Patent on design? Jay's DualFW Hub

Hi guys, I was one shake away from posting my new dual freewheeling hub setup with adapter, and thought maybe I otta consider the whole patent thing?

If it's a one-of part you came up with that's easily retro'd, should you think about a patent? I don't think there's that much interest in a dual fw for middirect setups, but even so, should I give the 3d design away for free, or get a patent and sell the part or design?
Hint: it's just a tiny part that allows use of off-shelf items to make a dual fw for 155- 160mm d/o's, and uses the white ind hd fw for motor power.

Thanks

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Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.

Or as the Full Metal Alchemist would say, Construction, Deconstruction, Reconstruction.

It is the great power of merely negative/critical to engage only in the antithesis/deconstruction, while those whine about only wanting the positive have what Freud would call a 'Lacuni,' a HOLE in their personality. Critical thinking requires all three.

As for your part, Do you really think you can make enough off it to cover the cost of the patent, on the off chance you get a patent? You have to prove it works, prove it hasn't been done before, prove you'd reduced it to a practice. I'd say you're getting a bit carried away. But it would be kewl to have a patent, this guy I went to college with has several. I want one, but I don't want to steal one of his.

As for the music speech, it takes gas to run a car, but gas is not a car. It takes creativity to remix the music different than it is, but remixing is not itself creating. The engineer of ZZ Tops's 'Eliminator' album has for years complained that he deserves all this credit for the album and goes on and on with "Me, me, me." Do you believe him?

So this guy directly around the block from me came over to my house and stole some 2x4's I had. When he came back to steal more he said because he was using what he already stole they were his. And said that he was entitled to steal more, while I stood there holding his truck door closed. He'd stolen my firewood before. You should have seen how put out he acted when I was reading him the riot act. Oh, that was topped after I went and talked to the Chief of the Fire Department about one of their firemen living on the block being at the guys house HELPING with the stolen 2x4's so that the firemen got the riot act read to him and disavowed the thief after that. This idiot needs to be locked up in more ways that one.

Kirby Ferguson you're a jackass. Stealing does not make something your own. Making your own makes something your own. TED can no longer claim these are the most intelligent speeches after letting that idiot talk. Danger Mouse belongs in the mousetrap he's gotten himself into. He deserves to lose everything, moreso than Robin Thicke.

So let's reduce this song comparison to a practice and kick that speech to the Kerb. In 1928, before Johnny Cash and his second wife June were born, her parents recorded 'Will You Miss Me when I'm gone.' This version (Not as good) was recorded in 1935 with their oldest daughter singing along.

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Well now, the rest is history. The song became a country western staple. Performed by pretty well everyone. The song evolved some, including some people singing "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone." In fact, that was the refrain as used in the movie 'Pitch Perfect.' Even as they called it 'The Cup Song' they continued to credit the Carter Family. (Takes a minute to get to the song.)

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In practice, you'd think a patent would be useful, if you had a novel idea, and wanted to make a buck off it. A few "minor" extensions to property law and whamo, now only YOU can profit off your novelty! Well, why not! A guy's gotta eat, and it fosters the friendly and fair competition that makes markets efficient, eh? Well maybe, but that was then and this is now, and if your not a mega-corporation and that's not a cash cow, patents are useless, unless 1. your idea is good enough and easy enough to steal and 2. can afford the legal team to go with it, and most importantly 3. you prioritize vengeance and that almighty dollar above all else. Well you might stop a corporation from stealing your wares (yeah right) but more likely you'd have nothing for it but some empty pride, and would only be able to give a small time foe a short fight.

As a comparison, is Justin or ebikes.ca patenting anything, as a small scale producer? His stuff is not open source or anything (shame shame!), but anyone could knock those creations off - I mean most of it is just building on the basics, so why don't they? They offer a refined product and the service to match, and they've built a reputation with the community they serve. That's the best protection I can think of for "physibles" - and it's basically free. Tesla opened up their patents, why? Because they get in the way of some important things, like market adoption and standardization. GNU/Linux runs a giant, outsize portion of the world, why? Because it's not obstructionist, people with brains can move at the speed of thought and leave the lawyering to the already-rich Luddites waiting to die. They licensed it specifically to give corporate greed monsters a massive headache, and it's worked so far!

I've got some engineer buddies that went to the trouble over the years to patent some kind of fairly inane, marginally interesting crap (the few old timers that didn't have to sign workplace intellectual property waivers), and for all of them, there are one of two outcomes: You have something to brag about when giving lectures and at cocktail parties, and/or two - they have something to be bitter about for the rest of their lives after Dong Xi Widget company knocks it off. Engineers aren't the poorest of folks, but a patent battle with a trans-national or a foreign entity is not even remotely in the cards. Unless you are on a mission to stifle small business or starting a professional patent troll firm, I'd say don't waste your time.

Everybody that likes to tinker raves about 3D printing, CNC milling, free software, DIY 'lectrics and the new "maker" revolution, and we all share ideas with our techie buddies on forums, while corporate pigs are busy toiling away, trying to put the genie back in the bottle with ridiculous fairy tales of Digital Rights Management and stronger, International Intellectual Property rights dressed up as free trade. Started with the entertainment industry, and they still prattle on with their unworkable schemes about "owning" ideas.

Dauntless' comparison of remixing music to stealing 2x4's is, well... frankly laughable. While stealing goods is a tangible thing, and he got deprived in the act of that theft, people remixing Beatles' or Carters' or reworking such tunes deprives no one of anything, we're all richer for it. Ideas, knowledge, creativity - these are not a zero sum. No one is going to buy the Grey Album if they wanted the White one. The very notion that an idea can be "stolen" is ridiculous. Heck, one person walks into a library and steals all the ideas, locks it away in his head and damn - we'd all be better off dead! Not to mention the fact that the poor dead Carters and Beatles of the world couldn't be arsed to give a damn about what people are singing and strumming today, at any price!

I agree- if your product and sales plan speak for themselves, you needn't worry about competition, at least for a while.
Is there patentable stuff in the CA though? I guess you can patent code, that's the main value, besides the sum of all the parts.

I would sell diy kits for middirect bikes if I work out a good frame and setup.
The best option for a lightweight build that you still wanna pedal is dual freewheel imo, and it would be nice to include the hub/adapter on the bikes or be able to print and sell separately.

I wouldn't even think about a patent if I could just go ahead a print a handful out. I don't think cnc'd/ mass produced would be a threat, as this will always be a niche thing for nonhub bikes. Enter printing, except then there is no protection whatsoever on the new design, which is one-of and extremely simple and small. Honestly, it's just a piece to adapt from a threaded white hd fw to a standard freehub body.

Still, I think if it were readily available, along with a more friendly middirect mountable frame, there would be alot of people coming from both hub and middrive camps to try.

I think making and selling niche stuff is an awesome idea, and the more people supporting cool hobby's and markets like ebikes, the better!

Apple patented a rectangle with rounded corners. A shape. Patents are sticks lazy giants use to poke other giants, and beat small guys over the head until they're dead.

A requirement for a patent is that the invention be novel. A widely-used example is the shopping trolley/cart wasn't patentable because it was obvious. An adapter to convert between two common, similar bicycle parts probably isn't sufficiently novel.

kd8- Yeah, I know that's pretty much the patent game. Also used to simply hide good ideas from mass use too.

pnx- Bingo, that's what I'm wondering. There must be some folks on here that have original products and have gone thru this. A few middrive kits come to mind.

and what the material scope and cost would be of printing vs milling?

What alloys can be printed? Higher carbon steel or even mild steel would be ok, but a lighter alloy would be nice.

TangentDave is apparently pursuing the patent route for his harmonic drive: http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=70099

If you believe in open source at all, then you should be ashamed of yourself for considering it.

That's one real world consideration, and the other is that only BIG benefit from IP protection.

It's not something that could ever make big money via a protected patent, because they'd simply produce an all in one double FW unit...or they'd simply steal it. Can you afford the lawyers and years of fighting.

No, share your ideas with the world. With a small production item like that, simply share it by producing and selling it at a fair price. Another idea is to share sufficient detail publicly as demonstration that it's your idea first. That buys you a year of time to make the decision to patent or not and still be protected.

Yes, the cycloidal drive (i am a participant in the noncommericial thread), but that is obviously patent worthy in terms of novelty.
I was thinking more like cyclone or LR and that scene. Not sure if the have, or even attempted legal beagle for any of that neat stuff.

JohnCR, well said- i absolutely agree. Not worried of big companies, and will be happy to just make a few and go from there.

Another idea is to share sufficient detail publicly as demonstration that it's your idea first.

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I'm not sure if it's my idea first, but I'm pretty sure I don't see anybody rolling around with dual fw's on the rear? (My first version has been on the bike since start-there's a video on my thread.) The newer version is far simpler and refined.

I know Bzwind has talked about dual fw for their newest pedal bike, but the hub is still in development, and far less info is forthcoming than what I've shared, including the mode of fw. (white HD in my case)

One more thing to consider: the most likely companies to copy something are the various east-asian ones, most of whom wouldn't care if you did have a patent, and wouldn't respond to any litigation about it. At best they'd "disappear" and a "new" company would continue producing the same thing under a new name, and you'd have to start over with all your legal fees and paperwork.

At worst, nothing at all will happen and they'll just ignore you, and then perhaps your patent will be considered unenforceable and some other company in a country that *might* care about patents would start making them, and when you try to enforce it with them, someone will say "but you didn't do it for *the other* company, so you can't do it for this one either". :/

Then you've simply wasted money (probably a lot of it) getting the patent and then trying to enforce it, for nothing.


But, to some, it is nice to say you have a patent.

And there is also nothing forcing you to try to enforce a patent even if you do get one, if you just want it to have it in your name.



EDIT: BTW, when I started working on my idea for a complete ebike lighting, power monitoring and power / motor / traction control system, years ago, I was trying to do it as open-source, but the only people that were interested in helping me all wanted to get patents off of it, which was not what I was trying to do. I did want to manufacture them and sell them, but I didn't want a closed system like the partly-similar ones (bionx, etc) that already existed...and no one was interested in doing it open-source, so I gave up on it cuz I myself can't do all the software and engineering needed to actually make it all work.

If the few that could've helped me with it hadn't been determined to do it all as patented systems, there might be a completed project by now that others could be basing complete bike systems on, or even a whole commercial product to just buy and bolt on to bikes to make them ebikes. :/

nutspecial said:

but I'm pretty sure I don't see anybody rolling around with dual fw's on the rear?

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I guess that depends on how you're meaning that. I don't know how much you've read of ES, but there's been various ways of using a separate freewheel for pedal chain and motor chain at the rear hub for years, here on ES (and probably elsewhere).

The simplest method of that, using single-speed freewheels, is to thread one onto the hub itself, then thread a bottom-bracket bearing cup (BB cup) into that, and then thread the outer freewheel onto that.

It's also been done by broaching splines into threaded freewheels to put them onto a cassette hub.

It's also been done with a freewheel on the left side of the hub for the motor (in addition to the pedal freewheel on the right side of teh hub), in various ways from gluing a threaded freewheel onto a threaded flipflop hub, to boring or filing a keyway into the hub and the freewheel, to others I cant' remember right now.

Thanks amberwolf, yep you're right. I read the thread with broached fw's being slid onto freehub bodies, and also where you 'stack' a 7spd freewheel using a bb cup.

The latter is a perfectly acceptable and easily achievable setup for less than 1000watts. Problem is, the only fw strong enough to take high power on the rear is the White HD, and it is not stackable with a bb cup due to the shoulder. Plus gear# limitation and bearing placement is outdated on freewheel hubs.
The former seems backwards, why mount the White HD on a weaker freehub, and still need another broached fw for the pedals? Plus you only get one pedal gear.

the dualside drive hub is cool, but again, I don't see anyone using it, and I found it better to keep drivelines on the same side.

So, White HD and freehub body seems to be the (best?) recipe for highpower and 8-10 pedal gears.

It's actually easy and cheap to obtain a patent in your own country, but the waters get deep quickly when considering international. As you've pointed out with simple enforcement.
The hub is just a piece of the puzzle though, and is kinda worthless without a reproducable frame that allows for the middirect motor. I'm currently looking at eastgem.net 's steel frames, and the new/old stock 'st3' 7005 aluminum. Plus there's skeetab's genesis, this could be possible with a swingarm from scratch.

I'll investigate printing vs milling the adapters and go from there.

So I have gotten a price for dmls printing and for millwork to produce this part. Looking at 400-500$ which is just outrageous for what it is. Obviously more volume would help price, at least for milling, but at that point cnc would be the more obvious choice.
So I think a patent is completely moot for this litte part now. If it was usable in ABS, it could be printed for 20$, then maybe get a patent just for show, or if you saw a big market, but people with a printer would just print their own anyway, which I absolutely condone. Imo, it's like buying groceries vs growing your own.

Anway, I bought a mini lathe from grizzly. Slightly better than harborfreight imo, and better service and manual etc. Even a better price!

So just with that, it wasn't too difficult to make my own. I had to substitute a small rotary burr on the dremel, and some files and time for a mill, but it came out great. Here's the drawings, let me know if you want a different version.



Recipe for the hub:
-Fixie thread hub, and a threaded brake adapter if you want a disc on left. (hub should be loose bearing type)
-Sickbikes flanged FW. (Remove the 4 'ears' and file the 4 slots to match your adapter.)
-6000 sealed bearing (common to sealed bearing hubs)
-Adapter
-Freehub body and cassette
-cromo solid 10x185-190mm axle

Puttem together in that order, and it's the best version I've done so far!

Good for freewheeling a middirectdrive/parallel midrive and 8-10 bike gears in a 155 d/o. 3rd bearing is additional center support. Klein is running a 150mm d/o and a modded freehub with 7 gears.

*also, I can't imagine there is enough interest (I LOVE A PARALLEL FREEWHEELING SYSTEM btw!) but I'm talking to white industries about a custom fw that would eliminate the adapter. If there's some interest, I might find it feasable, or look to teamup with a store.

Thanks for your help guys!

nutspecial said:

I'm not sure if it's my idea first, but I'm pretty sure I don't see anybody rolling around with dual fw's on the rear?

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I've been rolling around with dual freewheels on the rear for 6 years.... :wink:

I got an error when trying to open your sldprt file. Any chance of uploading it as a STEP file?

I wish there were more cassette type hubs without a freewheel........

Did you see this thread? http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=30846

View attachment adapter.zip

Someone else had that prob with my sldprt files too. I'm too new to even offer a guess. The stl file should work for those with slicing software. I just attached igs and stp, and the snapshot.


I was not aware of your thread- so what did you end up with? I can assume the last drawing on the thread? I'd love to know more about it and your build, I had a hard time coming up with even this on my own.

I started with a cheap flanged fw, bb cup, and a 7spd fw that was on another old thread, but soon found I needed an hd fw for the power. Really love the parallel fw drive tho- I am not babying it, and get to pedal and coast too, but I'm averaging close to 3mi/ah presently with frequent full 70a draws.

Thanks for the interest!!! please let me know your thoughts, and if you have more info on your custom setup!

Nice work, Jay!

I used a vaguely similar solution in my dual-freewheeling bottom bracket design attempt:
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=35846

Jules was pursuing the modular hub design a while back. I'm not sure what the latest is on that. I'm more into motor design at the moment....

Thanks Miles, oops I forgot to mention the ingredient of the adapter itself, that allowed fabrication with only the lathe and some handtools/dremel. I started with a 10$ used hub so as not to have to handmake the 10t spline. I expect the 6061 should hold up good.

So what are people running, most of these builds seem not'covered' or not linked. This is why I was banging my head off the wall trying to figure out how to dual fw high power.

I think many would be interested in lists and stats of working dual freewheel hubs and cranks systems for the 'non-hub' section. The Cyclone/LR/Bafang/Cycloidal middrive kits are excellent, but a parallel middrive can offer some really unique benefits (imo). And then main thing is just getting that power to the wheel.

[youtube]In52NPeGUOc[/youtube]

The vid shows the abililty to pedal without drag thru the full pedal gear range, while being able to apply 6kw thru the single reduction *as needed* from the halftwist throttle

Also this is my first 3rd person test video. Just trying to show the pickup when 'geared' for 38mph and no pedaling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqKd5waJik0

Pardon my newbie ness but those pics and 3d pic explain nothing to how this works.

I wouldn't bother explaining it to me for now anyways...

As for the topic of patent, I think it was mentioned there are not too many people out there with the need.

How many would you roughly guess are running a motor and can pedal at the same time with legal power levels happily though the gng cyclone bbs02 style design?

How many need to change that design to go to yours?

Maybe you could try fabricating a whole kit similar to LR or the French guys (can never remember his hard to spell forum name).

Sell everything you need as one kit and demonstrate it. Then I think you could add a patent. Similar to the BHT guy.

any hoo - looks cool

Very true.
1million to 1?

Works for me though

Nah, I got out of commercial stuff cuz it's a headache, and goes against my morals, plus the temptation is minimal, cuz the potential is very minimal lol.

I have vid of putting it 2gether 3 weeks ago, but it sucked. I'll try for another when I make another.

I am nothing, dust in the wind, same as the rest.

this is cool stuff, i'm watching this and i would like to buy some of these from you. RH dual chain is the way to go IMO. with custom swing arm and wider hub like 175mm. Adam (the french guy bzhwindtalker) insists that this will still be too narrow to get straight chain lines but i insist it's not

Producing small batches of your adapter on a CNC mill wont be a big problem i think. Made these "dual freewheel adapters" some years ago, they were not very expensive even though i only bought 25 pcs at once

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=52572#p780267

Cool! I wasn't impressed with the cnc pricing for a handful of adapters, so I'm getting pricing from white ind for a custom fw that would do the same thing, and be more of a 'product'.

There's valid igs, step, and stl files in the attachments if you wanna print or machine one to try it out in the meantime, as I'm not ready to sell the adapter or whole modified dual fw hubs. The idea of the adapter is it's pretty diy. The only tooling used was a mini lathe for the first one. Just let me know what question you have!

Honestly, it might even work printed out of abs! Someone quoted me 20$, so maybe give that a try? You'd just need the other components, and to lightly modify the white fw. Actually, 175mm d/o might allow for a stock fw, and a different 'adapter'. I couldn't even find axles in 10x1mm that long. The 190mm are just enough for adjusters and nuts in ~155 d/o's.

Bzhwind has alot of experience- way more than me for sure. Doesn't his new bike in production use a dual fw rh? Either way, this works for me with a 3/4" wider bb, and so far I've just fit a 2.4" tire in my frame. A 3" might require adjustment to motor placement, and possibly the sprocket to clear the chainline while maintaining straightness.