The May 18, 2020 edition of the New Yorker has an article titled "BREATHING ROOM" with the subtitle "Engineers take on the ventilator shortage". The article is about the explosion of innovative new ideas to design a new, cheap, easy to produce ventilator. One that drops all the gold plating but works well enough for most COVID-19 patients needing ventilation. Now I defy anyone to come up with a design that has less gold plating than Robert Menard's RoboBreath, but is the RoboBreath the star of the article? Was Menard, Canada's most brilliant ventilator designer, interviewed for the article? Not a chance! Amongst other designs the article discussed the Vermontilator, an awkward stumble of a name, Ford's Airon ventilator, G.M.'s Ventec, the Spiro Wave, the VOSCON ventilator and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's M.I.T. E-Vent. But absolutely no mention of either Rob or the RoboBreath!
As soon as the pandemic hit Menard went into action designing the Robo-Breath, a device with the potential to save thousands. Unfortunately, after a week or so of effort, Rob gave up. But the RoboBreath shouldn't be judged on the basis that it's a total failure! Some, or even all, of the designs reviewed in the article, all done by the big-bucks establishment research facilities, will be failures too. Yet they get the praise and publicity while Rob is totally ignored.
I confess that I mocked Rob for using bathroom plunger parts from Canadian Tire as critical components in the RoboBreath prototype but it turned out that the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Lab were initially thinking along exactly the same lines;
While they concluded "That idea lasted about six hours" Menard was, at least momentarily, thinking right up there with the Big-Boys. And what recognition did he get for all of this effort? Nothing but a few randomly scattered postings on Quatloos. Shabby, shabby treatment. So, as partial rectification, I've moved all of the Menard RoboBreath postings to this dedicated thread so there is at least one centralized source that historians can refer to when writing up the history of the pandemic. They'll need it, the paper trail for the RoboBreath is rapidly disappearing. Menard's RoboBreath website is inexplicably gone as are his You Tube videos showing the device in operation. But at least Rob's kept his begging bowl open for donations!"Gee, can we at J.P.L design a ventilator that uses parts scrounged from a garage, or from a vacuum cleaner or a Home Depot?"
https://www.gofundme.com/f/life-saving- ... hare-sheet
Although, after almost two months of soliciting, it's still $99,978 short of its $100,000 goal. No wonder Menard failed. Ford and M.I.T. didn't have to plead on GoFundMe for scraps to keep their dreams alive.
Anyhow, here are the postings starting with my first responding to a post from Gregg. I've put this preamble at the beginning of this post to explain why this new discussion suddenly popped up.
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Well Gregg we'd all like to thank you and Ford for your help in trying to end the ventilator shortage crisis however Ford and GM can stand down and go back to manufacturing cars and leave the production of sophisticated medical devices to the professionals, the people who actually know what they are doing. The problem needed the brains and abilities of people with the scientific, engineering, and medical knowledge necessary get the job done without relying on unavailable Chinese parts and expensive unnecessary frills. I am of course referring to Robert Menard and his friends!Gregg wrote: ↑Wed Mar 25, 2020 8:47 pm Deeper thoughts....
The metal dies, we mostly outsource that kind of small part stamping. Our presses make fenders not radio frames. Any number of shops have presses that can stamp district better and faster than us. But we can make the dies better and faster than anyone. That's work that can't be automated and has to be done by a skilled tradesman. Even the stamping we outsource we do still make and own the dies our self. And we are wicked good at replacing dies in a hurry.
On the 3D printing, we use it more to make parts for our machines when they break. It's quicker than ordering that part from Germany or China or where ever the machine was made and cheaper than maintaining inventory of whatever might break. But company wide we have thousands of the things some big enough to make full scale auto panels for prototypes. We'll really be able to help there I can see. Say the company that makes them has 2 printers and can make 40 parts a day. If they can send us the print we can make probably 2000 a day.
So I think our main contribution will be 3D printing and die craft service. I'd add we don't need his permission to do any of this.
That's right, Canada's greatest Freeman, in just one weekend, produced a ventilator prototype that can be immediately mass produced at an unbelievably low, low price! Thousands will pour out of factories every week!. So scrap those plans to have a few over-designed gold-plated machines trickle out of your plants in dribs and drabs, the problem is solved. I present to you all Robert Menard's Robo-Breath first prototype ventilator!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iwqFjjgh-U
It will no doubt come in whatever color combination the customers want.
Menard released his last Freeman video over three and a half years ago and has kept a modestly low profile since. But he's been actively inventing things to better our lives. His first big venture, done during his Freeman days, seems to have been the NinjaGoat, a mobile, stabilized camera platform. Unfortunately he was unable to perfect the 'stabilized' part so the camera bounced around like a kid's yo-yo. Then he had a venture where he proposed turning old furniture, fridges, dressers, whatever, into miniature hydroponics gardens that restaurants could install in their kitchens to grow their own herbs on demand. And this wasn't just some bullshit pie-in-the-sky concept, he built an actual prototype made from an old dresser! But, perplexingly, the restaurant industry failed to come on board. Next up was a stint as president and CEO of Imaginarium, his own computer gaming company. His idea in that one seems to have been some sort of tank game that combined computers and actual toy tanks, I was never clear on the concept. Guess that's why I spent my whole life and as a salary drone rather than an entrepreneur. Sadly that didn't seem to work out either so he moved into hand-made wooden bathmats, kitchen trays and such sundries. That one still seems to be in play and we may yet be all using Menard's wooden bathroom utensils.
However while his past ventures didn't meet with the success he'd hoped for his mind was always actively seeking new horizons and this time he's hit a home run. I guess it's finally time to stop mocking him. I'm almost seventy-one so I'm right in the coronavirus danger-zone. Perhaps, who knows, my life might be saved by a Robo-Breath. If so I'm going for subdued grays and black. The prototype is too flamboyant for my drab accounting background.
