I have completed  approximately 100 creative projects in the years I have been consulting and those in this area are  representative of the projects I have worked on which do not fit in the other categories on this site.  I have seen what works and what doesn't.  It is critical to pick good people to advise you as they can either save or cost you a considerable amount of money, and in extreme cases, their advice may either make you very successful or an expensive failure.

I was consulting for a  company to develop a method of determining the optimum conditions for crushing rock which required testing of the system in an operating crusher in an industrial environment.  They chose (against my advice) to test in Europe which required that I make a trip to the site to solve problems with the system. Because of the distance to the test site and difficulty in addressing problems from far away, problems were not adequately addressed and the project ultimately ran out of funding.

It is important to always test close to home and even more important,  listen to your consulting engineer when he says "do not test far from home" (or some other important truism).   This particular project was ultimately not a success as much of the available budget was taken up ignoring the suggestions the consulting engineer made.  It was a project that was daring in concept but failed because of management decisions to allocate funding which were not in the best project interests.


While at the Nevada Test site in the 1960's I designed a radiation monitoring system which was able to monitor over twenty locations within several miles of the monitoring location using only twisted pair field phone wire laid across the desert surface from the detectors simply by unrolling it from the back of a jeep.  The system was protected from interference from radio transmitters by the circuitry I designed and which saved a great deal of money for the testing organization.  I have always tried to create excellent projects at low cost since it is very easy to design a project that is complex, failure prone, and costs a great deal of money, but much more difficult to design a simple system that works well at very low cost!




In the commercial area, this was an example of a device for an individual client who wanted a new method of fitting lens wear frames by bending them easily when they were hot.  This concept worked very well and I believe the client made considerable money from the device.






This was the passenger system  unit for a long distance bus entertainment system designed in the early 1970's before there were all sorts of personal entertainment devices like MP-3 players.  The control unit offered 16 channels of recorded music etc., and allowed the two passengers in a seat unit to each rotate out an earphone  from the back of the seat headrest.  This system was coin operated by placing a coin in the main bus control unit and setting a knob to your seat number.  Your seat was then turned on for a specific amount of time.  This unit worked very well but was not successful  for the client because the various bus company unions would not allow it on the busses (as they couldn't decide which union would have responsibility for it) and it became a jurisdictional dispute!  Consulting engineers learn lots of interesting things they (or you) would not ordinarily believe!  Use them  as they are very easily worth the money even if they only steer you away from a debacle like the one above!


Recently I was able to assist nationally known law firms in preparing the technical part of their case for a patent infringement suit between two very large companies.  I had the opportunity to read thousands of pages of documents to help establish the defensible position of the law firms client,   I have regularly assisted clients in drafting patent documents and hold four patents of my own with a fifth pending.  Today, when intellectual property is becoming more important, it is important for clients to be aware of the need for protection of their ideas.  All patent work I or anyone I may locate for your work is confidential and we work closely with the clients patent counsel.



This was an early project which could be restarted now in the winter recreational market.  It was an environmental suit which literally made it impossible to freeze to death in cold climates such as the arctic and yet avoids the need to take off garments when working hard and overheating.  It uses only a very small amount of power from batteries for several days of operation and uses a unique temperature control method.   I have worked with all sorts of people to create all sorts of devices for all sorts of reasons., and offer this expertise as a project coordinator for clients.