Hi, my name is Peter Noble and I am a time served (apprenticeship) engineer. Educated to degree standard in computing, electronics and telecommunications I have always had an intertest in inventing.
I have had a business installing computers for travel agencies. Most companies I visited had just had a shop refit. I was asked to work clean. Not easy when expected to drill walls.
Plaster dust and debris from breeze block can be difficult to remove once spilt onto a new carpet to say nothing of the effect red brick dust has on a biege carpet. I tried envelopes and sticky tape.
There must be a better way. The first Drill-Mate was constructed from a childs anti-spill paint pot with a piece of pipe for a handle with a polythene bag over it to catch the dust. it worked really well.
I contacted the Innovations Catalogue Company who in those days had inventors days to show ideas. They liked it and put me in touch with a mouldings agent in the plastic garden products industry.
An injection moulding tool was manufactured. Drill-mates could now be mass produced to a new design which allowed a vacuum to be used connected to the handle. They're made in Yorkshire.
They are sold through trade outlets for electronics engineers. They have been adopted as a health and safety product by the asbestos removal industry. They are now stocked by nearly all Asbestos related sales and hire centres in the UK.
It featured as a designer's product on BBC TV's "The Apprentice" in the series 2008/9