The problems that don't come apart easily.
Woodtecher works with teams who have run out of straightforward answers. We take a tangled brief, break it down to what is actually true, and build the design, software and hardware that solve it.
Concept and product design, 3D CAD and engineering drawings — through to design for manufacture.
Web, mobile, data and embedded software — built to be maintained, not just demonstrated.
FEA, crash and impact, CFD and thermal — analysis correlated against real test data.
One team across the three disciplines most projects split apart.
Hard problems usually fail at the seams — between the designer, the developer and the engineer. We keep all three in the same room, so the trade-offs get made once, early, by people who understand all sides of them.
Product design
From a concept to a part a supplier can actually make. Modelled properly, drawn properly, and optimised before it reaches the shop floor.
- Product & concept design
- 3D CAD modelling
- Engineering drawings
- Design optimisation
- Reverse engineering
- Design for manufacturing & assembly (DFMA)
Product simulation
Digital twins and physics-based models that let you test a design before a single part exists. Fewer surprises on the bench, fewer late-stage redesigns.
- Digital twin development
- Multi-physics & systems simulation
- Virtual prototyping
- Simulation-driven design iteration
- Performance & durability modelling
Project management
One accountable plan across design, software and engineering — so schedule, budget and scope stay honest from kickoff to delivery.
- Programme & milestone planning
- Cross-discipline coordination
- Risk & budget tracking
- Supplier & stakeholder management
- Delivery reporting
Four stages, in this order, every time.
Frame the problem
Before anything is designed, we agree on what success looks like and what constraints are real. Most of the risk in a complex project is removed here, on paper, cheaply.
Prototype fast
Rough versions, early and often. A working prototype settles arguments that a specification document will keep alive for months.
Engineer for real conditions
Dust, bad networks, tired users, tight tolerances. We design against the environment the product will actually live in, then test it there.
Hand over and support
You get the source, the drawings, the reasoning behind each decision, and a team that stays reachable after go-live.
Two of our own, for tyre design teams.
Both put a number against a design before it is built, and both run with no network connection at all.
AIRR
Predicts the rolling resistance of an untested tread design in seconds, learning from the tyres you have already measured.
About AIRRPATCH
Finds the block arrangement that spreads impact energy across a band instead of concentrating it into an audible tone.
About PATCHBring us the part of the project nobody wants to own.
Send a short description of what you're trying to build and where it's stuck. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right team for it.
Built by people who like the difficult half.
Woodtecher is a design, technology and engineering studio. We exist because most complex projects don't fail on any one discipline — they fail in the gaps between them.
The name is a promise about method.
Working wood means reading the material before you cut it — the grain tells you where it will hold and where it will split. Engineering a product is the same job with different tools: understand the structure of the problem first, and the solution stops fighting you.
We started with a small team of designers and engineers who were tired of throwing work over a wall. Today we run projects end to end — research, design, software, hardware, testing — with one team accountable for the whole thing.
Our clients come to us with the parts of a project that don't fit neatly into anyone's job description. That's the work we're built for.
Four principles we actually argue about.
Understand before you build
A week spent framing the problem saves a quarter spent rebuilding. We push back on briefs that skip this, even when it's uncomfortable.
Show, don't describe
Prototypes settle disagreements. If we can build a rough version to answer a question, we build it rather than write about it.
Design for the worst day
Products are used in bad light, on bad networks, by people in a hurry. We design against those conditions, not the demo.
Leave it maintainable
You own the code, the drawings and the reasoning. Nothing we deliver should require us to keep it running.
Manufacturers, infrastructure teams, healthcare providers, and founders with a hard first version to get right.
Some clients bring us a whole product to take from idea to production. Others bring one stubborn piece — a mechanism that won't hold tolerance, an app their field teams refuse to use, a data set nobody can read.
Either way, the engagement starts the same: a short paid discovery, a written view of the problem, and a plan you can act on with or without us.
Two tools for the tyre design office.
Each answers a question that normally costs weeks of testing to settle. Both run entirely on your own machine — no account, no network, nothing transmitted.
Two tools, two questions.
AIRR — rolling resistance
Know a tyre's rolling resistance before you build it. AIRR learns from the tyres you have already measured and puts a number — with its expected range — against a design you haven't.
PATCH — pitch arrangement
Spread the impact energy across a band instead of into one tone. PATCH derives the pitch set from the tyre size, then searches its arrangements for the order with the lowest tonal peak.
Built for a design office, not a data centre.
Offline by design
No network connections of any kind. AIRR installs on an isolated design network; PATCH is a single HTML file that opens locally. Your geometry never leaves the building.
Reads your drawings
Both measure the pattern straight from a pitch image — any polarity, stepped or straight boundaries, dimension lines or none. No tracing, no scale to set.
Answers you can check
Every figure comes with its uncertainty or its assumptions stated, plus CSV export. Same inputs, same result, every time.
The rest is easier to show than to write down.
Tell us which tool interests you and we'll walk through it on your own data — measured tyres for AIRR, a pitch set for PATCH.
Rolling resistance, before you build it.
Artificial Intelligence for Rolling Resistance. AIRR learns from the tyres you have already measured and puts a number — with its expected range — against a design that only exists as a drawing.
AIRR
Know a tyre's rolling resistance before you build it.
A rolling-resistance measurement costs money and weeks of scheduling, so most tread concepts are discarded on judgement rather than evidence. AIRR learns from the tyres you have already measured and puts a number — with its expected range — against a design you haven't.
Rolling resistance only — not wear, grip or noise. It narrows the field before rig testing; it does not replace the measurement.
AIRR brochure PDF · 1 page · 392 KBEvery prediction carries the range it is expected to fall in, and a warning when a design sits outside the tyres the model was built on.
The rest is easier to show than to write down.
Tell us which tool interests you and we'll walk through it on your own data — measured tyres for AIRR, a pitch set for PATCH.
A band of noise, not one tone.
Pitch Arrangement for Tonal Control and Harmonics. PATCH derives the pitch set from the tyre size, then searches its arrangements for the order with the lowest tonal peak.
The chosen sequence, drawn where it lives — around the tyre.
PATCH
Spread the impact energy across a band, instead of into one tone.
A tread with every block the same length puts all of its impact energy at a single frequency, and that tone is audible far beyond its share of the total level. PATCH derives the pitch set from the tyre size, then searches the arrangements of it for the order with the lowest tonal peak.
It ranks designs on how impact energy spreads across frequency. Absolute pass-by level needs a calibration table fitted to your own coast-by measurements.
PATCH brochure PDF · 1 page · 166 KBThe rest is easier to show than to write down.
Tell us which tool interests you and we'll walk through it on your own data — measured tyres for AIRR, a pitch set for PATCH.
From a concept to a part someone can build.
From a concept to a part a supplier can actually make. Modelled properly, drawn properly, and optimised before it reaches the shop floor.
Product & concept design, done to be made.
We take a rough idea or a difficult existing part and turn it into something a supplier can quote, tool and produce without guessing at your intent.
Concept to part
- Product & concept design
- 3D CAD modelling
- Engineering drawings
Refinement
- Design optimisation
- Reverse engineering
Ready for the floor
- Design for manufacturing & assembly (DFMA)
Bring us the part that's giving you trouble.
Tell us where it is in its life — a sketch, a prototype, or a part that's already failing in the field — and we'll tell you what it needs next.
Test the design before it exists.
Digital twins and physics-based models that let you test a design before a single part exists. Fewer surprises on the bench, fewer late-stage redesigns.
Simulation-led, correlated against real data.
We find where a design fails, and by how much, before anything is cut or tooled — using models that are checked against physical test data, not left to run unverified.
Digital twins
- Digital twin development
- Multi-physics & systems simulation
Prototyping
- Virtual prototyping
- Simulation-driven design iteration
Confidence
- Performance & durability modelling
Tell us what the design has to survive.
Load cases, duty cycles, environment — we'll tell you what a model can answer before you cut metal.
One plan, held accountable.
One accountable plan across design, software and engineering — so schedule, budget and scope stay honest from kickoff to delivery.
One accountable plan, not three separate ones.
Because design, software and engineering sit under one roof here, the plan for all three is one plan — not three schedules that only meet at the review meeting.
Planning
- Programme & milestone planning
- Cross-discipline coordination
Control
- Risk & budget tracking
- Supplier & stakeholder management
Visibility
- Delivery reporting
Tell us the shape of the project.
Who's involved, what's been promised, and by when — we'll tell you what a single accountable plan looks like for it.
Design thinking, practised — not lectured.
A hands-on day in which one real problem is taken through all five stages: from the first interview to something a person outside the room can react to. Nobody leaves with only notes.
What design thinking actually is.
A way of working on problems whose answer isn't obvious. You find out what people actually do rather than what they say they do, agree which problem you are solving, produce more options than feels comfortable, build the cheapest version that can be judged, and let it fail in front of someone while failing is still cheap.
What each stage is for.
Empathise
Interviews and observation, without pitching anything. The aim is to come back with what people actually do, in their words.
Define
Turn the pile of observations into one problem statement narrow enough to be wrong. Most projects skip this and pay for it later.
Ideate
Quantity before judgement. Everyone writes before anyone talks, so the loudest voice doesn't set the direction.
Prototype
Paper, cardboard, a clickable screen — whatever answers the question fastest. It only has to be good enough to react to.
Test
Put it in front of someone who wasn't in the room and watch where they hesitate. Then change it, or change the problem.
Useful the week after, not just on the day.
A way to start when the brief is vague.
Most coursework rewards a finished artefact and says little about how to arrive at one. This fills that gap.
- Ask questions in an interview that don't lead the answer
- Turn scattered research into a problem statement a tutor can argue with
- Defend design decisions in a crit with evidence instead of taste
- Leave with a documented project — process included — for a portfolio
- Work in a team under a deadline without design by committee
Fewer expensive assumptions.
Rework is usually the cost of deciding early and finding out late. The loop moves that discovery to the cheapest point.
- Test an idea in a day, before it becomes a budget line
- Separate the problem from the first solution someone proposed
- Give engineering, design and commercial one shared vocabulary
- Run a workshop that ends in a decision, not another meeting
- Bring users into the room early enough that their answers still change something
Bring us a real problem and we'll build the day around it.
Tell us who the group is — a class, a team, a mixed cohort — roughly how many people, and what they're working on. We'll come back with a plan for the session and what you'll have at the end of it.
Tell us what's stuck.
A paragraph is enough to start. We read every message and reply within two working days — with an honest answer about whether we're the right team for the job.
The messages we can answer best include: what the product is, who uses it, what has already been tried, and what would count as done. Rough is fine — we'd rather see the real state of it than a tidy summary.