Erik Sunden

I built the world's first autonomous nail-painting robot, taking it from an early concept to a product deployed nationwide — the first working prototype came together in my home garage during the COVID-19 lockdown. As founding mechanical engineer I led the hardware design, prototyping, and production scaling: choosing and integrating the motion systems, fluid dispensing, material handling, and actuators that make the machine work, then setting up contract manufacturing, testing, and third-party servicing to keep it running in the field.

That work is behind the patent on the core application system (US10939738B2).

I worked on a 3D-printing system for large-scale continuous carbon-fiber parts, designing the print head end effector shown above — the mechanism that feeds, cuts, and handles the fiber material — around a mix of pneumatic and electric actuators. I fabricated and tested design iterations by hand to move fast, set up the company's PDM system for design documentation, and mentored engineers as the team grew from 6 to 40.

The filament guide and nozzle systems from that work became three patents (US10076870B1, US10926463B2, US10415898B2).

I built the precision deposition systems used to manufacture quantum-dot-enhanced optical films — the kind that ended up in Samsung displays and the Amazon Kindle Fire. That meant engineering equipment that could apply nanomaterials across large substrates at micron-level accuracy, prototyping components in an in-house machine shop, and working with contract manufacturers to scale the process.

I worked the manufacturing line for Solyndra's novel cylindrical solar panels, improving yield and throughput while cutting costs. Most of that came down to better tooling for the automated systems, plus clearer process recipes and operator instructions for the floor.

Before mechanical engineering, I estimated materials, labor, and equipment for large-scale bridge construction projects — early exposure to how big, physical things actually get built and budgeted.