Recuperation

[Peter Bowles]

Its good to back, Happy New Year all -

So, as part of a new years resolution to increase efficiency in the studio, I'm planning on building a recuperator at long last into our furnace.

It should be fairly straight forward, though I have a couple of options and am looking for some sage advice from those that may know...

I can either run the piping inside the brick stack of the furnace where there is greater temp but a shorter run of pipe, or I could run it for a much greater length through the cooler part of the stainless pipe that sits on the top of the brick stack. With a bit of extra hassle I could probably do both but am not sure how much additional transfer I will get into the combustion air. I remember from discussions about this some years ago that there is a theoretical ceiling to how hot the air can get before the volume becomes too great for any further advantage - does anyone have any thoughts on this.


And a second and slightly easier one, should the pressure feed to the top of the regulator come off the airline before or after the recuperator. I'm thinking after but have concerns about warm air to the top of the diaphragm.

Just as an indication of what I might expect, does anyone have temps for their recouped air at normal working temp and at batching temp.

Thanks anyone

Pete

[Hugh Jenkins]

For various reasons, I do not have linked controls on my gas and air for recuperation. There is no upper limit on the temperature of air, but there often is a limit on what the burner system will handle. Most burners will not handle air more than 600-700F. In that case you can stay outside the furnace and maybe still be too hot. With a total burner system rebuild and the best recovery, you can get air in the 1400F range. That continues to improve.

When the heat of the furnace goes up, the recuperated air heats up and is therefore more expanded and contains less oxygen by volume. You have to chose between adjusting the air each hour during the melt, or selecting an air setting that is excess at the lower temps but right at the top end.
The air pressure to the gas regulator must come from the cool side of the recuperator.

If you want to build it yourself, I suggest a 4" stainless stove pipe inside a 6" insulated stove pipe. Three feet will get you enough heat. If not exposed directly to the exhaust at the furnace port, this will last quite a while and be inexpensive. Going higher tech is a couple $K but can pay back in a few months time depending on fuel cost and furnace size.

[Hugh Jenkins]

I don't think I answered one of your questions very well. I have had great success with air temps up to 1400F. That is with a 4ft heat exchange stack. It calculates to about 20% return of the heat remaining per foot. When you get to 60% total return, the next foot can only give you 20% of 40% remaining heat. You are fighting for an ever decreasing amount of return. I think I will get another 10% max with a high tech (and expensive) ceramic core, but it is getting marginal for the expense. The first 30% is fairly easy. I got that with a welded column of VW cylinders inside a 6" stove pipe ten years ago.
The part that has been trickier is transporting the heated air to the burner without leaks or cooling. With pipes outside the furnace you are losing heat you worked hard for. Try to keep the transport inside the insulation jacket of the furnace. There has to be a path for the heated air. This can be done with a two path casting that lets the exhaust into the center channel of the heat exchanger and collects the heated combustion air from the outer cylinder. If the heat is not too high (less than 1000F) you can do a lot with metal fabrication.

[Peter Bowles]

Many thanks Hugh. I'll digest this and be back with the progress.

Pete

[Kraig Richard]

If your adding on, or upgrading a heat exchanger to an existing nozzle mix burner, be sure your nozzle isnt too long. With ultra high air preheating it's possible to crack the gas (as is done for heat treating atmospheres), and generate a type of carbon particle that can adhear collect and grow off the burner. Weird shaped hollow stalagtites.

Turning down an efficiant supercharger is tricky as less air gets pushed through the exchanger the temp can really ramp up, besides pushing exchanger limits, is tricky to have the setting be right the next morning when the glass and preheat temp is cooler.

[Hugh Jenkins]

Kraig. Those are two reasons that I keep the gas and air controls independent of each other. At the end of a melt, you need to be able to turn down the gas and leave the air turned up. This isn't a time to consider efficiency. You are cooling down the furnace at a very low gas setting but also wanting to keep a high air flow through the exchanger so it doesn't overheat.

[Scott Novota]

Does feeding warm air/hot air into a burner instead of cool air really have a drastic difference in the heat of the flame? I guess I can see how a flame being hotter by the difference of the temp of the air or some percentage of that heat delta, but is it really worth the hassle?

I only ask because I don't know anything about stuff like this.

Scott.
.

[Steve Stadelman]

Originally posted by Scott Novota
Does feeding warm air/hot air into a burner instead of cool air really have a drastic difference in the heat of the flame? I guess I can see how a flame being hotter by the difference of the temp of the air or some percentage of that heat delta, but is it really worth the hassle?

I only ask because I don't know anything about stuff like this.

Scott.
.

It can be incredible, remember that 80% of air is nitrogen and during combustion lots of heat goes to just warm up that useless tramp gas.

If you can suck the heat back out of the exhaust stream with a recuperator..........you win.

[Kraig Richard]

Hadn't ever considered of the concept of running lean for preservational purposes....... Especially in the same thread as "Volkswagen Cylinders".

Guess I'm in the running slightly rich "camp" from considerations made torward engines for cylinder preservation.

Honestly thought running lean it would "light up" the (Inconel) liner in my exchanger on the turn down "re-entry" level of heat.

{ Aside.....Remember a sign at the sculpture studio speedy melt warning about magnesium in volkswagon parts, maybe it was just blocks.}

Shielding the hot end of the exchanger liner with ceramics made the connection last a lot longer. 6 - 8 inches

Just flashed this idea... For After-Charge turn down opening a bleeder valve on the hot air (just before burner head) venting some hot air instead of the economy rationalised from running a lean atmosphere? There a way to run those numbers?

A way to bump up efficiancy % of a "tube in tube"-- jacket styled heat exchanger.....

The Plug.

If the internal flue pipe diameter allows/designed for it, hanging or affixing a plug down the middle of the flue, to create a dead space which positioning causes heat to be closer to the collection surface/ echhanger lining.

This ask a little more from the liner. Not having the plug to close to the furnace exaust manifold helps in this respect.

A foot +/- less long of a plug then the exchanger jacket ?

Less velocity at the liner wall at the hottest end by not being pluged up.

Smooth walled plug as such described gained a very noticible flowmeter ball drop for the propane.

Spiral banding wrapped around the plug might yield another few % points of efficiancy from increased turbulence enhancing that transfer.

[Scott Novota]

So if you did something as simple as, lets say, pull your intake air from just above the opening of the glory hole you would see a difference not only in heat but also in the amount of gas used. IE> you could run at the same heat inside the glory on a less gas rich mixture?

Color me interested in learning the ways of the furnace/glory hole building jedis.


Scott.
.

[Steve Stadelman]

Originally posted by Scott Novota
you could run at the same heat inside the glory on a less gas rich mixture?

Color me interested in learning the ways of the furnace/glory hole building jedis.


Scott.
.

No, you must keep a stochiometric ratio. Hugh refers to idiosyncracies of actual operation.

By preheating the inlet air you just get to use less fuel to heat everything else.

[Scott Hegan]

regarding preheating the air for the glory.. I am pretty sure that the glory uses the most fuel in my shop, but the burner system is a premix with a gibberson tip and an alfred mixer. Preheating the air for this system greatly increases the chances of flashback. I'm not going to do it.
The eclipse thermjet can be adapted for preheated air with the substitution of a high temp alloy nozzle for about 250.00.
There is an excellent article about recuperator application and design in the 1980 GAS journal. Contact me offline if you want a scan of it. Scott@heganglassworks.com
Way back in 1992 I was doing a rebuild on a correll furnace here in california, and the recuperator was just shot. The stainless core was flaking away. It never occurred that the lack of flow after the charg cycle was probably raising the surface temp of the stainless well past 2000 for long periods.
I have been considering having a bypass pipe route around the recuperator on my setup for startup. Also, do you think having a way to variably dilute the flue gas with ambient air to maintain a certain temperature of the core is overthinking it or a useful feature?

[Hugh Jenkins]

I have said often that the main way to extend the life of Charlie Correll's heat exchange stacks is to be able to turn the gas down and keep the air flow up for a few hours after the melt cycle is complete. I wish he had said this himself. It does mean having separate air and gas controls. Charlie favors the linked control systems. They can be digitally controlled quite easily. I can imagine some kind of a time delay system for turning down the air but I wouldn't know how to design it. So, I favor the two knob manual system, one for gas and one for air.

I think that there are many ways to control the air temp for heat limited burners. I know of several Gib head systems that use "warm air' and run just fine. They often are in the 400 to 600F range. The Eclipse burners use a shunt of the hot air if it gets too hot. I have worked hard to find a way to use the air as hot as I can get it. I keep metal out of the hot air path entirely and the burner is completely ceramic anywhere the gas and hot air are combined.

The ways to make a heat exchanger work more effectively include a longer tube system, better conductivity of the materials, turbulence in the air passages, roughened rather than smooth (increased surface area) exchange surfaces. Passing the air within the insulation jacket of the furnace keeps it from losing the heat that it has captured. Pathways outside the furnace will always lose some heat.

I am going to do a lot more themocouple observation of the heat change over the length of my newest heat exchange stacks. I want to plot the curve of heat change in the exhaust and intake air. What I know for sure is that the more heat you recover, the less fuel you have to use. The air to gas ratio has to be the same, but both can be greatly reduced. I am currently running both my glory hole and furnace on recuperated burners. I have reduce the furnace propane use from 15 to 5.5 gal per day and the glory hole from about 2 gal per hour to 1 1/4 gal per hour. More work has to be done on my glory hole doors to catch up with current best designs. Mine still has a 6 inch opening all the time. Overall with the same furnace and glory hole I am down from 1000 gal per month in 2001 to under 400 gal per month today. Is it worth the hassle? I think so. Our propane just went up from $3 to $3.10. Both of my boys are glass workers and I hope to keep them able to afford to do it as long as they want to.

[Peter Bowles]

Thanks Hugh for your continued input on this, and also thanks Kraig, still digesting it all.

So, in thinking this through, just want to table a couple of ideas possibly from left field. Firstly, and this is the easy one, if your glory hole is anywhere close to your furnace, would it not be more effective to use any remaining heat from the furnace stack, than trying to recoup it from somewhere from the glory hole itself.

Secondly, and a little more odd. What if the shape and volume of the flue was changed from a tall vertical stack to something else, where the through velocity of exhaust gas becomes slower allowing greater time to conduct to the incoming combustion air. Firstly I was thinking a large cuboid sort of box or chamber - giving larger volume and the potential to fit more metal surface area for the piping. I was then thinking further, that the flue could easily become almost horizontal for some distance, again slowing down the rate of flow through. Pressure in the furnace could be maintained with dampers at the exit of the furnace and with a section of traditional flue at the end of the horizontal section - possibly again with a damper to create enough draw. It might take a bit of jigging to drive the thing - but any thoughts ? am I way off base here.

Pete

[Scott Hegan]

this is the sort of post that GAS could build on - get the first person facts and designs. Publish them or make them available on the web for free. That would be useful for so many and help some struggling studios control costs.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Pete, when I built my recuperator, the path was more like the lower intestine than a straight line. The path went back and forth making a big series of 45 degree turns (not 90's). It allowed the air to really get heated as it passed thru the flue of the furnace. I think the total run was about 20 feet. This in turn required greater air pressure at the intake to overcome the turns in the system. It worked very well.

There is nothing wrong with taking the furnace heat and putting it in the gloryhole as long as the gloryhole is under a hood and vented properly. It's six of one, half a dozen of the other. I do think that the furnace makes a very sweet whoosing sound when it is recuperated since you don't have all that cold air being banged around as it ignites with the gas. It would work fine I think with the possible exception of caustic gasses potentially trashing your work in the gloryhole if you had multiple furnace operations.

[Scott Novota]

Pete you last post begs the question, does introducting heated air into you air/gas mixture reduce the sound of the burner/ignition inside the glory?


Scott.
.

[Ken Peterson]

what's up Hugh. I just wanted to tell you that everything you say goes along perfectly with my mechanical engineering thermodynamics education. You've really done your homework!!!! I knew you were so scientific/methodical, but I didn't realize to what extent (It's awsome you're going to plot temperature vs. recouperator position). I think it's because you'll always be somewhat of a high school dean in my head. I'm lovin these posts.

Don't you think that the greatest inefficiency in a glory hole is having such a large flue (the front door). It seems to me that if you want to build the worlds most efficient glory that you would....

1)recouperate through a proper sized flue.
2)have the doors closed all the way shut (like no opening on the front so that it would exhaust fully through the recouperated flue)when you're not using the hole (maybe pneumatic doors?)
3)turn the hole up whenever you open the door (maybe have a one door, two door, and three door setting on the burner, and possibly attach a switch to the doors so whenever you open a door it automatically goes to that setting), and turn it back down when you close the door.

I just look at the front door of my glory, and it's way huge compared to what I run a furnace at. When I open my furnace flue that big, it doubles my gas consumption.

[Hugh Jenkins]

Ken, you came along when I was promoted to my level of incompetence. Knowing I can recouperate my glory hole has been a big step. Seeing what people are doing with scissor doors is another area of great progress. I hope to put the two together soon. Different settings for door openings has been attacked by Eddie Bernard with proportional heat control burners which are now on the Penland glory holes. Someone may be able to put all of these together. Is it you?? I am a minimal automation guy. I have a foot switch now for reduction and can add a channel for power, but I doubt I'll go digital control. Bill Worcester is considering it for his two ended, scissor door glory hole since Eddie can provide it.

Brian Kerkvliet has done a combined, vertical and horizontal heat exchanger. It was a very complicated construction, but did very well on heat recovery. The two measures of efficiency of an exchanger are the delta of the exhaust heat and the delta of the combustion air heat. How you get there is all of the fun! I think I am close to what I can do with an easy to build and operate system. If you want to see complexity, Google heat exchanger and recouperator and see what industry installs.

I decided years ago not to get into joining equipment in series, but to deal with each one the best I could. It is not the only way to go. I think there are equal issues in linking and controlling heat flow from one unit to another. My stack temps are now around 700F and my get somewhat lower. I am now inspired by Steve Adams water flow heat system. It uses the general excess heat of the shop. Another idea we could almost all put to use.

The main reason for quieter operation of reuperated burners is that much less air and gas have to be pushed through the system. In my case up to 70% less. Velocities and turbulence are greatly reduced. The recent experience with a 30" glory hole has pushed my current burners to the noisy level. I am now scaling up the design so that the gas/air flows are lower. That should do it. If so, then I can't imagine having to go any larger for a studio burner.

[Steve Adams]

Hugh, I didn't mention before that the gloryhole here also gets it's air from the recouperater on the melting furnace. The 20" gloryhole also has a sissors or guillotine door which closes up tight and vents out the bottom between the leaves of the door. I don't know why anyone would continue to use the barn door type because this works so well. It is operated with one hand and never requires an assistant. It also closes with a foor switch...

[Peter Bowles]

Hugh, its not something I could do as I have a ss nozle for the incoming gas and other ss casings aroung the burner port, but if you had a completely ceramic burner, would you not be better off just switching the furnace off and closing off the flue at the end of the melt cycle to avoid the recuperator overheating?

Pete

[Hugh Jenkins]

Peter, I, too have one metal part that is heat exposed. It is the high pressure air jet for the recuperator. It depends on at least a small air flow to keep cool. As it is, it takes a long time for my furnace to cool after a melt, so I don't mind running a little cool air through the system at that point. The gas input for all furnaces has to be metal at some point where the line goes into the block or gas head or whatever you want to call it. With no gas or air flow you will still have at least some radiant heat and perhaps conducted heat to those outer parts. So I have settled on turning way down and having a slight flow through all parts of the burner even for cool down. I am currently running the gas at 4psi through a #66 jet. When cooling down, I set it at 1# for 3 to 4 hours and then readjust to idle. Partly this fits the bedtime schedule, but it also seems to be gentle on the glass, the furnace, the crucible, etc. Completely off for those hours would save a little fuel to be sure. It still may not be perfect, but it beats the heck out of what it was before.

While writing this, I realize that it may be possible to replace the metal jet with a ceramic part. Interesting thought. Thanks for that little brain teaser.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Hugh, a sandblasting nozzle might do that job very well.

[Kraig Richard]

".....While writing this, I realize that it may be possible to replace the metal jet with a ceramic part. Interesting thought. Thanks for that little brain teaser........"

One way to do a metal to ceramic interface is compression fittings.

Don’t know what diameter jets you are dealing with.

A furnace burner I use is a maleable 2x2x1.5 bulb T. Affixed inside are threaded pieces that hold the gas nozzle...... which is a Ceramic thermal couple tube supported at the cold end with compression fittings designed for brass and copper tubing.

Instead of a fixed length of thermal couple tube /gas nozzle I have used a capped pipe screwed into the backside of the burner.

This pipe houses for the extra ceramic tube while adjustments are being made. Gas flows into this capped pipe housing and enters the T/C tube.

Take the thing apart adjust the amount of T/C tube sticking out of the burner, turn it back on. Move it again. See what happens. Tuning the burner so the flames final maturity impinged the surface at three inches below a full charge seemed economical.

I see in one of the glass magazines that "the" flat glass industry is getting better fuel efficiency with glass/flame impingement plus amazing refractory longevity now the target walls aren’t targets anymore. (Theres a middle east analogy hiding in there somewhere)

Tighten compression fittings to barely snug and the T/C tube can be firmly pushed or pulled and will stay there. Just taking off the capped pipe allows access. Tighten slightly after you like the looks of the flame.

They sell openended t/c tubes, or saw one open.


Skiing in Vermont

....Not to shabby conditions.....you are all more than welcome to come have an intense time .... spend money.

Remember ... just because one may have sucked at sports when a youth doesn’t mean that that individual can't successfully live vicariously through their kids.

Kid got another two goals this week in U10 soccer.

Soccer Rules

Soccer showing signs of recuperation

I have been warming soccer benches since the late 60's. I watched soccer being played on three continents and Martha's Vineyard. Saw my first pro game in 78.

If you guys havent been to live soccer lately their are now teams all over that have had years of extensive profesional coaching.

The level of play and poetry in motion out there is right now changing like what M. Jordon did to basketball and L.Taylor did to football. It's a whole new game. The evoloution of this sport has been incredible. Night and Day.

Go check out your area for inside venues. There's even old fart teams here that play each other. All the big teams have academys.

Go to youtube and search soccer and check it out the moves. This is the time for a tipping point in this sport.

[Hugh Jenkins]

The compression ring holding T/C tube is almost exactly what I was thinking. I don't quite get a picture of what you are doing, but the ceramic tube idea may help in lots of situations.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Hugh, I have a boatload of TC tubes that are both large and small. I simply question the orifice being too large which is why I suggested the sandblast nozzle. I have several of those with 3/32nd orifices which is pretty small. The TC tubes are probably 1/8th inch and larger but are two feet long.

[Kraig Richard]

Originally posted by Pete VanderLaan
Hugh, I have a boatload of TC tubes that are both large and small. I simply question the orifice being too large which is why I suggested the sandblast nozzle. I have several of those with 3/32nd orifices which is pretty small. The TC tubes are probably 1/8th inch and larger but are two feet long.

In order to create smaller orrifices with t/c tubes I have drilled out closed end tubes, sawed slits in closed end tubes. and 3rd shrunk the hole using my non-pattened preshrunk frax sairset mixture. One can get a nice hole size by using a saranwrap covered drill bit as a hole plug to pull out after the sirset sets up. The sairset material can be machined/filed/sanded honed/polished before firing with little difficulty.

[Hugh Jenkins]

The orifice sizes I will need for air in the high temp stream are from #55 to #65. I may have to look into diamond drills. These are not as critical as gas jets in that you have a much wider range of pressures with compressed air. Wall thickness is an issue with orifice deliveries but is easily compensated with larger size.

So Pete, in that boatload do you have some 3/8" OD closed end tubes to contribute to research? 1/4" OD would work OK too.

[Pete VanderLaan]

I'm pretty sure that I do. The trick will be finding them. I don't know if you remember the last scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when the ark of the covenant is being wheeled down an aisle in this incredibly huge government warehouse to be lost forever in storage.

It feels a lot like that here right now. I still can't find my welding cables.

[Hugh Jenkins]

Pete, If and when you find them, keep me in mind. In the mean time, I will see about finding a standardized part that will work. I wouldn't want the entire recuperation world depending on your "Lost Ark Supply" inventory.
Just joking! We moved in 2000 and there are still unopened boxes and things that haven't surfaced that we are looking for. Maybe they fell off the boat.

[John Riepma]

This may be missing the point entirely since I don't understand the recuperation process at the level that the avid recuperators do, but the temperature part of the discussion prompts me to ask: what about titanium for your gas train fittings? The melting point of titanium if 3034F, and regular threaded fittings are somewhat regularly available. I've never bought them but they are available in a catalog of titanium products from a supplier that I've bought other materials from (for my day job). here's the link:
http://www.midlandcorrosion.com/ The advantage of titanium is that it is somewhat easy to machine to exact sizes, such as orifices. It's not that awfully expensive either. The disadvantage is that it work-hardens like a beast if you're not careful, so it may be best left to an expert. I have also used Midland Corrosion in the past for near-net-shape machined components, so I know they have the resources to provide fully machined components if that's what's needed. Hope this helps.....

[Hugh Jenkins]

The perfect combo: ceramic jets in titanium fittings. What if we actually had a brainstorming session?

[Kraig Richard]

Originally posted by Hugh Jenkins
The perfect combo: ceramic jets in titanium fittings. What if we actually had a brainstorming session?

The brass is soft and can be moved by an expanding material and not rupture itself or the material in contact with.


And from the previous comment..."The advantage of titanium is that it is somewhat easy to machine to exact sizes, such as orifices. It's not that awfully expensive either”...


It might be not awfully expensive, but go ahead and put a chunk in your lathe and have at it before claiming "somewhat easy to machine" Was as much fun machining as Inconel. Maybe you got a different kind of Titanium then me, but I abandoned a flame retention head project because this material was laughing much too loudly at me. I tried new words to facilitate the process, to no avail.

Another methodology of joining parts/tubes, sleeves, cylinders, collars, together is heat shrunk.....to have the part that’s the inside part, be dimensioned so it’s a little large for what it’s fitting into. The hole or outside part that is too small gets heated, with a torch or oven and the hole or fitting expands. The insert part is put in cold, and when the outside part cools down, shrinking and locking /clamping the pieces in place.

When the unit is put into use in severe heating the parts heat up together expand equally and stay locked/bound/glued/affixed in place.

Seen this bondage technique work well for the collars on the top side of a tube in tube heat exchanger. (Wheaton early 80's)
This cold shrink technology is used to take (older) BMW motorcycle engine blocks apart, and sleeve insertions on racing engines.

Near similar results can be accomplished with the use of cryogenic equipment to accentuate temperature differential.

[Hugh Jenkins]

Actually in the situation I would apply this to, the ceramic tube end would be the only part getting hot. The junction with the metal air line only gets warm. Using standard ferrules for copper and brass tube fittings should work fine. I have ordered some tubes to try out.

[Douglas Terry]

My personal experience (not vast) with Titanium is that if you're machining it and it gets hot, it gets super hard to work with. If it's kept cool from the very start, it seems to machine fairly well. Doug Terry

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Kraig Richard

It might be not awfully expensive, but go ahead and put a chunk in your lathe and have at it before claiming "somewhat easy to machine" Was as much fun machining as Inconel. Maybe you got a different kind of Titanium then me, but I abandoned a flame retention head project because this material was laughing much too loudly at me. I tried new words to facilitate the process, to no avail.
QUOTE]

[Kraig Richard]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Douglas Terry
[B]My personal experience (not vast) with Titanium is that if you're machining it and it gets hot, it gets super hard to work with. If it's kept cool from the very start, it seems to machine fairly well. Doug Terry

I didn't want to say cause it sounds weird but the only way I was able to machine a smaller project (plate drilling) was heating the work with a torch and brief drilling and repeated bit quenching. Once the steel was bright red the bit was able to bite. I don't know if I removed any properties. The piece held out.

[John Riepma]

The problemn with titanium is that it work-hardens if you dwell the tool. For instance, pieces that I was tapping taught me that I needed chrome-plated taps and never to stop turning the tap - for some reason it was very hard to restart and there was a greatly increased risk of breaking the tap. Same thing with drilling, use a new drill every time and cut the speed/feed to about 15-20% of what you would use on mild steel. The "machineability index" of titanium is about 15% that of mild steel. The reason I suggested it was that I thought the only machining that would be needed from the description given was the drilling of an orifice. That is, if the other tubing/fitting components were readily available from the supplier I suggested. It's really best left to a machine shop that has prior experience with this material, and I didn't mean to suggest that it could be machined by the average person with a home workshop. I'm a machine builder by trade, and I got kicked around a bit by that material too the first time I tried it. There's also plenty of machine shops that are adept at working with it, and those could be suggested by the guy at Midland Corrosion. If there's a market of any size for these things he can provide you with whatever you can design through his contacts.