ABC Science is out to find Australia's backyard inventors.
So far we've unearthed inventions ranging from the practical, the ethereal and the gravity-defying.
In the second instalment of our "Edisons of the 'burbs" series, you'll meet three inventors who've created some cheesy, motivating, and safety-conscious solutions.
LimBits, for the truly tailored workout
Ella Osborne is a sprinter who has represented Australia at the Oceania Athletics Championships.
She strength-trains in the gym to help her performance on the track, but Ella was born without her lower left arm and sometimes has to adapt her exercises to suit her needs.
Ella uses a prosthetic arm, and while there are companies that make attachments to help with exercise, she says they can sometimes be inaccessible, expensive or not exactly fit for purpose.
Luckily, Ella's dad Simon has always loved tinkering in the shed.
"He's always done that with my prosthetics, from when I was a kid," she says, including the time he made a prosthetic attachment to help her learn to ride a bike.
As Ella she got older and her training evolved, she needed more specific equipment for the gym, but funding and availability made the process a bit complicated.
So during COVID-19 lockdown at their home in Newcastle, Simon and Ella designed some new prosthetic attachments by reappropriating things they could buy cheaply online.
They called their project LimBits.
Simon used car suspension bump stops to make adaptations for push-ups.
And theatre lighting clamps for weight-training grips.
"The ones online don't always fit the dumbbells that you have, or the resistance bands doesn't always work in there or bend in the right way," Ella says.
"So that did kind of spark the idea to invent our own. Through that, I was then able to access a wider range of gym equipment.
"That was kind of the first time I had more free rein over what I could do."
Simon grew up on farms in the UK and worked on safari expeditions in Africa.
"I always enjoy coming up with other solutions to problems, things that people wouldn't necessarily think of," he says.
"I just basically repurpose everyday stuff that I can find which is suitable and then make it work in a way that then helps Ella achieve the goals and the things she needs to do."
He finds the materials and comes up with a very specific blueprint.
He then takes his design down to a local machine shop where they make and fabricate the metal attachments.
All in all, Simon estimates the parts cost him about 10 per cent of what commercially available parts would, a saving worth thousands of dollars.
Ella has since moved away to study at the Australian National University, but she still uses attachments her dad has made.
There's the shoulder harness for dead lifting, and of course a pool cue to wipe the floor with her competition at the student bar.
Cheesy-chip finger cleaner
Duncan Hellmers is a professional inventor. By day, he develops and tests prototype kitchen appliances for his employer. By night and weekends (sometimes), he invents things for himself.
And occasionally, just for fun, he gives himself a challenge.
"An interesting way to come up with new ideas is to think of ridiculous solutions to things," says Duncan, who lives in Sydney.
So one day he set himself the challenge of inventing a device to clean the tasty orange chip dust that gets on his fingers and remote when he's eating chips and watching TV.
"It leaves a lovely smear on your TV remote when you go to change channels."
Re-inventing the serviette was not an option, he says.
"It's obviously easily solved without having to invent anything, but that defeats the purpose of the exercise."
Thus, the "Cheeto-Matic" was born.
This one-of-a-kind sanitary gizmo took four days to build and cost $50 in parts that were mostly sourced from a hardware shop.
The finger-size sponges are mini paint rollers, the white tubes holding the sponges are from the plumbing department, and the gears, motor and battery pack are from a hobby electronics shop.
The idea, Duncan says, is to start building as quickly as possible, so you don't stew on the design.
"It's a way of rapidly prototyping things," he says.
Having built the device, Duncan tested it in the field: his living room.
Operating the Cheeto-Matic involves simply sticking the fingers and thumb into the motorised sponges, which rapidly spin.
"It quickly removes that cheesy dust," he says.
Although it worked as well as he had hoped, he had no plans to commercialise the invention.
"I don't know how many people take [the chip dust problem] seriously enough to spend money on [the Cheeto-Matic]."
Bushfire car shield as a last line of protection
Rob Walker has seen his fair share of Australian bushfires.
He worked for 13 years as a manager for operational support for the Queensland Rural Fire Service.
"More and more, our bushfire-prone areas are increasing — where they didn't have bushfires before they're getting them now, and this is part of climate change," he says.
Rob is retired now, but as a member of the Australasian Fire Association Council, he spent a lot of time working on firefighter safety and thinking about civilian safety.
"Radiant heat is the deadliest form of heat … it'll get you before a flame does," he says.
Research and testing done by the CSIRO has lead to fire trucks in parts of Australia being fitted with high-temperature curtains to help stop radiant heat from entering the cabin.
Rob thought he could take the idea further.
"Given most bushfire fatalities are civilians, I wondered: why couldn't smaller vehicles have curtains?"
But, Rob says, curtains in smaller vehicles, when rolled up, could impair a driver's view and be unsafe.
So the 69-year-old from Ipswich came up with a wildfire survival shield.
The shield would be mounted externally on a car to protect the glass from shattering and the door seals from melting.
Rob sourced the materials and made up a couple of prototypes.
The shield incorporates aluminium reflective coating on an insulating backing which cover all windows and door seals and blocks radiant heat from entering the cabin.
It also reduces smoke particles and carbon dioxide entering the cabin as well as reducing off-gassing or release of toxic chemicals from door seals and synthetic materials within the cabin.
There's also an option to have the shield in a bag mounted on the roof of the car or utility, ready to deploy.
While Rob says materials in the prototype satisfy industry standard safety data tests, the finished product has not undergone CSIRO lab testing.
He believes the shield could eventually be useful for civilians and first responders — but wants to be clear that it would only be used as a last resort.
It would only work if the fire was moving fast through the area, and if getting out of the vehicle to deploy it wouldn't create even more risk.
"The best thing for people to do is evacuate and go early," Rob says.
"We make covers for firefighters, which they've got to get into the fire, [but] we won't make them for civilians, because they're going to leave.
"However, if it's too late to evacuate … when all else has failed, you [could] hop in your car with the shield deployed."
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*Don't worry, we'll be in touch for permission before we share your invention.
