I'm Selling My New Invention! :d

Sep 16, 2018, 23:44:18 PDT was a red letter day for me. That's the day I started selling my first invention! I'm currently only selling it in two places. On Etsy https://bit.ly/TechnoRing and eBay https://bit.ly/TheTechnoRing But I will continue to expand on its exposure from here on out. If you'd like to contribute please share my Etsy https://bit.ly/TechnoRing listing wherever you think people would like to see it. Thanks! I'll use Shapeways as a production partner for sterling silver if I get too swamped but I can't list it in my Shapeways shop because it needs to be assembled. If you're a regular to the forum you probably wondered where I was the last few months. Well, I was working on this invention and numerous other things that are still in progress.

Let me tell you the story about me and innovation. As a kid, I was always taking things apart and building stuff and generally just being extra curious about how the universe worked. At age 16 my hobby was looking for gold and treasure. I wanted a kind of dowsing rod that one could put a piece of gold in and it would supposedly detect just gold. I saw the device in a treasure related magazine and the price was around $800 dollars. I couldn't afford that much money to spend on it so I sulked. Then! Something amazing happened! I realized I could figure out how it worked and then MAKE IT MYSELF! HAHA! That day in the summer of 1980 I realized that I could figure out how ANYTHING worked and I could make ANYTHING! And my next realization was I could not only do that but I could create my own stuff based on my own ideas, just like I had been doing since I was two years old! I realized I was AN INVENTOR! Forget looking for gold and treasure! I was going to invent a product and make it and sell it! And from that very day, that's what I set out to do. And I did, but it didn't work out so well. Because I ended up working on trying to do that for 38 years! HAHA! Yep! I worked on that nearly every day for 38 years before I finally got an invention on the market for sale.

At this point, I literally have tens of thousands of inventions. And over the decades I worked on countless inventions and sacrificed everything to try to make and sell one. I won't list all of the problems I ran into because I would have to write a novel to describe that but I can narrow it down to two main problems. Being too creative and not having the money to buy the right tools. Tools are super expensive. Handtools are cheap, but I needed machine tools and robotic tools, which are super expensive. So I spent a few decades and made my own from scratch! Shapeways was a big part of having access to the right tools too!

But that was only half the problem. The other problem was I was too creative. When you're too creative you end up thinking of so many things you can create that you end up always thinking of something better to work on. Consequently, you never spend enough time working on just one thing and you end up never finishing anything. When I realized this I made a deal with myself. That I'll pick something simple to work on and I'll stick to it until I'm successful at doing just that one thing. Being an artist I picked jewelry as the one thing I would work on without stopping. It wasn't an invention but if I could be successful at that I could have money and the discipline to work on an actual invention to completion.

So, I did that. Universe Becoming LTD is my jewelry business, which I started in 2011. I'm successful with it. I sell my jewelry designs all over the world. Hats off to Shapeways here again too because Shapeways made it so simple to create a jewelry business it was literally a walk in the park. As easy as designing, uploading, and selling! Instant success! So eventually, I decided I had enough success with jewelry that I could repeat the process for an actual invention and that's what I did next.

I have tens of thousands of inventions so what to pick, I thought. I almost went down the road of developing and implementing one of my 3D printer inventions and I was getting ready to do that when Jimmy Fallon tripped on a carpet in his kitchen and nearly lost his finger because of that. Some time after that is when I learned about ring avulsion. I suggest you don't look it up because if you do you are going to see some horrifying images. Ring avulsion is when your ring catches on something solid under a good amount of momentum and then severely damages your finger. It happens about 150,000 times a year to people in the US alone. Shortly after the Jimmy Fallon incident which brought a lot of attention to ring avulsion, I was doing marketing research on jewelry and I noticed tens of thousands of people PER DAY were buying rings made out of silicone. WHYYYY?? I thought. What's so special about silicone rings? After buying one and doing some more research that's when I learned about Jimmy Fallon and ring avulsion. Well, I instantly started seeing ways to remediate the problem. But with precious metals! Not silicone! It took me about a year to get everything dialed in and the result is the Techno Ring invention I now have up for sale.

You may notice in the listings, if you read one of them, I mention that it took years of development whereas I'm saying one year here. Well, the thing is, my dad, when I was about 5 years old showed me his mangled finger after he had a ring avulsion event and that always stuck in my mind. So, subconsciously I've been working on ring avulsion for 49 years.

Do you have any inventions you're working or have worked on? If so, tell us about it. Well, in a confidential way of course. Even if you don't think someone will steal it, you don't want to relieve details about an invention in public until starting the patent process because if you mention enough details in public it can be counted against you as prior art if it's longer than one year and you do file for a patent.

I have a couple of patented circuits. One was a new topology for a high frequency divider circuit. I actually envisioned it driving to work and within an hour of getting there I had demonstrated a working unit using another packaged circuit I had designed and some available lab components. It was a true Eureka moment and had been gurgling around in the back of my mind for weeks. I knew there was a way to do what I needed to do but it didn't gel until I was sitting at a stop light.

The other one also worked but it turned out to not be very real-world practical. Basically it was high speed signal level quantizer for A/D circuits but it didn't lend itself to being integrated on a single chip so not really worth much on this planet.

As far as other every-day useful inventions I'll need to think about it. Almost everything I do seems to end up with some novel shortcut mechanism that ends up taking 15 extra steps.

Thanks for sharing this great story James! I can see you've put a lot of soul into this, and it is such a great idea!

This is a great story, James! I had never heard of ring avulsion and I think I'll refrain from googling it, but your solution is brilliant. Your design reminds me a bit of my husband's hinged wedding ring. I'm sure you've seen them. The jeweler recommended it because my husband has larger knuckles but skinny fingers and the hinge allows you to get the ring over the knuckle, and then tighten at the base of the finger so it isn't flopping around. It comes with a special plastic tool to open the hinge, should that be necessary. I'm sure you can imagine the jokes at our wedding about who would be in possession of the opening tool!

Best of luck with sales and marketing. I think the biggest challenge will be getting across to people that this is a safe alternative to a regular ring if they've never had experience with the potential for injury.

Pretty cool engineering! But does it come with an inscription? "One ring to rule them all..."

Very interesting MrNibbles! I've always loved electronics. I was never left brain optimized enough to get much into digital electronics but I did get into analog enough to design my own circuits, for the most part. You know what would be an interesting electronics project? A very low power TIG welder for jewelers. The power levels needed would be so low, 0 to 5 amps lets say, that it could probably be constructed very cheaply. I'd pay something like $150 to $250 for something like this.

Thank you EvieL! You're the best! *high five*

Thanks, Ontogenie! You're the best too! No, I have not heard of it. Thanks, I'll look into that. That's one way to keep em in line! hehe Yeah, I'll need to do some demonstration videos to get the point across better.

Thanks, barkingdigger! I'll see if I can fit that in there! HAHA!

I need to invent a 3D printed hat, with laser beams mounted on it, that creates a cone of safety from mosquitoes. Bonus points for seeing little sparking flashes when each skeeter is eliminated from my personal space.

I WANT ONE OF THOSE TOO! BUILD IT! HAHA!

Brilliant design, James! Love it.

From a humorous perspective, you got me thinking about inventions, and perhaps the best proposed invention is Dr.Evil's shark with a laser on its head. I might be able to design a mount for that laser. Not sure how to go about measuring shark heads, though.

On a more serious note, there were a few people I knew in the Army who had a finger "de-gloved", as the saying goes, while wearing a ring and working on motors. Really awful injury.

That is a wonderful invention, James!!

And don't forget to peruse all the Shapeways patents!

https://patents.google.com/?assignee=shapeways&oq=shapeways

Excellent invention ... When I was in High School one of the athletes suffered a grievous injury to his hand when he was wearing a class ring playing basketball. His ring caught on the net or hook on the basketball rim and nearly lost his finger and injured the tendons in his wrist too. I've heard of many of these injuries in the Navy too.