Our History
Rota-Dent was started in the late 1960s by A-dec’s founder Ken Austin. A-dec started donating dental equipment in 1966. At that time the equipment came from returns, demos, and repaired items that could not be resold. Then around 1967-1968 demand for a portable dental unit to do missionary dental work abroad began to surface. Ken designed a special protable dental unit that could be built by Rotary volunteers. A-dec donated the parts and the Newberg Rotary Club supplied the labor to assemble and ship the units. Over time assembly of the Rota-Dent units was moved back inside A-dec and the finished unit was donated to the Newberg Rotary Clubs. This made the unit’s progress through the company’s rigorous quality control system quicker and less costly.
More recently A-dec implemented a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) computer system that makes it more efficient to use a standard A-dec portable dental unit (PAC-1) vs. building a special Rota-Dent unit.
Today the Rota-Dent program is overseen by a board of five directors made up of two members from each of the two Newberg Rotary Clubs, one Austin family representative, and an A-dec liaison. Together with its Rotary volunteers the Board administers the Rota-Dent program and coordinates the distributions of the Rota-dent units throughout the world.
More recently A-dec implemented a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) computer system that makes it more efficient to use a standard A-dec portable dental unit (PAC-1) vs. building a special Rota-Dent unit.
Today the Rota-Dent program is overseen by a board of five directors made up of two members from each of the two Newberg Rotary Clubs, one Austin family representative, and an A-dec liaison. Together with its Rotary volunteers the Board administers the Rota-Dent program and coordinates the distributions of the Rota-dent units throughout the world.