"Perfect" LED current limiting challenge

[Mike6158]

I've seen how they put chrome in the inside of a frito bag. It's pretty cool. They spray it on under a vacuum. I also watched them make a kajillion of those plastic Walmart bags that usually break about halfway back to the truck. Pretty cool. At one point it looks like a giant condom. Well... giant to some people anyway

[Chris Smith]

It is very interesting to see metal and plastic come together.

Working near the equipment or the chemicals isn’t, but to see a nylon mix of plastic, one that naturally rejects sticking to anything including the mold getting a treating of several special baths of deadly chemicals to etch its surface pores, and then builds up a skin that starts to attract a copper layer, then a nickel layer, and finally a chrome dip,... is very intriguing.

One tiny mistake and that days worth of assembly line production goes to the scrap heap. And considering some runs can be in the hundreds of thousand of parts in just one shift.

Dave

Crown City Plating since 1911.

Largest Chrome plater this side of the Mississippi, so I hear?

Second largest in the world?

They didn’t invent the chrome plating process per se, just many of the processes for sticking chrome to such plastics such as modified mixtures of ABS, Nylon, Teflon and many other hard to work with plastics.

They also invented or discovered many of the processes involved in the electrical process that is still used today in much of electroplating.

They experimented in the Cad plating process for many years and also hold many patents there as well.

We had an Irish woman who was the Main Chemist and patent holder, and all of her work is patented and still a secrete, while working with these nasty chemicals over the years has given every single chemist that worked there, cancer, and taken their lives.

But the formulaes are still there.

The lasers we used we purchased from Luminonics [spelling?] and we modified it onto Bridgeport milling machine which included a camera microscope and soft ware to etch the information onto products, and in some cases, clean out badly formed holes in parts caused from the plating process.

Most of this work is proprietary and still held in trust.

<small>[ January 09, 2006, 02:38 PM: Message edited by: Chris Smith ]</small>

[jimandy]

Now this is interesting and informative stuff. I'm sure that some of us are relieved that a level of civility seems to be returning to this topic.

BTW

We had an Irish woman who was the Main Chemist and patent holder, and all of her work is patented and still a secrete

I believe if her work was patented it would no longer be secret.

<small>[ January 09, 2006, 03:43 PM: Message edited by: jimandy ]</small>

[Chris Smith]

Jimandy, civility only works until arrogance and his brother ignorance enters the room.


As to the patents, I can only guess.

They don’t have to expose the formulae or the contents in the patent?

I believe they might be sealed patents, or its something like bill gates and his sectrete "code" that runs his operating system?

They probably list part of the basics, with out giving up the actual secrete?

Similar with food recipes, and other ingredient based patents.

The raw ingredient may be listed, but not how to make it, but then Im not a patent lawyer.

I do know they sell their stuff in containers to other platers, and there are no major handling or safety labels like most other products must have.

No long list or MSDS on any of the drums Ive seen. Dont ask me how they do it?

They are just listed as hazardous, non flammable, and / or flammable.

And they are nasty and known cancer causing materials. Just smelling them drags up a fight of flight response, and flight always wins out there. You never go back for seconds.

[philba]

Originally posted by jimandy:

We had an Irish woman who was the Main Chemist and patent holder, and all of her work is patented and still a secrete

I believe if her work was patented it would no longer be secret.

that is correct. the patent system was set up to allow an inventor to describe his or her invention in enough detail for others to reproduce the work while retaining rights to allow them to profit from it. This is a very powerful concept as it allows other inventors to build upon existing inventions

the patent office would reject any application that was not sufficiently detailed to allow reproduction. I know, several of my patent applications went back and forth with the patent office before they were issued.

[Chris Smith]

And as we also know from our basic history, chemistry, and drug companies, revealing the complete formulae is not required for a patent.

Unlike physical proprietary items,.... drug companies, chemical formulas, and other ingredient based patents are only required to disclose a minimal amount of information.

What they store “In office or on file” we will never know?

[philba]

Well, glasnost didn't last long.

I'm curious about how much patent experience you have. I think you are confusing trade secrets and patents. You don't patent formulae, you patent processes. formulae are usually held as trade secrets. Think Coca Cola, the KFC mix of 11 herbs and spices or the dopant gas concentration for a semi's process. Trade secrets are recognized specifically seperate from patents. As is copyright. People often conflate the three but they are quite distinct.

Patents are completely public. There is no such thing as a "closed" file unless national security is invoked but typically, national security stuff doesn't get patented. In fact, once you file for a patent, the actual filing is public. it used to be that it was private until the patent issued.

Since you are big on relevant experience, I hold a number of patents, managed the process for about 10X that number and have done analysis on, literally, hundreds of competitors patents. I have spent a lot more time than I would have liked advising a very major software company's legal department on patent issues. I also served on the aforementioned unnamed company's patent committee.

[Chris Smith]

Really? Try again.

From the patent office....

"Patents will not be granted for an invention that has already been publicly revealed. Even a posting on the Web can negate the criterion of novelty. In the US, an inventor could not file for patent protection if an article were published about the invention more than one year before the filing is made. In other parts of the world the patent would be invalidated on the first day of publication of the article. Much of the information in the patent literature is, in fact, never published in any other format"

<small>[ January 10, 2006, 01:33 PM: Message edited by: Chris Smith ]</small>

[jimandy]

Uh...Chris.

What did your quote from the patent office have to do with what Philba said about patents?

<small>[ January 10, 2006, 02:21 PM: Message edited by: jimandy ]</small>

[philba]

Originally posted by Chris Smith:
Really? Try again.

From the patent office....

"Patents will not be granted for an invention that has already been publicly revealed. Even a posting on the Web can negate the criterion of novelty. In the US, an inventor could not file for patent protection if an article were published about the invention more than one year before the filing is made. In other parts of the world the patent would be invalidated on the first day of publication of the article. Much of the information in the patent literature is, in fact, never published in any other format"

Kind of a surprising posting from some one who likes to say "listen and learn".

That has nothing to do with my comments, it is about "prior art" which is irrelevant to granted patents (other than being the basis for overturning a patent). Note also the use of the phrase "any other format"

Here's the process:

- during the invention process, i.e. prior to filing a patent application, there can be no public disclosure.
- at the point of filing the patent application, the invention is deemed "disclosed".
- at some amount of time after the application (basically office paperwork time), the application's existance is made public by the patent office. I'm not certain that office actions (back and forth between the uspo and the inventor) are made public.
- if the patent is issued (i.e. granted), it becomes part of the public record. That is the "format" for publication that your quote refers to.

[Chris Smith]

Everything.

Recipies, processes, and ingredience stay secrete to the owner and are not accessable to the general public.

"HOWEVER, SOME CHEMISTS DENIGRATE PATENTS AS INFORMATION sources since the titles, descriptions, and claims tend to use general, broad terminology, rather than the precise wording typically found in journal articles or other forms of primary scientific literature"


Note the words “Chemist and Patent” in the same paragraph.


Patented and materials for sale [formulaes of a product] are not labled, posted or even a rough ingredients put on them for patent reasons or even hazaderous labling.

Physical Patents list everything about them, while Formulaes, processes, and their ingredience do not.

<small>[ January 10, 2006, 03:53 PM: Message edited by: Chris Smith ]</small>

[jimandy]

I must have missed it but where did the quote come from that begins...
"HOWEVER, SOME CHEMISTS DENIGRATE PATENTS...."

[Chris Smith]

Sounds like another smoke screen on the horizon?

You said what cant be patented?

"You don't patent formulae, you patent processes. formulae are usually held as trade secrets"

Patent [or patenting a] formulae is a common term as I have found, so far. "Composition of matter" is another way of saying a Formulae.


What types of inventions can be patented?

The PTO issues three different kinds of patents: utility patents, design patents and plant patents.
To qualify for a utility patent -- by far the most common type of patent -- an invention must be:
a process or method for producing a useful, concrete and tangible result (such as a genetic engineering procedure, an investment strategy, computer software or a process for conducting e-commerce on the Internet.)

a machine (usually something with moving parts or circuitry, such as a cigarette lighter, sewage treatment system, laser or photocopier)
an article of manufacture (such as an eraser, tire, transistor or hand tool)

A COMPOSITION OF MATTER (SUCH AS A CHEMICAL COMPOSITION, DRUG, SOAP OR GENETICALLY ALTERED LIFEFORM), OR

an improvement of an invention that fits within one of the first four categories.

[ian]

<small>[ January 11, 2006, 05:46 PM: Message edited by: ian ]</small>

[ian]

Here is the circuit I used.........

V+ -->resistor -->320uH Inductor -->LED--->FET--->Gnd
....................^--<Schottky 1n5818-------'
....................^--<Capacitor--------------'

This circuit does seem to be working. I don't have all the proper components yet. I'm running at 5Khz with a 47mH inductor with a series resistance of 100 ohms. At 6.3 V I draw 1.25mA from the battery and the LED is at 2 mA. Because of the series resistance of the inductor I need 10V to get 20mA. I have more work to do but I'll keep updating this thread, or maybe I'll start a new one. Anyway, this looks promising.