Team

Paul Hammerstrom

PRINCIPAL

My “real” design engineering career started after a stint at Pratt & Whitney. I spent some time at Pratt & Whitney doing thermodynamic and fluid dynamic analysis on jet engines and jet engine test cells. After working for Pratt and Whitney I took a job working for one of my childhood heroes Horst Leitner. Under Horsts mentoring I began to learn that the beauty in engineering is creating simple efficient designs. At his company, AMP research, I mainly worked on improving the design of their mountain bike disc brake system.

In 1998 I took a job with Cannondale Corporation working on designing disc brake systems for their internal brand CODA. I worked on designing a low cost 25,000 unit/year disc brake assembly. I was also responsible for doing up front simulation and field data collection as well as working with the testing department to insure that all the designs met and passed international  testing standards. The real reason I took the job at Cannondale, was to work in the motorsports division. It wasn’t long before I was working in the motorsports division. Another engineer and I were tapped with designing a high end racing ATV from the ground up. We went from napkin sketch to prototype in four months. There is so much that I learned doing this project  that it would take a book to fill. I worked on all aspects of off road vehicle design from engine development, to frame development, international standards, etc..

After the ATV was in production, I became the Engineering manager for the motorsports division. In this position I spearheaded several initiatives that helped steer the company in some positive directions. After Cannondale, I worked for FOX Racing Shox. At FOX helped organize the engineering department, enforced adherence to ASME Y 14.5 geometric  tolerancing, and set up the product data management system.

Currently I own and operate Paul Hammerstrom Design. We specialize in product design with an emphasis on the detailed engineering side of “design”.

Dennis Wootten

SENIOR ENGINEER

Dennis brings a long rich design history to PHD. He is our most senior engineer and his designs are always teeming with a deep understanding of fundamental engineering principles. He is one of those rare engineers who can listen to an idea and quickly grasp the multiple levels of challenges that need to be overcome to achieve the client’s end goal. He has a pragmatic methodical approach that results in solid, robust and safe designs.

Dennis has a Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering Design from the University of California, Davis. He brings over 20 years of solid design experience to the table. He has a wealth of knowledge when it come to vehicle damper design and theory. He has 15 US patents.  In addition, he has expertise in kinematic simulation, surface modeling, tolerance analysis and GD&T.

Josh Yablon

SENIOR ENGINEER

Josh is a highly experienced bicycle frame and product designer. He has designed and engineered frames and parts for Cannondale, Salsa, Alter Cycles and Surly. He is one of the first designers to work on the fat bike trend. His work on bicycle shocks won multiple world championships in both the prototype and production form. Josh has an innovative out of the box approach to solving design problems. His simple pragmatic approach yields designs that meet or exceed cost goals. In addition, Josh is a veritable encyclopedia on bicycle design history. If he doesn’t know about it, it probably doesn’t exist!

Josh also has experience in manufacturing engineering.  He started his career programming CNC machines, streamlining auto part machining and designing tooling.  More recently he has been designing machines to assemble shock absorbers more efficiently, consistently and safely..

Josh’s career started well before graduating from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Josh’s parents raced Austin Healey Sprites and  owned an auto repair shop and a bicycle shop while Josh was growing up. The mechanical wizardry that surrounded him as a kid inspired his interest in Engineering. After graduating college, Josh worked at Ann Arbor Machine Company, Quality Bicycle Products, and Fox Racing Shox.

At PHD we use all of Josh’s 19 years of experience to the fullest extent. His unique approach to solving problems and his strong work ethic make him a valued member of our team.

In his down time Josh likes to take some time at the track to ride motorcycles, work on his Datsun, build furniture and of course, ride his large collection of road and mountain bikes.

Eric Lindsley

SIMULATION EXPERT

Eric is our swiss army knife. He has so many skills to draw from. He brings to the table years of experience doing linear static, and nonlinear contact fea. The harder the problem, the more he attacks it. He has done simple single part FEA to large interconnected assemblies utilizing non linear contact controls.  His time at Santa Cruz bicycles as a test engineer gives him a unique perspective on failure modes. That experience helps close the loop on the simulation side.

He is also great at modeling complex surfaces and is an expert at family tables in Creo.

His main hobby interests are offroad trucks and cycling which both overlap nicely with much of the  work we do.

Zoran Sekulovski

MECHANICAL ENGINEER

Zoran has a unique skillset that he adds to our team. Not only is he a talented degreed Mechanical Engineer but he has an artistic side. There aren’t many people that can bridge the gap between the left and right side of the brain, but he is one of them. We rely on him to add that extra style to our designs. He is also just at home calculating o-ring squeeze or any other detailed engineering work that needs to get done. Another skillset that he brings to the team is his experience designing casting and injection molding tools. He can easily evaluate a design and quickly make it so the part is cost effective and manufacturable. Zoran is a quick learner, team player and has outstanding work ethic.

Zoran received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius – Skopje, R.Macedonia. In his off time he enjoys working on his 1992 Mazda 323, and building custom computers. He is also an avid artist and would love it if we didn’t keep him so busy so he could get back into painting.