Archives for August, 2008

Enough legal jargon!  I want some engineering!  We’re going to work again on Monday, at my house.  First on the agenda will probably be redesigning the transmission to lower the gearing ratio, as I previously posted about.  We’ll also be refining the steering and possibly buttressing the suspension if necessary. Further posts will follow during [...]

We’ve registered the domain name carofawesomeness.com, but the trademarking process has been proving more difficult and expensive than we had expected. We’re researching our options, however for the moment, the process is somewhat stalled.

I was interested to discover a project even crazier than ours – the splinter.  It is a super car made of wood. Joe Harmon Design

Will has begun the process of registering “Car of Awesomeness” as a trademark.  We have the option of attaching a domain name to the trademark, but unfortunately, LEGO(R)’s Fair Play policy prevents us from using their name in a URL, so we cannot, for instance, use legocarofawesomeness.com.  We are in the process of deciding if [...]

I researched our trademark a while ago to see if it was available through a database linked to the US Patent and Trademark Office’s site.  This evening I have been going through USPTO’s step-by-step instructions for getting a trademark. I have discovered a few things.  Every application needs a “representation of the mark,” which comes in two [...]

I was initially concerned that Lego® would not allow us to prefix our almost-pending trademark “Car of Awesomeness” with their brand name.  After writing to them though, it looks as though we will be fine.  The main think that I am now wondering about is that our applications must be personal and non-commercial; what if [...]

Recently I have been researching patents and have learned many things. Thing cannot be patentented if they have been in public use for more than a year. Patentability is a large field: patentable things must be novel, non-obvious, and useful. The US Patent and Trademark Office publishes a Manual of Patent Examining Procedure. There are [...]

We’re in the process of researching our options on the patenting and trademarking processes. We have yet to decide which component we want to patent. Will has a family friend who is a patent attorney who has thus far answered a few of our questions, and says he can give us some help as we [...]

We finished work at about 6:00 this evening.  We have made significant progress on the car, completely redesigning the suspension and steering systems.  We went through several different designs for the latter before coming up with the current one, which is, as we had hoped, suspended from the shock arms so as to move with [...]

We are awake, and are resuming work. The first order of business is the the steering system, which will float on the shock arms so it will move with the suspension. This has the added benefit of not adding the steering system’s weight to the car, allowing more play in the suspension for going over [...]

We have completed the MegaBlock sacrifice.  To give you an idea of the awesomeness, we used the following tools during the procedure: MegaBlocks Cigarette lighter Handheld butane torch 30% nitromethane RC car fuel Oxyacetylene torch Which makes for an awesome sacrificial rite.  We used the various torches to ignite the blocks and more thoroughly destroy [...]

We are commencing the MegaBlock sacrifice, aided by some nitromethane fuel. Photos to follow.

Will’s father located the missing spring, so we are continuing with work. We are adopting the original design with the smaller springs, as it appears that this will be sufficient for the car’s weight.

We have been working at Will’s house for the past three hours or so.  We are in the middle of redesigning the suspension and steering systems, but we have run up against a serious problem.  Somehow we managed to lose one of the four springs used in the actual shocks while rebuilding the shock arms. [...]

Finally, we have scheduled our next work session. We will be working Saturday evening and Sunday morning at Will’s house. One or both of us will be live blogging all the work we do, so expect more updates soon.

We are hoping to work on the car this weekend.  The first priority at this point is finishing the steering system.  Once this is complete, we will be able to begin the programming.  We also have to address the issue of shifting; we need some kind of rotation sensor to determine when the car is [...]

Some day, Whill envisions a world where engineers of automotive Lego creations can unite to share their ideas and progress to a world of better designs.