"Have you considered registering a design? A design protects the visual appearance of a product and can be a valuable commercial asset.
A design is the overall appearance of a product. This includes the shape, configuration, pattern and ornamentation which, when applied to a product, give it a unique visual appearance."

Don't know what you have over in the US though.

but there's a reason lawyers are involved in the patent process (the wording of a patent is of the utmost importance to preventing gaping holes someone can design around), which raises the cost very quickly into the $15-25k range.

Dang I dunno where you guys are getting your cheap patent attorneys    a little project for my company shot beyond $50k in lawyer fees

you can take that two ways.
Rich companies will crap all over you if you hope to invalidate their patents with saying I had prior art uploaded online first.
Or, if you already got your product to market and in shops and already got rich, do you really care about loosing small amounts of money when someone tries to copy you?

'Small amounts of money' is relative and it depends. Am I thriving with a growing company and an individual or two is making a few thousand here and there off of my products? I probably wouldn't care at all. Is an individual or small business gaining similar size to me at just a few thousands dollars? I probably would care.

The discussion of idea men/women is similar to that of artists/creative types. Companies need the ideas and art but they seem to regard the individuals that provide them as if the company could do without them. That's why I stopped drawing.

Prior art can invalidate a patent though, if you can prove prior art to someone else's patent.

I'm pretty sure that there is plenty of prior art for phones with round corners, or icons depicting phones that are green squares with slightly round corners and a symbol for a phone on it, (in fact I'm fairly sure this is what the old BT phone card pay phone booths used to look a bit like.

I'm obviously talking about the apple/samsung spat with the phone and the icons etc.

I have no strong views either way on this, (I genuinely don't care about either company). but what I would say is proving prior art, filling patent disputes can be a long and (very costly) business.

being right doesn't matter if you are rich.

you can take that two ways.
Rich companies will crap all over you if you hope to invalidate their patents with saying I had prior art uploaded online first.
Or, if you already got your product to market and in shops and already got rich, do you really care about loosing small amounts of money when someone tries to copy you?

And prior art prove nothing.

Take the patent granted to makerbot for their automated build platform.

A conveyor belt is hardly unique, and the entire concept was discussed at length (with rough designs) on Adrian bowmans reprap blog.

Basically, if you've got a great idea keep it to yourself until you have patent protection. Or the product in a shop if you go without a patent.
The idea that if you put it online it shows prior art. Or write down your ideas ant get notorised or post it to yourself dated/recorded delivery etc is rubbish.

Work only with people that you know and trust.
Protect your ideas and then share your ideas.

I'm not sure where this sits with a company getting a patent granted on ideas developed by the open source community (the automated build platform patent suggests that there is nothing to stop a company patenting your open source ideas).

I would think that actual product on sale would be prior art.

Sadly this may not stop a person copying your idea and getting a patent on your idea, but it does mean that you have a better chance of challenging the validity of their patent when/if they use that patent against you.

The old World War II saying plays here also: "Loose lips sink ships." You have the machine to work on in private. Until you are really ready to try and produce it don't go telling or showing anything to anyone. In a lot of cases the cost of a patent isn't worth the effort unless your return would be in the millions. Getting a product out to market fast, make a profit and move on. You'll end up with more of the money in your pocket instead of the lawyers pocket.

One of the best ways to go cost efficiently is to submit a Provisional Application prior to any public disclosure (uploading to Youtube / Thingiverse, or any form of offer for sale) of your invention .  This application will preserve your filiing date (first to file); and give you 1 year in which to file your full Utility Patent.  The cost of filing a Provisional is not too expensive if you do it yourself online...about $180.00, I think.  The trick is you need to provide enough detail in the Provisional to support / cover the protectable claims of your final Utility Patent.  If you employ an Attorney to do this, you have a pretty good bet that it will read well to your full Utility application.  A decent attorney will charge around $1,500.00 for a provisional.

If you feel your invention has good Market value, you can file in this manner and then within 1 year hopefully build enough cash from selling to cover the Utility Application.

Reading a patent often just gives people ideas on how to solve the same problem another way and so your patent may not be preventing anyone from selling a similar product.

To make an actual product it is often difficult to do so without violating someones patent. Large companies have portfolios of patents and they often trade or sell access. It is very difficult for a small organization to successfully defend a patent against a large company.

A great TED talk on patents.  It's basically explaining that all ideas are remixes of old ones and that patents stifle creativity. It also has some funny contradicting Steve Jobs quotes.

Yeah I've seen that TED talk, and I'm one of the biggest Steve Jobs downplayers around, I know everything he did was stolen, modified, and marketed.  Steve Jobs was a world class marketing genius, but he never invented a single thing. 

You have to defend it if it's a big enough idea for someone to steal and reproduce, my inventions are not game changers in that respect.  There's a decent chance that someone overseas could want to produce it, but at that point it would only be after seeing my success, at which time I should have the money to defend if necessary. 

The thing that I'm in awe about every day since getting my SD is that I can be sitting on my couch and come up with an idea, since I'm fluent in Solidworks and have 15yrs engineering background, I can model up that idea in 10-15 minutes and start the print.  From the time the idea pops into my head to the time I'm holding the working model in my hand is a couple hours, and if I want to change something I've got the second generation in my hand a few hours later.  The amount of time and expense this machine has eliminated is just mindblowing.  I literally have a plastic bag in my car with 6 working prototypes of inventions I've been kicking around for years but the cost and the thought of how to protect the idea during the process of having prototypes made has kept me from moving forward. 

The issue that I have from here is where do I go next, I know there's a mountain of information about it on the internet and in the link you provided, but with a full time job, an hour commute and 3 kids, my time is very limited.  I'm thinking my sleeping is going to take a hit just so I have a chance to do more research on how to move forward.

I don't seem to be able to insert links, but "inventionstatistics dot com" places those costs at over $1 million.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1s_PybOuY0

It's basically explaining that all ideas are remixes of old ones and that patents stifle creativity. It also has some funny contradicting Steve Jobs quotes.