Product Design & Engineering in San Jose
Tessel engineers physical products that ship — mechanical design, rapid prototypes, and manufacturing handoffs that survive contact with the factory.
Idea to Injection Mold
Every stage of hardware development, under one roof and one NDA.
From Napkin to Production Line
Hardware punishes optimism. The render that can't be molded, the hinge that fails at cycle four hundred, the tolerance stack nobody checked — we've rescued enough projects to design against all of it from day one. Tessel's work is judged by one metric: does the product ship, at cost, working.
- ✓Engineers who've shipped, not just rendered
- ✓Prototypes early and often — the truth machine
- ✓Tooling and unit cost modeled from first CAD
- ✓One team from sketch to first article
Where Products Get Real
A hundred sixty shipped products started on this bench — printed, machined, broken, and improved.
What Shipping 160 Products Builds
01Material Judgment
Knowing which resin survives a dishwasher and which snap-fit lives past a thousand cycles — that's shipped-product scar tissue.
02Test Before the Market Does
Our bench finds the weak hinge before ten thousand customers do — validation is cheaper than returns.
03Factory Fluency
Documentation packages factories praise and first articles that pass — because the design spoke their language all along.
The Redesign That Pays for Itself
Most products carry invisible cost — parts that could merge, tolerances tighter than the function needs, assembly steps a small change would delete. Our DFM passes average eighteen percent off unit cost, and on real volumes that's not a fee, it's a rounding error against the savings.
- ✓Part consolidation and fastener elimination
- ✓Tolerances loosened to what function requires
- ✓Tooling strategy quoted before commitment
- ✓Assembly time engineered down, step by step
Every Engagement Comes With
Your CAD, Fully Yours
Native parametric files delivered at every milestone — no hostage geometry, ever.
NDA From First Call
Your idea stays yours. We sign before we listen, standard.
Weekly Build Reviews
Progress shown on real parts and real screens — not status-report fiction.
Cost Model Updates
Unit economics tracked from first CAD through tooling quotes — no launch-week surprises.
Vendor Introductions
Our machinists, molders, and factories become yours — margins transparent.
Post-Launch Support
Engineering changes and cost-downs handled by the team that knows the product.
From Teams That Shipped
Tessel took our founder's cardboard mockup to a production-ready design in fourteen weeks. The tooling quotes came back exactly where their DFM analysis predicted — to the dollar, basically.
Their redesign cut our unit cost twenty-two percent without changing how the product feels in hand. Same function, four fewer parts, one less assembly step. That's engineering.
We'd been burned by pretty renders that couldn't be molded. Tessel designs with the tooling in mind from sketch one — our factory in fact asked who did the CAD so they could compliment them.
Asked Before the First Sketch
I have an idea but no engineering background. Is that okay?
That's most of our favorite projects. Bring the idea and the customer insight — we bring the engineering. The discovery phase translates your vision into requirements a build can follow.
What does product development cost?
Phased and quoted per stage, so you never commit past the next milestone. Discovery is deliberately affordable; full development scales with complexity. You'll see the map before you spend.
How fast can I hold a prototype?
First printed parts typically within 48 hours of CAD, functional prototypes in one to three weeks depending on complexity. Speed of iteration is the whole game — we build for it.
Can you fix a design another firm started?
Often, yes. We audit the CAD honestly — what's salvageable, what isn't, and what it'll take. Rescue projects are a third of our bench.
Do you help choose a factory?
Yes — domestic or overseas, matched to your volumes and quality bar. We prepare the documentation package, manage first articles, and stay engaged until production runs clean.
Who owns the design?
You do, completely — CAD, drawings, and IP. Our work is work-for-hire, delivered in native formats, with zero strings.
The Product in Your Head Deserves a Bench.
Send the brief — an engineer replies within a business day with honest feasibility and a phased plan.