking for a line of credit. Chase got his information and told him to come back in two weeks after they checked out his information. Chase found out the guy dropped out of MIT to develop some sort of optical filter, went back to finish his degree and graduate. They found out he was thought to be something of a irritant to people always finding problems and new solutions to fix them.
Well, Chase refused to extend a line of credit and told Ed Land not to waste his time, "Nobody will buy a camera that prints it own picture"