MakerGear Forum

yeah there is a minimum order on the guts so i have to buy a certain amt. i usually get 60-80 at a time. thats what you have to do with any product. there is always that up front initial investment you need to cover. there is always a little bit of risk when producing anything. every batch of these i do i say it will be my last one but then they sell faster than the batch before so i just end up doing another one lol. i am running parts for a new batch now actually. 1/2 doz rolls of pet. i run through a roll every 2.5 days running 24 hrs a day. of course i am at a stand stll now since i snapped the heat break on my hot end

Manufacturing parts using 3D printer can work, as long as the part
is not subject to a lot of stress. My spoons can lift more then 55 pounds of lead.
No 3D part, the same thickness can match injection molding strength of polycarb.
Spoon are .077" thick and even where the snap dug into the eyelet,
only a small indentation was noticeable.
This is polycarb under abuse.

I make 3D printed diver rings, done about 400 of them, but this part is not under a lot stress.

M2 perfecting my spoon project is paying dividends in fish caught.
Here's a recent goodie for Manistee, MI, a 36" Lake Trout:
Been very busy with production and miss not being able to read all posts.

Yeah, that's a keeper! (Might have to look into one of those gizmos for the hubs - he's a biggggggg fisherman.)

Hi Captain John, did you ever convert to a utility patent? If so, what patent service did you use and what was the approximate cost of the entire utility patent process?

pyronaught wrote:Put off those provisional patents as long as you can, since once you do it the clock is ticking and you know how fast a year can go by.

Do not put it off too long. As I understand patent law, since the day you published this, you only have a year to file for the real thing.

Phil wrote:

pyronaught wrote:Put off those provisional patents as long as you can, since once you do it the clock is ticking and you know how fast a year can go by.

Do not put it off too long. As I understand patent law, since the day you published this, you only have a year to file for the real thing.

That's true, once you put it online you have the same one year deadline as if you filed a provisional patent. After that, its fair game for anyone to steal your idea. The patent system switched from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file some years back, so it no longer matters if you came up with an idea before someone else did, the first one to file the patent gets it.

How about if a provisional patent expires without converting to a utility patent? Does first to file still apply?

hybridprinter wrote:How about if a provisional patent expires without converting to a utility patent? Does first to file still apply?

Nope. The idea would then be in the public domain, so nobody can patent it.

Phil wrote:The idea would then be in the public domain, so nobody can patent it.

Unless, of course, you have a department of patent attorneys on hot standby:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... ecause-ffs

AFAICT, owning a patent gives you the opportunity to spend money on lawyers to enforce that patent. If the infringer has deeper pockets than you or resides in a regime with slack IP protection, which will be true for any non-trivial infringer, then owning the patent doesn't have any real effect on your business trajectory.