Maybe you'll like this one...
I've tried to come up with a variable plate concept and so far this is the fastest most feasible thing I can come up with.
Oh, if this ever works and someone beats me to the patent office; remember me in my old age and retirement years...or better yet maybe someone or this nano guy can hire me...I can come up with stuff like this all day long...
Kingpd, good to see you are thinking but you also need to learn how to keep your imagination within limits.
Learn to strip away ideas that are going to be too costly or impractical or ones that defy the rules of Nature.
Nothing wrong with thinking way outside the box but then you have to pull it back to something that is possible. I am not going to be the one to say what is possible or not since there are some amazing things done. There are metals that if you apply a charge, they change length, which is close to your pin idea.
A word of warning, if you publish an idea or make it public in some way, that might make it invalid to be patented. Describing it here on the forum might be considered as making it public and then it might not be patentable.
The rules now in most countries is "First to File". So if several people have the same idea, the one that would get the patent is the one who filed first. Also getting a patent is not so easy. One might think that one has a really unique idea and then find out that others have been thinking about a very similar concept years ago.
There are also lots of patents that just will not work. Having a patent is no guarantee that it is a working concept. I have found it very interesting to look at patents of printing press manufacturers and see how they think. From my perspective it is pretty sad. They don't have a clue on what is important.
So, I suspect your interesting idea is too complicated and expensive but keep thinking. But please, if you really have an idea that you think is patentable, don't talk about it on these kinds of forums. Patents are very expensive and expect something like $10,000 per country. The EU is not one country so you would need a patent in each one. You only have a year to apply to any country, once you file the patent to the first country. Then if you get a patent, you need to pay maintenance fees annually or every few years. They add up.
Then a patent is only good for defending in an expensive court action. There is no guarantee given to you. You would have to fight it out if the patent is not clearly unique and the winner can be the party that has the most money.
Too much reality? Sorry. Get back to dreaming of interesting things that might be possible.
That is the fun part.
