Popular Mechanics - USA (2019-04)

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36 April 2019 _ PopularMechanics.com

↓ MY STORYPATENT

Before there’s a patent, there’s an idea.

Before that, there’s a person with a problem to solve.

(2) LAST NAME (3) FIRST NAME (4) APPLICATION NO.

(1) PAT E NT

Bandura Stephen 62/436,808

Ground Clamp Socket

with Only a

Socket Wrench

A union electrician invents a socket to

easily tighten any electrical ground clamp,

saving himself time—and the risk of

accidental exposure to 35,000 volts.

(5) I’m an electrician by trade. I went to a union apprenticeship,

and I’m still union. I ended up on a job at Merck pharmaceu-

ticals. They have a lot of substations with a medium voltage,

which goes any where from 2,000 volts up to 35,000 volts.

(6) On these systems, when you’ve turned them off, the cables

and equipment still retain energy. So you need to discharge it.

Ground clamps attach to cables with an eyebolt or a T-handle.

They’d often be in very hard-to-reach areas. And we wear arc

flash suits, which kind of resemble a big bulky thing you’d see the

bomb squad wear. So now we’re trying to turn these handles...

(7) I said, there’s got to be a better way. I wish I could ratchet

these on. So I searched the old interweb to no avail. And I had

this idea that, you know, I could make this thing.

(8) A friend of mine, a machinist, I was talking to him and he was

like, I’ll make that for you. I drew up the specs. Half-inch drive

socket. There’s a short slot in the center for eyebolts, and then

perpendicular to that there’s a longer slot that fits over

a T-handle. When you have the socket on a ratchet, you

now have a lever. Archimedes at his best.

(9) The machinist made the first one. Everyone at work

was like, Wow, check that out! You should make these!

(10) The machinist says, Here’s the name of this patent

attorney we use: Bala Sundararajan. Give him a call.

He walked me through getting a provisional patent.

(11) The provisional patent protected me when I shopped

the thing out to manufacturers. You can get the pro-

visional faster, and you still have the protections of a

patent. But it’s only good for like a year. After that, you

have to decide what you’re going to do.

(12) I sent it to all kinds of manufacturers. No, no, no, no.

And then one day, a company called Rack-A-Tiers said

yes. It was like, Now what do I do? Somebody said yes!

(13) I went ba ck to Ba la , and he cooked up some numbers. It

was something like $5,000 to go for the full-on patent.

(14) When I was shopping the socket around, one guy I

ta lked to said, Listen, just so you’re aware, if a company

decides they want to make that—a larger company—

you don’t have the resources, patent or not, to fight

them. And they know it.

(15) So I looked at what percentage I’m getting from each

one of these, and I’m thinking, It’s going to take a long

time for me to make up the price of a patent. And I’ve

already got the manufacturer. I decided to forgo get-

ting the full patent and spending all that money.

(16) Ve r y u ne x p e c t e d. I made a tool. My kids are like, Dad,

you’re an inventor! And I’m like, Yeah, yeah I am! Never

one of my aspirations, but, hey, we’ll put it on the résumé.