Precision machinist / mechanical design / hands-on prototyping.
Grant Cooper
Most of what you’ll find here started with an idea for something I wanted, followed by the decision to build it instead of buy it. I’m a precision machinist, and my work spans mechanical design, CNC machining, fabrication, electronics, and automation.
Design informed by making
I spend as much time working with machines and building things as I do designing them. That hands-on experience affects the way I approach design: considering how something will be machined, assembled, adjusted, maintained, and actually used from the beginning.
The project decides what I need to learn
I don’t try to keep a project inside the skills I already have. If the solution calls for a mechanism I haven’t designed before, an unfamiliar manufacturing process, electronics, code, or something else entirely, I learn what the project requires and keep going. I’m comfortable taking on unfamiliar problems, learning what I need as I go, and applying it directly to the project.