Topic: Business idea (Off-Topic, but looking for feedback) - page 2. (Read 4720 times)

I'm quite aware of 3D printing, and have followed it since it started with modified ink jet printers years ago. How long do you think it will be until we can print something like an iPad at home from scratch?

I urge you to look into 3D printing a little further. It's not that new. My point is that we are not a long way away at all. There's another name that it is called but I can't remember the term. I think it's additive engineering (as opposed to removal engineering).
They are doing human organs, engine parts and I've seen intricate items like a timepiece.

Don't forget any disruptive technology is going to get held back by tptb, but things move forward.

It sounds like you need yourself a Lyle Lanley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_yLodI1CQ

Good luck to you... I have been wondering why we don't have automated delivery systems since I was a child... just takes someone crazy enough to believe to change things.

That's a good point. And with things like Skype becoming more mainstream, travel will be required less, too. Luckily, 3D printers are a very long way away from printing electronics, televisions, blenders, and refrigerators. It'll happen eventually though.

The politics of making that a reality would bog it down into a painful misery.

Besides 3d printing may do away with shipping a lot of stuff. Imagine local 3D printing shops that have the raw materials and you design what you want from home, they print it and you pick it up and pay for it.

We are on the verge of some new and very disruptive technologies impacting the masses.  Nanotech being one. The significance is not realized by most but it hasn't gone unnoticed by defense industry and others.

But maybe your maglev could be used for moving raw materials.

If trucks were taken off the Interstate system, there is at least a full lane that could be devoted to a two-way autonomous freight system. Container size does not need to much bigger than a coffin for most crap people buy. Trucks and trains can still be used for the few large items.

Not sure how much you know about the automated freight trains being used in the coal mining industry in Australia but certainly companies like BHP have a lot of money to spend and the resource boom is still going very strongly down under (so maybe some opportunities there).

Five to ten tons. I can make the weight be whatever I want it to be, but one of these will transport one pallet, or about two refrigerator sized boxes.

With an aerodynamic shape.

What was the maximum gross weight being transported, again?

Hence the suggestion--cost. It is the cheapest option and shouldn't add that mush complexity to the project. In fact, I can envision the developer(s) of the bloom box working hand-in-hand with your project.

"Small" also cuts down on the surface area exposed to oncoming air mass, resulting in greater speed potentials.

Ah, um, yeah, I was kind of expecting that. Coming up with an idea for sending a train through a tube, and using a fancy word like "maglev," isn't coming up with a "maglev design." There are a lot of these "designs" out there, but none have been build since 1887, because the maglev part is actually the most important and most difficult part of it. It's only recently that Transrapid, JR-Maglev, and our system were invented, and all three are still being developed. My system, which I actually own, is the only one that allows for such cheap automated transport, and is what I hope will allow my project to actually become a reality.
As for naval railguns, they use maglev style propulsion, but not suspension. The propulsion is basically your average every-day motor, but unwrapped into a flat strip instead of being a circle, so the magnets move forward instead of swinging around an axis. That, again, is the easy part. Making something hover on magnets has always been the difficult part.

Still, really awesome to hear others are actually working on developing something like that. I would prefer to have this be above ground to save on tunneling though, which is another reason I am pushing for "small."

As a former Interstate truck driver, I am 100% for an underground freight transport system. I am not familiar with the engineered systems out there. Jacque Fresco is a 94 y/o industrial designer, not an engineer. I don't think he has specific schematics. Naval rail guns achieve artillery velocities, so it must be possible.

I would love to hear Jacque Fresco's design for suspending a train in the air using nothing but magnetism. What type of maglev system did he design, and how does it work?

Thanks for the link btw. Definitely useful. It's good to know that others are looking for something like this, and that I can mention to VC's that the technology they will be investing in may later be sold to those other guys.

Your basic idea isn't new. Francis Bellamy wrote about it in 1887 sans the maglev. Germany has been working on this awhile too. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/02/a-world-without.html
The Venus Project's Jacque Fresco has designs for high speed maglev through vacuum tubes for speeds approaching 6000 mph. The Zeitgeist Movement also has many such designs.

Trolls and naysayers on forums are free  


I have actually seriously considered China, and despite their total disregard for patents and copyright, I do know how to work with them, and, personally, would be willing to partner up. The two problems I have are 1 - I have no idea how to approach them (especially since they are already sold on Transrapid), and 2 - my grandfather has struggled against communism all his life and doing this with China would be... uncomfortable. Being royalty, his parents were executed, and he was on the run as an enemy of the state throughout his entire youth. He was only left alone, somewhat, after he got his engineering degrees and proved to the government that he is worth a lot more alive than dead. They still spied on him and made his life difficult though (the phones in his house always made a *click-whirr* sound when you tried to call someone).


I haven't, beyond just putting up walls to prevent foreign objects from getting in. Since the system will be closed in the middle, and only open at the distribution center ends, I haven't considered security to be a problem. But I guess someone could load a bomb into a box with a GPS, ship it, and have it detonate in the middle of the rails. A 350mph bomb would do a hell of a lot of damage Thanks for the tip.


Less efficient. Maglev uses an electric motor, with a gap of less than 1cm between windings and magnet. Almost no power is lost. With tubes, you have to power fans, spin them up and down, and pipe the air around corners and such. Tubes also make it more difficult to automate the thing. With the speed and power being built into the track, you can send a train one after another at a 10 second interval, and though the trains will speed up and slow down, they will always be at the same 10 second interval (the system works by sending electric waves down the rails, and the trains ride the waves). With pneumatics, you either have to send one train at a time, or hope that the train in front is sufficiently being pushed by the train behind.


Yes. The original patent actually uses passenger trains as example, and in fact, my other business idea involves moving 12meter 30+ ton containers. The problem is pretty much no one in US rides public transport and passenger trains here are not profitable, and in Europe everyone is fixated on the German Transrapid technology, and at the same time wary of ALL Maglev tech because Transrapid was such a colossal waste of money (it works, but only after billions were sunk into it over the last 40 years). Last night I was thinking that, eventually, these will be inevitable for passengers. We won't have oil (jet fuel) for ever, and once that starts to run out, a trip from DC to NY, instead of taking 1 hour by plane, will have to take 4.5 to 5 hours by solar or battery powered dirigible or prop plane. Ground based electric will be the only high speed option.


If I wasn't clear in my business proposal in the OP, I am not proposing truck-sized trains, but only something that would carry two refrigerators or a small sedan, being launched as soon as the box is dropped on it, as opposed to waiting to get filled like trucks are. That's about the smallest this tech allows, though, since it depends on the speed of conductivity of aluminum. Any smaller would require more conductive materials (gold for example) and would make it prohibitively expensive.
Commercial wheel-on-rail trains can't go that fast because centripetal forces will shred the wheels, and there are friction and vibration issues. The main barrier, though, is transferring power to the trains. Overhead lines can't support high speeds. It may be possible to build wheel-on-steel trains using out linear motor technology, though, assuming the wheels can take the abuse.

The Shanghai maglev will reach a top speed of 431 km/h during peak hour trips (only 301 km/h off peak).

Cargo tends to be less sensitive to acceleration and deceleration than humans, and there would be less safety engineering needed.

Also, the air resistance increases by the square of the speed, not linearly. So hurtling through the air at 350 mph is a hell of a lot more ambitious than going at say 250 mph. Just ask the engineers that designed the Bugatti.

This sounds really ambitious.

Why are you focused only on cargo transportation? Can't the same technology eventually transport passengers? If you are able to build truck-sized "trains", can't you make the equivalent of buses as well?

I wonder how smaller can you get... it would be awesome if one day our ordinary family cars were able to hop on some rails and run on super-speeds. (btw, google tells me 350mph ~ 563kph... that's fucking fast! I don't think there's any commercial train in the world running at such speed, is there?)

If the maglev is able to do all the work, why bother with the tubes?