About 18 years ago the chief engineer of Polaris pools, (Neil Bergstrom) flew out to my place in Mesa, Arizona, to see a new pool cleaning system I was working on. He saw it in my pool working and was impressed. He said he thought the pool industry was ready for such a product. He invited me to San Diego to make a presentation to his engineers. The engineers were impressed, but two weeks before I got there, Polaris was bought out by Zodiac, and the new Zodiac CEO, with no experience in the pool industry, was in no mood to take on a significant project. The housing crisis hit, and the demise of the pool construction industry forced the project into a holding pattern. Neil abruptly quit Polaris for reasons unknown to me.
3D printing at that time was crude and expensive, but today, you can buy a 3D printer and quickly print out plastic parts. The prototype that Neil saw was made of aluminum and crude to say the least. I now have SOLIDWORKS installed on my computer and have converted the metal prototype design into a design that is well thought out. A plastic prototype can now be printed on a 3D printer, and most of the currently designed parts can later be created with two-piece injection molds. I have printed out several parts and I think creating a fully functional plastic 3D printed prototype will be fairly easy, all I need is some encouragement from a major pool equipment manufacturer.
The pool construction industry is reluctant to change for a lot of reasons; product liability is probably high on the list of concerns. Product liability is a concern, but in truth, all products have this problem, even McDonalds hamburgers. In my former life, I think I spent half of my time thinking about what can possibly go wrong and making certain nothing surprised me. Good engineering, lots of pool professionals thinking about what can go wrong, and a lot of testing of the product should insure a good product with no liability issues. A single working prototype is easy, but we need a good engineered design such that thousands of units that are sold will last twenty years without a single failure.
As an engineer with a B.S. in engineering from the University of Washington, I think I can design a quality, reliable system that will work for 20 years. I am not qualified to develop and market this product, this must be done by a major pool equipment manufacturer. At this point all I need is some encouragement from a major pool equipment manufacturer.