ElectriPlast – Spotlight on Tom Aisenbrey Part 1…

The

ElectriPlast

Inventor



By Dan Richman
Seattle Post-Intelligencer--16 April 2004



[ElectriPlast Blog Publisher's Note: The following article will shed insights gleaned from a Seattle Post press release. The article entitled “An invention in Bellingham could alter your cell phone” offers a clue to the next step in the ElectriPlast and Plastenna marketing game plan.

For those new to the ElectriPlast story and the myriad of implications associated, read on. Enlightenment is not far away -- PK sends...]

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A Bellingham firm says it has created a plastic that can turn cell phones into their own antennas, resulting in fewer dropped calls, better battery life and clearer reception.

The highly conductive resin, dubbed Electriplast, could also improve the efficiency of LED lighting, in-floor radiant heating, defibrillators and pacemakers, said its inventor, Thomas Aisenbrey, who is chief technology officer at Integral Technologies Inc.

Antennas molded out of Electriplast and mounted on military vehicles would be harder to see and therefore tougher to disable, and on cars, they'd be unobtrusive.
Electriplast isn't on the market yet, but trials are going on at four Fortune 100 companies, and major handset makers have expressed strong interest, said Aisenbrey, who holds two patents on the substance and has 44 more pending.

The inexpensive material, also known as Plastenna, conducts heat, electricity and radio- frequency energy nearly as well as copper, yet it can be mixed with rigid or flexible plastics and formed into just about any shape plastic can take on, he said.

"My gut's telling me this is going to change the electronics world," said Aisenbrey, 46.

An independent testing lab verified some of Aisenbrey's claims.

"He could show that a cell phone modified with his antenna was up to twice as efficient as with a normal antenna," said Lothar Schmidt, a technical manager for Cetecom Inc. of Milpitas, Calif.

For the chief executive of Integral Technologies, which hasn't turned a profit since it was founded in 1996, Electriplast represents a bright future.

"I think it will rock the wireless world, quite frankly," said Bill Robinson, who runs the company from an office in Vancouver, B.C. "It's fun to be in the position we're at, finally."

The company, which is traded over the counter, has a market capitalization of about $31 million, with 5,000 shareholders.

At one time, it had 20 employees. But when Aisenbrey, who said he has been tinkering with electronics since age 6, arrived there from Panasonic three years ago, he fired the rest of the engineering staff because of their inefficiency. Now it has seven employees.

A high school grad with certificates in electronics and sound engineering, Aisenbrey came up with Electriplast 30 months ago "as a fluke thing" while trying to remedy design flaws in an antenna the company had been shipping.

A patent search revealed nothing like it, clearing the way for intensive development, third party testing and commercialization perhaps as early as this year.

"Without a doubt, we want to drive this company into a multimillion business," Aisenbrey said. "I'm not here for the fresh air."


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Integral Technologies website: http://www.itkg.net/