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NEWSCIENCENEWSCIENCENEWSCIENCE Real products Nobue Minato leads us to the two devices that might convince a potential investor that this is all for real. Firstly, she shows us the cooling fan pro- totype that is being manufactured for a con- venience store chain's 14,000 outlets (three fans per outlet). The unit looks almost identical to a Mitsubishi-manufactured fan unit next to it, which is the unit currently in wide use. In a test, the airflow from both units is about the same. The other unit is the car air conditioning prototype that caught our eye as we came in. It's a prototype for Nippon Denso, Japan's largest manufacturer of car air con- ditioners. The unit is remarkably compact and has the same contours and size as a conventional unit. Minato's manufacturing skills are clearly improving. Minato air conditioning unit in action. Real products Next we move to a unit with its motor is generated by the magnetic strength of the The banker and his investment connected to a generator. What we see is permanent magnets embedded in the rotor. Minato has good reason to complain striking. The meters showed an input to "I'm simply harnessing one of the four about Japan's social and cultural the stator electromagnets of approximately fundamental forces of nature," he says. uniformity. For years, people thought of 1.8 volts and 150 mA, and from the genera- Although we learned in school that mag- him as an oddball for playing the piano for tor 9.144 volts and 192 mA output, i.e., 1.8 nets were always bipolar and so magneti- _a living, and bankers and investors have x 0.15 x 2 =540 mW input and 9.144x cally induced motion would always end in avoided him because of his habit of 0.192 = 1.755 W out. a locked state of equilibrium, Minato claiming that he'd discovered a But according to the laws of physics, you explains that he has fine-tuned the position- breakthrough technology all by himself, can't get more out of a device than you put ing of the magnets and the timing of pulses —_ without any formal training. into it. We mention this to Kohei Minato _ to the stators to the point where the repul- However, the Osaka banker stands up while looking under the workbench to sion between the rotor and the stator (the after the lecture and announces that before make sure there aren't any hidden wires. fixed outer magnetic ring) is transitory. he goes he will commit ¥100 million to the Minato assures us that he hasn't tran- This creates further motion, rather than a investment pool. scended the laws of physics. The force lock-up. [See last section, How it works: Minato turns to us and smiles. We supplying the unexplained extra power out magnets in motion, for a full explanation. ] brought him good luck, and this was his third investor in as many weeks to confirm an interest. Bringing the tech to the table With the audience gone, we ask Minato what he plans to do to commercialise the technology. His game plan is simple and clear, he says. He wants to retain control, and he wants to commercialise the technol- ogy in Japan first—where he feels he can ensure that things get done the right way. Why doesn't he go directly to the US or China? His experiences in both countries, he suggests, have been less than successful. "The first stage is critical in terms of cre- ating good products and refining the tech- nology. I don't want to be busy with legal challenges and intellectual property theft while doing that." Still, the export and licensing of the tech- nology are on his agenda, and Minato is z talking to a variety of potential partners in Kohei Minato in his workshop. other countries. 42 = NEXUS JUNE — JULY 2004 Minato air conditioning unit in action. www.nexusmagazine.com