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Bringing An Invention To Market
I was reminded recently how hard it is to bring an idea to market after George Cathey, Collierville, Tenn., contacted us about his idea for an on-the-go mower blade sharpener. It’s designed to attach to the underside of mower decks to quickly sharpen blades without removing the blades. Cathey tells us he’s already been interviewed by the producers at the TV show Shark Tank. The problem? Right now he only has rough prototypes and a design on paper.
  “The idea is to keep mower blades sharp all the time without having to remove them from the mower. The power of the rotating blade does the work of sharpening,” says Cathey. The sharpener attaches to a long metal rod that runs from the driveshaft hub, through the discharge chute, and hooks over the top of the deck. An abrasive disc is sandwiched between a pair of metal plates that pivot up and down on the rod. A spring-loaded knob on top of the deck pushes down against the sharpener to engage the blade. “A couple seconds is all it takes to sharpen a blade,” says Cathey.
  He knows it will take a substantial investment to engineer a commercial system for market so he’s talking to manufacturers, hoping to find one to take it on.
  Contact: George Cathey, Memphis, Tenn. (ph 901 355-7601; gc@georgecathey.com).
  


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2017 - Volume #41, Issue #6