August 2010

patent examination: patent law in plain english

This is ridiculous. I’ve been studying for the patent agent exam for a few months, and have just finished doing a once-over on just about everything. It is  a mess of poorly written literature.  It sucks. Now, as I go through my second pass of studying, I’m going to take what I consider to be [...]

Tagged as: invention, patent bar exam, study guide

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do-gooders are easy to research

I like nurses. They do Good (capital G) I spent a fair amount of time around nurses when my first son was born, and walked away with the impression that they are the glue of our medical system. Yet for some reason it seems that there isn’t a whole lot of innovation (i hate that [...]

Tagged as: data visualization, good, nursing, word clouds

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liquid metal (as awesome as it sounds)

Just came across LiquidMetal today. Wow. At first I thought it was just a twist on Metal Injection Molding (MIM). Digging in a little further I realized that the really cool part isn’t the process, it’s the material. Liquid Metal isn’t actually a material, but a class of alloys, check out their website for more [...]

Tagged as: alloys, apple, liquid metal, metal injection molding, springs

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something you didn’t know about #6 screws

Came across this fun fact today… 6-32 screws have the worst ratio of torque that can be applied to torque necessary to shear the screw. In other words, they are the screws most likely to shear off. Good to know.

Tagged as: fasteners, screws

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hard anodizing

A while back I had the need to get some sheetmetal (every spell check in the world keeps telling me it’s “sheet metal” and not “sheetmetal”, but I digress) and machined parts hard anodized.  I’ve been meaning to post my notes on the process for some time… and now I am. what is hard anodizing? A [...]

Tagged as: aluminum, anodizing, hard anodizing, hard coat, plating

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