Ian T.

A playful, sensitive, caring human who has practiced and loved designing products since I was a child. Raised with regular access to a wood shop from age five by a wonderfully patient father I built cabinets and furniture in my early teens and worked into the construction trades until my early 20's when I tired of my options and started night school at my local JC. I eventually earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cal Poly, SLO, and worked for 12 years in the design and manufacture of a range of products in the industrial, recreation and medical device sectors.

During that time I learned the subtleties of many primary manufacturing processes including machining and metal fabrication, extrusion design, some metal casting, CNC sheet metal production, metal hydro-forming and high-pressure thermal forming of plastics along with applicable coatings and finishing technologies for the same. I was also schooled in the development, application, and auditing of quality systems under ISO and FDA guidelines and the associated supply chain establishment and maintenance needed for the manufacture of products to exacting standards.

Thinking I needed a change from the corporate world I began consulting on designs for small solar and wind installations and studied the emerging materials science applications of Geopolymers for infrastructure applications. I developed conceptual designs for automated equipment to refurbish small bridges based on the results of various Geopolymer studies but was unable to elicit support for its development. I explored ways of improving commercial greenhouse production while lowering the energy expenditures and later for lowering the cost and improving the efficiency of GSHP, (Ground Source Heat Pump), technologies but was equally unsuccessful at finding support for my proposed solutions.

In recent years I have returned to consulting on product development for others and still look forward to helping develop new and refine existing technologies to address the considerable challenges facing our world.

In general, I would characterize myself as a mostly talented mechanical/manufacturing engineer and product designer who is skilled at the synthesis of elegant solutions through the application of wide-ranging technologies.