By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

AUBURN – Aaron Scalia had one of those ideas about five years ago that makes people say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Now, he’s poised to cash in.

A national invention incubator has taken his idea for Teflon-coated road construction tools and is shopping it out to manufacturers.

“I just didn’t want to wake up one day and see someone making money with my idea,” he said.

As a highway supervisor for Auburn Public Works, Scalia regularly works with asphalt, the hot, gooey mixture that makes up most roads and many sidewalks.

“Part of the job is shaping the asphalt once it’s down with shovels and rakes,” he said. But the goo sticks to the tools like cookie dough to a spoon, making them heavy and bad for shaping the asphalt.

“If everything sticks to the tool, you pretty much can’t do anything,” he said.

The problem had an easy fix five years ago – spray the tools with diesel oil before each shift. The oil dissolved leftover asphalt while adding a slickness to the tools that kept new tar from sticking.

New EPA regulations – never mind rising oil prices – made that a no-no five years ago, and road crews began relying on more environmentally friendly solvents.

“They have some with citrus in them that dissolve the asphalt fine, but they don’t lubricate the tools at all,” he said. The asphalt keeps sticking, so workers spend almost as much time spraying their shovels as they do moving tar.

“There are other alternatives now, but they’re pretty expensive,” he said. That’s when he had his idea: Make the slickness a part of the tools.

“My idea was to put something on the surface that doesn’t let the asphalt stick,” he said. “It’d be just like a frying pan, and I knew it would work really well.”

Teflon precedent

A simple prototype did the trick, he said. He cut a Teflon-coated frying pan into the shape of a shovel, attached it to a stick and took it to work.

“I dug into the asphalt, and it worked like a charm,” he said.

He’s spent the last three or four years trying to get his idea to market. He’s currently working with Invent-Tech, a Coral Gables, Fla., company that incubates new ideas.

Alain Arango, an inventor-relations representative for the company, said Scalia’s idea is in the advanced development stage. The company has promoted the idea to several tool manufacturers.

“Now we’re waiting to hear from them,” Arango said.

Invent-Tech would help Scalia patent his idea if a company likes it. Scalia could expect years worth of royalty payments if his Teflon-coated road tools make it off the assembly lines and into the hands of road crews.

“We couldn’t disclose how much, but it varies from case to case, depending on the idea and the scale of manufacturing and the licensing deal,” Arango said. It would be pretty high up there, however.

“We’re talking enough to never have to work again,” Arango said.

Scalia said he’d be stuck without the incubator company’s help. Dupont owns the trademark for Teflon, and he doubts he’d ever be able to negotiate a deal with a company that size on his own.

“And there’s no way I’d be capable of making the shovels or things like that,” he said.