deBotech presents Our Big 50/50 GiveBack Event on FaceBook!!! How it works is simple – the first 50 people that get 50 of their friends to like us will receive FREE dBt Swag. Thats right we said FREE!

Just check us out on Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=lf#!/pages/Mooresville-NC/dBt-Performance-Parts/135710356463621 and take a look at our 50/50 GiveBack Event Tab for instructions on how to WIN FREE dBt Swag!

July – 2010

It’s official – deBotech, Inc. has opened it’s Online Store.  Please visit www.dbtparts.com to view our current offerings.  All of the products that you see on this dBt Performance Parts website are a result of deBotech investing the time, money and materials into the R&D and tooling/molding for these parts so that they become more affordable for everyone.  Hans has wanted for years to be able to meet the demand of the smaller race shops or the week-end bikers.  This is what he has come up with; we have several areas of products from NASCAR/Nationwide and Sprint Cup parts, Motorcycle products including Kawasaki and Ducati parts, RC Components and Go-Kart parts as well Exotic products. This is just the beginning, we have 100 products available for you to view and purchase online at this time but we have several more available to be purchased and even more in the R&D phase of production.  We are always looking for your ideas for products that you would like to see and we welcome any photos that you may have as well.  All of the dBt Performance Parts are 100% Carbon Fiber unless you specify otherwise when you order.  We are confident that you will find our products superior to anything else on the market as well as the most reasonably priced.  It is important to remember, these are parts that deBotech has developed and for our customers that have developed their own designs and/or tooling/molding, we hold you and your information in the strictest of confidence.  Please visit our on-line store often as we will be adding more products and please visit us on Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mooresville-NC/dBt-Performance-Parts/135710356463621?!/profile.php?id=100001345395420 as well. We look forward to hearing from you and thanks to all of our customers for your continued support.

University of Cincinnati Assistant Professor Grant Schaffner in the School of Aerospace Systems is the principal designer for a revolutionary new skeleton sled that was used in the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Two Cincinnati-area businesses, ProtoStar Engineering and Machintek Corporation, jointly designed and built the new sled. The sled was ridden by John Daly, one of the three male athletes on the U.S. Skeleton Team. In addition, the sled shell or fairing (called a “pod”) designed by ProtoStar Engineering was used on the sled ridden by Noelle Pikus-Pace, one of the two female athletes on the U.S. Skeleton Team.

Schaffner’s aerospace research at UC in the College of Engineering and Applied Science is in the area of human health, survivability and performance in extreme environments.

“Mainly, I deal with astronauts in the space environment, soldiers in combat and athletes,” he says.

Schaffner is also the president of ProtoStar Engineering, an engineering consulting company based in Cincinnati, Houston and Phoenix.

The sled project began just one year ago when two of the principals of ProtoStar Engineering — Schaffner and Karl Schultz — sketched out a rough design for a revolutionary new sled on a piece of paper while meeting with staff of the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation (USBSF) and a representative of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) in a hotel room in Whistler, Canada, following the Skeleton World Cup event there. To that point, ProtoStar Engineering had been providing technical consulting to the U.S. Skeleton team, mainly aiding with aerodynamics analysis and sled structural testing.

Acting on inspiration gained while observing the World Cup event and based on knowledge and experience gained during the past year, Schaffner drafted a preliminary design with the assistance of Schultz. The representatives of the USBSF and USOC liked the idea and told ProtoStar Engineering to run with it.

Schaffner and Schultz credited their experience gained while “bodystorming” (a term used by ProtoStar Engineering to reflect the philosophy of interacting physically with the products they work on) as playing a major role in the design.

“The ‘bodystorming’ term is a play on ‘brainstorming,’ except that you physically involve your body, too,” says Schaffner. “In our case, this consisted of getting on the sled and actually sliding down the track at Lake Placid. The coaches were quite impressed that I and two of my partners were able to make runs from the top of the track after only three days of very brief instructions and practice runs from lower on the track. Our final runs weren’t pretty and we had some impressive scrapes and bruises on our shoulders and arms to show for it, but we gained a real appreciation for the sport, the sled and the track.”

The bodystorming took the form of a three-day “crash” course (quite literally, as attested by the scrapes and bruises they received) in which the ProtoStar engineers learned to ride the sleds themselves, starting near the bottom of the track and eventually working their way up to completing two runs from the top.

Schaffner adds, “It was scary, but intense, exciting and fun at the same time. I can’t say that our sliding was pretty, but we sure learned a lot!”

What followed from the meeting in Whistler was an intense year of design and testing and re-design and testing, with many sleepless nights and hard work along the way. Opportunities for testing were very limited because there were no ice tracks available during the summer, when much of the development work took place. When prototype test results proved to be very promising, the project got a last-minute funding boost from the USOC to build a competition sled for the games. The funding was approved in late December 2009 and with just two months to go to the opening of the Olympic Games, Schaffner says “it was a mad dash to the finish.” The sleds were built just in time to undergo some preliminary runs in the few remaining events on the European portion of the World Cup circuit. While the competition experience was very limited, the results were promising enough that John Daly committed to using the new sled in the Olympic Games and Noelle Pikus-Pace replaced her existing pod with the pod designed for the new sled.

The sled frame was fabricated by Machintek Corporation, located in Fairfield, Ohio, and the pod was fabricated by deBotech Inc., located in Mooresville, North Carolina.

“Without the passionate support and extraordinary measures provided by people at ProtoStar Engineering, Machintek and deBotech, the sleds would never have been completed in time for the Games,” says Schaffner. “It was truly an extraordinary effort that made it happen!”

http://www.uc.edu/news/nr.aspx?id=11475

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Congratulations!!! Toast! Toast! Toast!…

deBotech recently acquired their AS9100 Rev. B and ISO9001:2008 quality certification. This was a natural progression for the company because the quality of our products has always been paramount to our mission.

We began the certification process in the beginning of 2009. We worked closely with the Industrial Extension Service of NC State University to achieve all of the necessary documentation. deBotech also received an Incumbent Workforce Grant from Centralina Workforce Development Board to help us train 100% of our employees.

Jamye and Hans deBot would like to express our sincere gratitude to the employees of deBotech for their commitment to the company, for their pride in their work and their individual commitments to the quality of our products. We would also like to thank Barbara Williams of NC State University for being an insightful and knowledgeable instructor and as well as Vail Carter of Centralina Workforce for his help in receiving our grant and recognizing our total commitment to quality.

deBotech, Inc. has recently been working with a local design team, Corvid Technologies and a man with a big dream to design the SV9 Competizion.  This car has Italian Blood with an American Heart much like its creator Giuseppe Viola.  In a collaborative effort, deBotech, Corvid Tech., Cameron Dempster (the car designer), Delux Technologies, Mark Frank of WinterPark Engineering and Giuseppe began working on this project in March 2009 and by July 2009 had the first two cars in the series complete.  According to Hans this has been a great opportunity for him to showcase deBotech’s ability to get it right the on-time, the first time, every time (one of deBotech’s quality objectives).   Please visit www.svmotorcompany.com to see the finished result.