Startup Hopeful of TMPS Success

Very few people have heard of EoPlex, but this startup company in Redwood city USA hopes to make their mark on the tyre world.

The company have come up with a way of ‘printing’ three-dimensional metal and ceramic objects. The process involves a special ink and ultraviolet light. The exact ingredients of the ink used remains a closely guarded secret, but the EoPlex technique enables the manufacture of items far too small to be made by conventional means.

One miniscule item the company intends to develop using this process is a device built into the tread of a tyre. This device is designed to generate an electrical current through the process of piezoelectricity — the ability of crystals such as quartz to create an electric charge simply by being vibrated. As a tyre travels along the road the pressure placed upon it would create such vibrations, thus creating voltage without a battery.

EoPlex chief executive Arthur Chait has realised the potential of this device in an age when legislation increasingly demands the fitting of tyre pressure sensors to new vehicles. Chait is confident that the EoPlex solid-state device will prove to be cheaper to make and more reliable and long lasting than the conventional battery-reliant sensors tyre manufacturers currently use.

As for the commercial viability of this product, there seems little doubt in the chief executive’s mind. “There’s a lot of tyres made each year,” Chait commented.