Licensing Opportunities & Patent Information

Licensing Opportunities & Patent Information
Currently, we are seeking a licensing arrangement involving the patent and/or trademark rights to manufacture, market, and distribute the Honing Channel™ system.

Patent Information
Dr. Larry P. Bleier is the inventor of pioneering workpiece finishing technology, and has been awarded numerous patents in the United States and worldwide on his innovations, including United States Utility Patent Nos. 6,074,293 and 6,361,408 B1, 6,949,018 B2.

This prospectus will introduce the Honing Channel™ Finishing System, which includes new, patent pending technology available for licensing. This revolutionary technology has unlimited applications for the surface finishing of both geometrically simple and complex items, including the manufacturing and finishing of complicated designed workpieces having curved surfaces. Used in a complex manufacturing process or incorporated into a simple device, the technology uses optimized channels or chambers with selectively placed abrasive materials to finish the surface of an item, imparting the desired finish with a controlled surface topography, cross-sectional geometry, and/or geometric shape. The chambers or cavities created would comprise at least a portion of a negative image surface of a portion of said tool or workpiece to be finished using suitable abrasive material(s). The cavity would also provide appropriate relief areas for the tool or work to be guided through the chambers and be finished. Almost any workpiece or surface that can be drawn or turned on an abrasive surface can be finished by the apparatus of this invention. In many situations, the Honing Channel™ Finishing System reduces the need for either specially trained technicians or complex finishing machinery to create the intricate, curved surfaces needed on many manufactured items.

The Honing Channel™ Finishing System can finish and shape virtually any metallic or non-metallic article with the application of machinery or devices having open channels or closed chambers. The present invention reflects the discovery that with this apparatus many surfaces can be carefully finished, shaped or sharpened to obtain the objectives required. This may be carried out by placing them in contact with abrasive surfaces that mirror completely, or partially and selectively, the desired surfaces of the objects to be finished. The present apparatus will aid in achieving the objectives of a specified manufacturing process(for example, surface topography or surface geometry, cross-sectional geometry, and surface finishing) by providing an apparatus having abrasive surfacing contours that have selectively engineered abrading contact areas and relief surfaces(non-contacting areas) to permit a desired outcome of a finishing process. By controlled movements of the tool or instrument, or part thereof, though the apparatus, one can impart a specific finish such as shaping, grinding, polishing, cleaning, buffing or sharpening to selected surface zones, while leaving other zones unfinished. Machine process engineers, technicians and design engineers can now find additional solutions for a process requiring precision grinding of flat, parallel and curvilinear surfaces. Abrasive surfaces can be strategically placed into chambers for precision finishing. This technology can help provide solutions for those engineering principles requiring attention such as kinematics, heat transfer principles for process effects on surface quality, effective fluid delivery, friction concerns, contact mechanics, chip formation, and deformation that are found for the most commonly used abrasive processes.

Although initially, the first patents were designed for the manufacturing, finishing, and sharpening of the cutting edges on dental instruments, additional applications of this apparatus were invented so that the clinician in the dental and veterinarian fields could also refinish and resharpen the cutting edges accurately as they became dull, and therefore, would not have to send them back for repair- restoration to the factory or a refinishing facility. These instruments have complex curvilinear cutting edges that previously could never be accurately sharpened, reshaped and refined with thorough deburring, even by the current dental instrument manufacturers prior to this invention. The other dental manufactures currently use flat abrasives, including grinding wheels that require the utmost hand skill to try and create the rounded semicircular shape in cross section of the cutting edge(curvilinear) but still produce less than the ideal controlled finishing with deviations noted in shape and surface roughness and sharpness. Currently, instruments produced by dental manufacturers lack the uniformity and established guidelines of the International Standards Organization Sub-Committee on Instrument Design for Dental Curettes and Scalers. Published research has demonstrated the problems with the lack of uniformity in the size, shape and geometry of medical instruments and their iatrogenic effects on medical and dental health. Current research has further reported problems with the quality of finished manufactured devices that fail to meet current accepted professional standards in office/hospital/clinic settings. Rough surfaces will promote biofilm maturation, and high-energy surfaces are known to collect more plaque, to bind the bacterial plaque more strongly and to select specific bacteria.

Now, with this new patent pending technology, the instruments can be restored and refinished with thorough deburring, and sharpened, hundreds of times in treatment by a clinician, with results superior to what the dental industry could provide previously though the use of channels with optimized angle construction that provide enhanced, targeted finishing. Use of this product by anyone on the professional team quickly accelerates the sharpening process, whether the instruments are brand new from the factory, improperly worn or damaged. Drawing the instrument's cutting edge through the optimized channel permits anyone to sharpen in one to four strokes, which restores, and even improves, the original factory cutting edge. This is accomplished a channel profile with a degree of angulation and abrasive zones are is customized to account for the instrument's actual usage .

With this dental application, licensed dental personnel and most non-licensed dental personnel learn to sharpen and shape the curette and scaler in less than one hour of training in any clinical setting worldwide. Because the stones are fully autoclavable, they can be used chairside during surgery or routine hygiene care requiring sterile technique.

The Honing Channel™ Sharpening System for dental medicine is a product consisting of high- strength, custom designed, manufactured aluminum oxide stones for sharpening, shaping and finishing of dental curettes and sickle scalers, based on this patent pending technology. This invention differs from the prior sharpening arts due to its selective, customized reshaping capabilities, as well as its ability to reshape and resharpen a tool's worn surfaces to meet and improve original tolerances. In other words, surfaces can be selectively and specifically shaped to restore and improve the complex angles and shapes of the working edges of a used instrument, or a used component of a complex machine or apparatus/device accounting for angular approaches derived from actual usage. In many cases, these worn or damaged surfaces or cutting edges can be restored at the location they are being used rather than taking down time and sending the part back to the factory for repair or replacement.

Technically any material can be used to abrade another material in this apparatus. For industrial applications, abrasives are minerals from a select group of very hard minerals used to shape, finish, or polish other materials. In processes that grind, finish, polish, hone, or lap, abrasives used with this device typically are limited to synthetic minerals with the exception of diamond and garnet. Common abrasive minerals can be crystalline forms of aluminum oxide, silicon carbide, zirconium oxide, diamond and cubic boron nitride. If the device is used in polishing or blast cleaning, an abrasive can be ice, solid carbon dioxide, walnut shells, plastic, sand or aluminum oxide. Conceivably, abrasive wheels, abrasive tools and fluids and belts could be utilized with this apparatus to achieve the desired Abrasive Machining Process.

Manufacturers and manufacturing customers are facing numerous challenges. Customers require ever increasing precision and quality of manufactured goods. There is intense global competition forcing down the selling price per part and faster part delivery times are needed. These and other challengers and demands have caused manufacturers to make some very important business decisions to stay ahead of the competition. Shaping Apparatus for Finishing Surfaces can help provide for enhanced competitiveness and profitability. Business management with their teams of machine process engineers, design engineers, related technical support and sales and distribution teams need to find manufacturing solutions and new products that can help their existing customers as well as help to expand to find new customers worldwide.

Holder of International (PCT) Patent Publication No. WO/US2016/014948 for "Shaping Apparatus for Finishing Surfaces" (this patent application as well as other patent pending technology is available for licensing in other industries.)

Holder of Patent # US 6,949,018 B2 Downloadable copy
(this patent along with the two earlier patents of 2000 and 2002 are available for licensing in other industries.)
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