Appliance Design - September 2008 - (Page 26) Velocomp and Protomold Team Up >>>> to Set Speed Records SPECIAL ADVERTORIAL Among the training tools used by cyclists are small computers that allow the rider to manage his output in real time. These have typically cost between $1600 and $5000, but the Velocomp iBike® Pro power meter sells for between $400 and $700 and does things no other cycling computer has ever done, according to company CEO John Hamann. These include measuring incline, wind speed, aerodynamic drag, and friction in the bike’s drive train. The iBike was born when Hamann teamed up with an engineer who shared his interest in bikes and computers. “Other power meters worked by measuring the forces applied on the bike pedal,” says Hamann. “They were expensive, inflexible, and heavy. The breakthrough idea was to use two inexpensive, solid-state sensors: an accelerometer and a wind speed sensor.” “Newton’s Third Law states that opposing and applied forces are always equal, and by measuring opposing forces the iBike would get the same power numbers as the other guys, but at a lower cost,” he continues. “We could also do cool things like measure drag coefficient. Cycling pros spend thousands of dollars testing aerodynamic drag in wind tunnels. The iBike does it by telling the rider to stop peddling and measuring the loss of speed at each instant. Because the iBike measures incline and wind speed, it can easily separate out impact of drag coefficient on the bike’s deceleration.” Hamann and his partner began product development in March 2005. “At Whirlpool and Sunbeam, we’d spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and years in product development,” he says. “Working with Protomold, we eliminated a lot of the time, cost, and bureaucracy. At Velocomp, product development was a self-funded, ‘no-overhead’ process. We used SolidWorks to generate product shapes and drawings. We began with SLA mockups, then turned to Protomold for final prototypes and, eventually, production parts. We were impressed with what Protomold promised, but when we actually got the parts we were astonished. I’d have expected to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, but we got production quality parts with a finish you’d expect from the best in the world at a fraction of that cost.” Velocomp has been in volume production since September of 2006, and Hamann estimates annual sales growth at about 50 percent. “We have been delighted by the rapid and enthusiastic acceptance of the iBike by cyclists,” he says. “With a partner like Protomold, we don’t just offer a better product; we can change the way we do business. Instead of waiting 12 weeks for parts from China, we keep a small inventory and get parts as we need them, which lets us be fast to market and cash flow positive at an early stage.” “We got to see how fast Protomold could be this past Christmas. A new product was selling far beyond our expectations, and we were running low on some parts. We called Protomold on a Thursday and got parts by Saturday. Unfortunately, in my haste, I ordered the wrong part, so I corrected my order on Monday and got new parts on Tuesday. You can’t get better than that!” NOBODY’S FASTER IN THE SHORT RUN® WWW.PROTOMOLD.COM/FAST | PHONE: (763) 479-3680 http://WWW.PROTOMOLD.COM/FAST
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.