December meeting

We had another good meeting. The table was full of inventors.
I got some advice on my bath temperature alarm idea.

Ian announced that there will be some kind of festival of learning at the Malvern Library on 7th January 11am to 4pm. This will give any of us the opportunity to tell local people about our club and about ourselves. The Tilt Dam people will be there with something to show people. Mr Toastabags, our man from the Dragon's Den, will be there with some of his products. Malcolm Victory's Rotaire washing line cover should hopefully be on display. We should get the opportunity to attract some new members.

I just heard that Ian will be having hospital treatment again, so I will probably be organising the event at the library. My email address is danheeks@gmail.com

November meeting

Two men from the Federation of Small Businesses came and explained to us the benefits of becoming members of the FSB.
Guy Unwin of Toastabags, showed us his wheelbarrow sides.

A new member, Kevin asked our opinion about an idea related to bathroom safety, and I had some ideas about it, which I hope to do some work on developing.

Ian told us about an inventors show he went to.
He saw lots of interesting things there. I thought the hydrogen fuel cell car looked great.

John Aston, Barry Dawson, Jed Marson, my dad Gordon, Guy's brother Carol, Mike Dean and maybe a couple of other people were there too.

September meeting

There were plenty of people there.
And the man from www.junk.com ( see front right of photo ) came and showed us this: http://junkk.blogspot.com/2009/08/its-alive-i-tell-you-alive.html
We all thought it was great. Charles Penny came and gave us more insights into large civil engineering problems. Jed talked about vertical axis windmills again. The meeting didn't finish until after 10pm. I was late because I went paragliding on the Malvern Hills before I got there.

August meeting

At this meeting, there was Jed, me ( Dan ), Ian, Robin, Guy, Malcolm White, Barry, Gordon, Mike Dean, Mike Redman. Ian told us how he had been to a meeting of "Transition Malvern Hills" ( transitionmalvernhills.org.uk ). They wanted to know if we could help them save the world. They gave us a list of questions, like "Could we invent a chemical to dissolve plastic" and other ideas they had had to make the world better. This caused a lot of discussion, although we agreed we should come up with some numbers for them, to help them make decisions. Later we went round the table each getting a turn to talk. I talked about my free CAD software ( HeeksCAD ). Jed Marson told us about his business as an agent between inventors and investors ( www.idea.st ). Mike Redman had some ideas for new products using his inventions. Mike Dean use his scientific background to add some useful comments about a variety of things. Gordon told us about his wind tunnel that he is making to test the sails on model ancient boats. Barry showed us a variety of light bulbs. He has been experimenting with using good quality LEDs to make superior indoor lighting. I can't remember what Malcolm White talked about. Guy told us about his Toastabags promotional flag visible from the motorway. Robin discussed flywheels as a method of storing energy in poor countries. Gordon, Barry and Mike Dean saw some problems with these ideas.

July Meeting

Ian was unwell for the June meeting, so I ( Dan ) agreed to chair it. We had a few new members. There was about 16 of us. We went round the table talking about each of our projects. Sorry, I didn't write a blog entry for it.

For the July meeting, Ian was back as the chairman again.
A man called Steve told us all about his rat trap invention.

Marcus showed us his developments for making drawer partitions.

Guy showed us his awards and his flower vase, made of welded plastic, which was quite pretty.

April meeting

I didn't go to the March meeting, but there was one and it was on the first Friday of March.

At the April meeting were, Ian Browse, Marcus Cleaver, Charles Penny, Malcolm White, Mike Dean, Gordon Heeks, Mike Redman, John, Geoff Hawkesford, Dan Heeks ( me ).
We decided that future meetings should all be on the second Thursday of the month, as usual. The experiment with the first Firday was a failure.

Mike Redman showed us his microphone cable.
Charles showed us a piece of glow-in-the-dark fibreglass scafolding pipe.

Someone, I think it was Charles, suggested the club starts a problem solving team, possibly as a business.

When it was time to go home somebody had locked the gate and the combination number we had was wrong, so we had to phone someone and get the right number.

February meeting

The meeting this month was held at The Malvern Hills Science Park, as usual.

This month we had a presentation by "Roar Forensics" www.roarforensics.com

Dr Simon Elliott (Consultant Forensic Toxicologist) enlightened us on their work here in Malvern, John Seviour (Co Director) from "Roar Particles" at Sedgefield presented us with new and innovative applications.

Simon told us about the work that they do, which gave us an insight into what happens when the police send samples off to be tested. It was quite interesting to know that there is a proper forensics lab, here in Malvern.

John ( the one with the beard ) is lucky to be working at the cutting edge of the industry. He has been playing with a machine which can detect drugs and explosives from a finger print! Some special dust ( made with nano-technology ) is dusted onto the print. Then some sticky tape is put on it and then unstuck and sent to the machine. The machine makes a vacuum and then burns the finger print with a laser, which ionises particles of the finger print. Big electro-magnets fling the particles up a tube. Different mocules take longer to fly up the tube, so looking at the finishing times of the particle flinging race, you can make a guess at what kind of molecules there are. You can then selectively trap out only the molecules you are interested in, with a well timed gate ( the times are only nano seconds, I think ), and divert them to a more comprehensive test in another tube. This could be used to tell whether someone is an old, drug-taking woman, or not.

Charles Penny was there, in case we needed a spare projector.

We decided that future meetings will be on the first Friday of the month

January meeting

Guy Unwin showed us various information he had collected from an inventors show in London, including an interesting electric generator driven by an electric motor which was powered by the output from the generator, thus providing an continuous free supply of electricity. This was presented by an Iranian man, although unfortunately there was no working demonstration.
Mike ( sorry I forget his full name ) told us about progress on his toilet odour extracting invention, for which he has a patent application for. John commented that his back mounted salt grit spreader would have come in handy the last couple of weeks, with all the ice we've been having, but apparently organisations are reluctant to take up the idea, as they consider themselves more liable to injury claim if someone slips on a gritted path, than on an un-gritted path. Marcus asked the group for advice on injection moulding companies regarding his invention of a tiling aid. Guy was able to provide the names of several companies in Malvern. Franics told us of his idea, which he probably said was not to be in the public domain yet. Mike Redman told us about his work on a product, but said that if I put it on the blog, I might be getting a visit from MI5. I told everyone about my recent programming efforts and showed them the mouse trap I have bought, which although is not my invention, is quite clever. Ian chaired the meeting and extracted £10 from most of us, as it's the beginning of the year again.