This discussion has taken a left turn on legal issues and that is fine
but what I was talking about when I said I was taking someone else's idea
and did not feel comfortable doing that was the moral issue of it, not the
legal issue.
I have taken digital pictures in stores and even held up a ruler to take
the picture so I could have a reference point to help re-draw the parts and
that is ok with me but this time its a guy who either got an idea on his
own or took someone else's idea and seemed to be a guy just like me, trying
to make a living somehow and he made this cool toy. I feel uncomfortable
taking his idea and making one of my own, if I had seen it at Harbor
Freight, I would have already have cut steel and started welding. Its the
moral issue of it that is bugging, not the legal issue since he will never
know I made a copy unless he is on this list and I am making one for me and
not for sale.
The only reason I feel ok doing it is because of his extremely high
price, I have roughly priced out the steel around $270 based on rough
measurement in my head and it will be even cheaper since I have lots of
scrap steel around. That $270 was based on buying 20ft bars too, so I
would even have steel left over, enough to build 1/2 of another. The
all-thread is peanuts which is what he used and the ACME thread is $150-200
for the threads and the nuts, I need both right-hand and left-hand
bars. And he wants near $3,000 for it, its just way overpriced and if I
can figure out the design of it, I think I will do it.
I made some drawings, they are rough, very rough since as I said I am not
an engineer and the killer for me was the 90degree change in rotation.
As to what it is, yeah, its a car lift as some of you have guessed, its a
scissor lift that gets all 4 wheels off the ground around 2ft. I have a
bad back and it hurts to do the frame work and now body on my Singer Le
Mans while its on the ground, this would raise it to a comfortable body
work height. I would not trust his for working under the car even though
he says it is safe but I want it for my hobby, doing the final work on the
frame by elevating the frame to a comfortable height and then the body work
at or nearly at eye level so I don't have to bend over for hours at a
time. My hobby cars are small 1930's British cars around 1,500 lbs. when
finished so it does not have to be industrial grade strength, just SAFE.
I have looked at the mid-rise lifts for $1,500 to $2,000. This whole
thing started by my looking for some really tall jack stands :)
Mike
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Mike Rambour
Bug Writer err...Programmer
mikey@b2systems.com
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If you want to learn more about the ULTIMATE BRITISH sports car,
then take a look at http://www.singercars.com/
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