I work on 72 different inventions.
Since Reaganomics we have lost millions of manufacturing
jobs overseas. One way to try to bring back jobs is to create new products by invention and innovation. If we
are going to turn around our situation it will be through invention, innovation and entrepreneurial acumen. I work designing
several large project and many smaller more easily managed inventions. The oldest comes from my days in the oilfield working
as a Hydraulic Snubbing Operator, "The Hydraulic Jack Robot" for control blowout drilling (under balanced drilling)
of Oil, Natural Gas, and especially Geothermal Wells.
The HJ Robot Design would
be a compound drilling robot that would cut the economic and environmental cost of drilling and increase the production and
lifetime of wells drilled. If the cost of drilling can be reduced, then tapping the vast Geothermal Energy Fields will become
economical. The HJ Robotic Driller would also be compact enough to fit within a submersible allowing drilling on the
ocean floor in mid deep water.
Another large project I work on is "The
Sub-Lateral Liner" which is a method of placing a thick impervious liner under an existing toxic waste site, sealing
from beneath indefinitely. For example placing a thick liner under Chernobyl or various Hanford Nuclear Sites, or the numerous
Hazardous Sites around SE Texas that are leaching toxic waste into our ground water. Nothing I work on is a revolutionary
new technology. What I do is redesign existing systems, methods or tools in a new way, often from the ground up.
The patent I have "The MF Construction Aid" is the first step in the RC Model and it is not
that hard to see or to build. Three Units could be set up at different times as Free Standing Safety Ladders,
or Manlifts, or a Gantry Crane, a Rail Crane, a Tower Crane, a Scaffold System or several other embodiments. These units
would be able do every job on a mid to large construction site at one time or another.
The MF Construction Aid could also work doing Refinery Shutdowns faster, safer, cheaper. We could work doing
Utility Work, New Construction, erecting High Power Transmission Lines or quicker utility repairs after Hurricanes. We could
erect Cell Phone Towers, Wind Turbine Towers, or actually replace these towers with our units. The towers would
then be able to retract in high winds or offshore in Hurricanes. This design would also work as a Mobil Observation Tower
along the US Border and finally as an "Exterior Diagonal Two Way Elevator System". That would attach to the outside
of a building taking up no interior space. The elevator cars would not travel as fast as a conventional
elevator but with multiple cars able to pass each other on the track many cars could be in use at one time with no waiting
for an elevator.
Ideas, especially, large ideas are very difficult for
all but a few people to grasp.
New ideas replace old ideas that have powerful
vested interests in general opposition, but everything we have and everything the human race
has ever built, has sprung from the mind of some crazy dreamer.
Technologies
like the Bloom Box, Black Light Power and others will change the energy game. Oil will soon be in decline,
and the price will go up, if it comes from Global Climate Change or Peak Oil. We have to redesign our local economy
and in so doing redesign the world economy. In Beaumont, TX just over 100 years ago a dreamer named Patillo
Higgins did just that, he had an idea that there was oil just south of town at a place called Spindletop. That dream
became the Lucas Gusher that changed the economy of the world for over a century. If he could do it then we could do
it again, build the first Robotically Constructed Dwelling or Building on the Planet and bring on the Personal Robotic
Revolution.
P.S.
“Necessity
is the Mother of Invention” Plato
The fire, explosion and sinking of the Deep Water Horizon Drilling Rig in the Gulf of Mexico and the response of BP
has made clear the short comings of Conventional Rotary Drilling. These Blowouts and fires have happened
regularly since the Lucas Gusher in 1901. The need for a new drilling process and newly designed drilling
equipment in tune with that process has become first and foremost a necessity.
Control Blowout Drilling or Under Balanced Drilling is the
process we need and “The Hydraulic Jack Robot Driller” is the equipment designed specifically for that task.
The HJ Robotic Driller is my invention that I have been working on since 1977. At that time I worked
in the oil fields mostly as a Hydraulic Snubbing Operator for HWI (Hydraulic Workover Inc)
and others. We worked on wells that were most often under pressure (Snubbing Work). It was dangerous work
in a dangerous environment. Doing this work for 6 years allowed me to see and have hands on experience
with nearly everything that could go wrong drilling and producing oil and natural gas. At that time it
was the most dangerous work you could do, if you worked one year at Hydraulic Snubbing you had a 100% chance of being in a
lost time accident, many of those accidents were crippling serious burns or fatal. The problems a normal driller would see
in 20 years we could see in 2 or 3 years. With that experience I was able to erase everything we know about drilling for oil
and start over from scratch. It’s obvious we are doing it wrong because we were doing it wrong at
the Lucas Gusher and how we drill today is an extension of that error. Pressure at the well head causes
fear and panic on a drilling rig because they are not designed for that eventuality as they are hard headed idiots. They are
unable to change what they are trying to do, or how they are trying to do it, and what the outcome is from their efforts.
The Hydraulic Jack Robot Driller would be a compound drilling robot designed for drilling under pressure. It
would be able to drill for oil, natural gas and especially geothermal wells at much less of an economic and environmental
cost. To be able to dramatically lower the cost of drilling geo-thermal wells would mean we could reach
the vast Geothermal fields and produce green energy in a cost effective way. We could also lower the cost and increase the
production of oil and natural gas in a true transition beyond petroleum to Green Energy. Compared to a conventional drilling
rig the HJ Robot Driller would be very compact, so compact it would be able to fit within a submersible, allowing drilling
from the ocean floor in mid deep water. While this endeavor would be tricky and have to be done just so,
it would not be as difficult as putting a nuclear reactor in a submarine or a crew of astronauts in orbit aboard the Space
Shuttle. With the BP blowout in the in the Gulf of Mexico right now we have a fleet of Remotely Operated
Submersibles doing the work about a mile down. Submersible Drilling is just an extension of that work several steps ahead.
If we are going to drill in remote difficult environments such as Off Shore or Alaska, etc. which we are,
we need to smarten it up. We need to realize we can and must do it better than the way we do it today
and we need to allow those with the ideas at least a hearing. Business as usual has
become very unusual.
The Greatest inventor
of the modern age was Nikola Tesla who early in the last century saw Geothermal energy as a almost limitless energy source.
"All that is necessary is to find an economic and
speedy way of sinking deep shafts to tap this enormous Geothermal Energy". N. Tesla
