Most hardware problems show up the first time you hold a device, power it on, or put it under load.
Treetown Tech provides rapid prototyping services for hardware products to help you find critical problems early on (before they’re expensive) and build the confidence to move forward with the right design. We specialize in projects that require integrated mechanical, electrical, and software systems.
If you need a team that can design and produce prototypes requiring integrated mechanical, electrical, and software systems, as well as solve the problems that those prototypes reveal, you need Treetown Tech.
Treetown Tech’s mechanical prototype services cover concept models, functional prototypes, and pre-production builds across materials and manufacturing methods. Our in-house facility includes the needed tooling, including 3D printers, CNC machines, laser cutters, and welders, to build quickly and iterate fast. More importantly, our mechanical engineers work alongside electrical and software engineers from day one, so mechanical decisions get made with the full system in view.
Our software engineers develop embedded firmware, control systems, and hardware/software interfaces alongside the physical build. For products with connectivity, sensing, or autonomy requirements, the software prototype is built and tested in parallel with the hardware because finding a firmware problem after the enclosure is finalized is a different kind of expensive than finding it in week three.
The instinct in hardware development is to prototype the easy parts first, get something in hand, show progress, build momentum. We take the opposite approach.
We attack the highest-risk technical problems first. If there's a fundamental question about whether the power system will work in this enclosure, or whether this sensing approach can achieve the required accuracy, that question needs an answer before you've invested six weeks in the surrounding design.
Early prototypes are often ugly. They're not optimized. They're built to answer a specific question and break in a specific way. When they break (and they usually do), we learn something the digital model wouldn't have told us. Then we build the next one better.
Treetown Tech's 16,000 sq ft Ann Arbor facility is set up to support that cadence: fast builds, immediate testing, rapid iteration, manufacturing support, supplier qualification, and scaling optimization. Everything in-house means the mechanical engineer and the electrical engineer are both present when the test reveals a problem, not coordinating across vendors by email.
Functional prototypes for investors, user testing, trade shows, or crowdfunding campaigns have different success criteria. Treetown Tech builds demonstration-ready functional prototypes alongside development prototypes. The engineering rigor is the same; the objective is proving the concept to an audience, not stress-testing it.
Every design gets real consideration toward manufacturability: tolerances, material selection, assembly sequences, and component sourcing are factored at each stage, scaled to how mature the design is. The result is that DFM work happens progressively, so the path from validated prototype to production-ready design is shorter.
IP stays with the client throughout. Our standard engagements are structured so that everything developed in the rapid prototyping process, including designs, firmware, and test data, belongs to you.
You have the vision. We have the team and expertise to get it built. Let's collaborate to innovate, problem-solve, and de-risk every step of the way.
