ralf chlipalski
29,000
Insider Points
|
Breathe right strips are these spring strips that stick to your nose to open up the nostrils at night or for sports. However, they’re expensive and I believe they’re only single use. They must be selling well because they’re in every pharmacy. I don’t know how they work but I assume it’s some sort of glue that is immune to oily and sweaty skin. I want to invent one that you can use over and over.
A few years ago I read about a tropical bug, like a lady bug, that has special feet that make it near impossible to remove from leaves. It doesn’t work like suction cups and it doesn’t work like gecko feet which have fine hairs that use the molecular Van der Waals force for adhesion. This bug’s feet use oil and sliding flat plate feet to adhere like two wet pains of glass adhere to each other. If I could just find the name of this bug, I could maybe order some and crazy glue them to a spring strip and see if their legs can adhere to noses. That’s the prototype. Now, how would I be able to manufacture the way their legs work? It’s beyond my abilities.
|
ralf chlipalski
29,000
Insider Points
|
Corsaire you’re the best!
|
Greg Rotz
53,000
Insider Points
|
Not sure if this is the one you were thinking about, but it uses flat plate surface adhesion with an oil:
Palmetto Tortoise Beetle
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in388
I think the answer to the mass-production side is to approach a company that has solved that and is looking for a killer application. http://inventables.com has suction tape that comes at the concept from another angle. I’d be curious if a highly absorptive substance like skin could be used as the tortoise beetle does for longer term adhesion.
p.s. Ran across this cool biomimetics paper while poking around Google on this topic:
A New Endoscopic Microcapsule Robot using Beetle Inspired Microfibrillar Adhesives
http://biomimetic.pbworks.com/f/A+New+Endoscopi...
|
Penster .
205,500
Insider Points
|
Vicks VapoRub…….I are simple….
|
Julie Brown
|
Ralf, I have a bug and her name is Betty: does that help?
The point of the Breathe Right Strips is that they open up the nostrils so the insides won’t stick to each other: maybe you could come up with something to stick up inside the nostrils – something which would still allow the person to breathe through their nose.
|
Michael Heagerty
404,500
Insider Points
|
Ralf,
I think with the prototype, the hardest part will be to teach them to “sit” and “stay”.
For production, I’m thinking suction cups with micro vacuum pumps…wait a minute, you didn’t just trick me into serializing did you?
|
