Patently Speaking highlights the technological achievements of Fort Wayne area residents.

Paintball Marker With Tool Box

•U.S. Patent No. 7,699,047

•Invented by: Dennis J. Tippman Jr., Fort Wayne; Bryce A. Carrico, Fort Wayne; and Jeffrey P. Douglas, Fort Wayne

•Assigned to Tippmann Sports, LLC

Paintball games have become very popular. And Fort Wayne has become a hub for paintball gun innovation.

As the mechanics inside a paintball gun (also called a marker) become more sophisticated – shooting paintballs straighter, faster and more rapidly – so has the outside design of the gun.

Paintball games often simulate combat scenarios, so some paintball markers are designed to simulate military rifles. Paintball markers can now have the look and feel of real military rifles such as M-16s and AK-47s.

One difference – aside from the obvious fact that paintball markers do not fire lethal projectiles – is that the paintballs they fire are top-loading. The paintballs are stored in a magazine above the gun so gravity can feed them into the firing mechanism below.

By contrast, military rifles feed bullets from pre-packed magazines underneath to the firing mechanism above.

If a paintball marker is to look like these types of guns, it needs to have the same type of undermounted magazine. But since a marker doesn’t use that type of magazine, such an addition would be a waste of space.

Not according to this new patent. These new paintball markers look like M-16 or AK-47 guns, with the same type of undermounted magazine. But the magazine is actually a tool box that detaches from the paintball marker like a real magazine. Instead of holding bullets, the magazine can be filled with tubes of gun oil, wrenches or whatever else is needed in the field.

The magazine is hinged, so it can be easily opened in the field to access whatever is needed to service the marker.

Permanent-Magnet Generator and Method of Cooling

•U.S. Patent No. 7,701,095

•Invented by: David M. Erdman, Fort Wayne; Joseph E. Miller, Fort Wayne; Daniel Gizaw, Belleville, Mich.; and Girma Desta, Suwanee, Ga.

•Assigned to Danotek Motion Technologies, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Generators look like big electric motors, with a cylindrically shaped body and center rotating shaft.

One problem with generators is that they produce a lot of heat. That heat needs to be drawn out so it does not cause damage.

According to this patent, past attempts to cool generators have included running coolant through a coil wrapped around the generator’s housing. Unfortunately, as this patent discusses, it is difficult to evenly draw heat from a structure by using circulating coolant. This is because there is greater heat transfer near the beginning of the coolant’s path than at the end.

This patent describes a new generator cooling mechanism that rearranges components inside the generator to accommodate coils at different locations around the generator housing.

Separate sub-chambers are arranged along the length of the housing, and ports between successive sub-chambers help the fluid maintain a uniform temperature draw along the length of the housing.

The preceding are lay descriptions of patents obtained from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s public records and are provided for general information purposes only. Nothing contained herein is a legal description of any claimed invention, identification of novelty, or offer of legal advice.

Because issued patents are based on applications often filed years earlier, the subject matter of some patents may have been available on the market for some time prior to the issuance of the patent. Additional information on these patents is available at www.uspto.gov.