Inside the mind of an inventor

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We’ve filed more than 100 trademark actions and 400 patents so far this year, from tiny tweaks to technological breakthroughs.

“The world’s patents are increasing by more than one million year-on-year. To stand out, we need to be meaningfully distinct,” says Richard North, Head of Intellectual Property Protection at Rolls-Royce.

Patents exclude others from making, using or selling an invention, and Rolls-Royce has been the UK’s highest patent filer for three years running. Richard’s patent team must all start as engineers or scientists, so they understand the technical attributes of inventions. It then takes another five years to get a second qualification in intellectual property (IP). He says: “IP attorneys need to be analytical, creative, extremely dedicated and have powerful powers of persuasion.

“Globally, we file around 900 patents a year. Some things look deceptively simple but can be so powerful – the impact on a product can be huge. We analyse our patents every year to see what benefits they’ve brought to the company. A small feature on a single turbine blade saved millions. I am constantly gobsmacked by what our inventors come up with.”

Richard North
Head of Intellectual Property Protection, Rolls-Royce

Solving the unsolvable

Solving the unsolvable

Dr Dan Clark, Manufacturing Specialist – Welding devotes his time to ensuring Rolls-Royce is at the cutting-edge of technology. But the work doesn’t stop once the patent is filed – a big part of the job is proving the idea is worth investment.

“In a big business it can be easy to accept the way we’ve always done things. New ideas bring with them a risk of failure and there can be healthy scepticism. Proving inventions are worth pursuing after you’ve done all the research and testing can be knotty, but I’ve always enjoyed solving the unsolvable.

“As a child I was curious about everything. I was accused of having too many eclectic interests at school – today I’d probably call that an overplayed strength, but I just enjoy looking at things in different ways.

“I’m fascinated by history and anthropology, so looking at how people have conquered the problems of the past in ingenious ways is a real passion.

“Different perspectives are key. When I think about problems, I like to think how a sailor or dentist would solve it to challenge my brain even more.”

 

 

Factfile

Name: Dan Clark

Role: Manufacturing Specialist – Welding

Specialisms: Welding engineering, localised heat treatment, powder metallurgy, Blisk repair, 3D printing.

Inspirational technology: TRIZ – a tool that encourages thinking by analogy to creatively solve problems.

Favourite innovators: Robert Watson-Watt, Tim Berners-Lee and Hedy Lamarr.

Factfile

Name: Dan Clark

Role: Manufacturing Specialist – Welding

Specialisms: Welding engineering, localised heat treatment, powder metallurgy, Blisk repair, 3D printing.

Inspirational technology: TRIZ – a tool that encourages thinking by analogy to creatively solve problems.

Favourite innovators: Robert Watson-Watt, Tim Berners-Lee and Hedy Lamarr.

Putting theory into practice

The Trent XWB and Trent 7000 engines use a new technology: blisks – a bladed disk that bring rotor disks and blades into a single component, instead of two. This makes them considerably lighter, which improves the fuel efficiency of an engine. But this new technology makes them expensive to repair and often scrapped if they are damaged, prior to Dan’s inventions.

“When we used separate blades and disks it was cheap and easy to remove a single blade and repair it than replace the entire disk, but blisks are immovable components. If they got damaged, likely through foreign object debris, we needed a way to easily repair them, so my inventions in their repair follow the theme of access in a restricted environment.

“I worked in a bridge building company at the start of my career. We made bridges using robotic welding, which was unusual at the time, but it made me think about robots being relatively small in size to the end product.

“One of my inventions uses this theory. Think of it as an extremely sophisticated shower head that applies hot jets of argon gas to the blisk.

“I explored the problem of blisk repairs for around eight weeks – although it felt like minutes at the time – working on unconventional approaches when it became clear that established paths weren’t working. 

“It was tough. We had a definite end date we couldn’t miss and if we didn’t find the solution it would kill off the other parts of the project. I had to look for a fast way to prove the maths worked, so we arranged some physical proof-of-concept trials on the workbench.

“It was a success – the technology was possible in practice and helped us get the funding we needed to go after the new approach.

“There are a relatively small number of people in the world who are highly creative doers. There are a lot of big thinkers, but it takes putting it into practice to make it count.”

Pioneering the IntelligentEngine

The making of a vision. Our IntelligentEngine takes form.

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