Failure Mode
Engineering is the practice of being less wrong over time.
Most hardware advice is a post-mortem of success. This is a forensic analysis of the breaking points.
Building physical products isn't about the perfect first CAD; it’s about fallibilism—the iterative practice of finding where your assumptions fail so you can fix them in Rev B.
The Resident Mechanic
I’m Will McLeod. I’ve spent my career in the trenches of hardware development, moving from early-stage prototypes to the high-stakes reality of the factory floor.
As a co-founder of Keen Home, I navigated the transition from a Shark Tank pitch to shipping hundreds of thousands of units globally. Recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Manufacturing, I’ve managed the "no-man's-land" of mid-volume production, pushed mechanical designs through the USPTO filing gauntlet, and dissected enough manufacturing failures to read the hidden history of a part through its witness marks.
I wrote the manuscript for Mechanical Engineering for Hackers to bridge the gap between "making" and "manufacturing." Now, I’m writing Failure Mode to document the current state of the craft—high-level mechanics, hardware startup strategy, and the forensic skills needed to build things that actually last.
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