Hate to burst your bubble, but...

192.11.226.120

Posted by DanK on September 27, 2001 at 15:15:50

In Reply to: home brew aurios/daruma/rollerblocks --see pics! posted by kuribo on September 25, 2001 at 01:39:26:

Hi all,

A few friends and I have our own company, and since several
of us are audiophiles one of the product ideas we had was
a ball-bearing based isolation device. (I'm an EE and
my main partner is an ME).

Believe it or not, what we came up with looks EXACTLY
like your design. The only difference I can see is we
have a larger ball-bearing, and our bearing is stainless
steel.

After sinking several thousand dollars into materials we
did a patent search and found that Symposium (the makers
of the rollerblocks) have a patent. I don't have a copy
of the patent here at work so I can't give you the number.

But basically, the Claims section of the patent is very broad,
and it covers "any isolation isolation device containing of
a rolling member".

After doing this research, and finding out that infringing on a
patent results in automatic triple damages, we dropped the idea
of marketing our isolators.

The Darumas are made by a Japanese company, so maybe they are
better able to get away with selling their isolator.

Even if you come up with an isolator design that you believe
skirts Symposium's patent, if they decide to take you to court
you'll have to spend big bucks on lawyers to prove your case.

In any case, we are NOT going to go into production with this
idea, but we would LOVE to recoup some of our lost money by
selling the several hundred we had machined up AT COST to
any interested Asylum members.

A single metal cup cost us $12, and the ball bearings were
$5 each.

If interested contact me at: dkuster@eclipse.net
I can provide more info and a picture.

Dan Kuster
dkuster@eclipse.net

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - home brew aurios/daruma/rollerblocks --see pics! - kuribo 01:39:26 09/25/01 (20)

Hate to burst your bubble, but... - DanK 15:15:50 09/27/01 (4)

Re: Hate to burst your bubble, but... - YM 08:02:19 09/28/01 (1)

Re: Hate to burst your bubble, but... - DanK 12:59:20 09/28/01 (0)

Re: Hate to burst your bubble, but... - kuribo 17:33:48 09/27/01 (1)

Re: Hate to burst your bubble, but... - DanK 20:39:56 09/27/01 (0)

Kuribo, have you had a chance to listen? - Jon L 11:10:23 09/27/01 (0)

Re: home brew aurios/daruma/rollerblocks --Group Buy??? - kuribo 01:58:12 09/27/01 (0)

woo child, those bad boys are nice!!! - mikenificent1 19:31:28 09/26/01 (0)

perhaps socially evaluate/do a small production run - NormanCdn 08:44:49 09/26/01 (6)

Re: perhaps socially evaluate/do a small production run - Julien43 07:50:23 09/27/01 (0)

Bummer - BobM 13:36:55 09/26/01 (3)

Spoons over drawer pulls - badman 19:04:56 09/26/01 (2)

Re: Spoons over drawer pulls - fullspectrum 22:29:30 09/27/01 (1)

Re: Spoons over drawer pulls - BobM 05:51:43 09/28/01 (0)

Count me in. - YM 10:53:03 09/26/01 (0)

Re: home brew aurios/daruma/rollerblocks! - DaveT 06:21:06 09/25/01 (2)

bearing source - kuribo 07:18:09 09/25/01 (0)

Ball source - bdiament 06:54:15 09/25/01 (0)

A prediction for commercial roller bearings - bdiament 06:08:14 09/25/01 (0)

Nice! (nt) - bdiament 05:16:13 09/25/01 (0)

Follow Ups

Hate to burst your bubble, but... - DanK 15:15:50 09/27/01 (4)

Re: Hate to burst your bubble, but... - YM 08:02:19 09/28/01 (1)

Re: Hate to burst your bubble, but... - DanK 12:59:20 09/28/01 (0)

Re: Hate to burst your bubble, but... - kuribo 17:33:48 09/27/01 (1)

Re: Hate to burst your bubble, but... - DanK 20:39:56 09/27/01 (0)

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