DUMB ASS DESIGN CO.

Research & Development Company.

Gallery

Recent Footage

Graphite MK2 CAD Demonstration

Base transmission and electronics assembly breakdown and showcase. This version is from late 2024. It used a series of servo motors instead of our more modern electromagnet design. This was to be the base for a cable driven 6-axis robot mounted above.

Filament recycler extrusion test

Scrap prints in. Clean filament out. ±0.05 mm tolerance. This particular test used 80% virgin PLA pellets and 20% recycled material.

Prototype clutch slam

Dual-position solenoid clutch engaging under a 12 amp pulse. Mildly violent.

Backyard metal pour

Pouring molten aluminum outside into a open mold. Proper PPE was used! Metal was melted using a homemade melting furnace.

Early Graphite MK3 Demonstration

Demonstrating an early test of the Graphite MK3 robot base. In this test, only a single clutch was attached to the geartrain and the system was stress tested overnight.

Newest Solenoid Design Demonstration

This is the newest most overly complicated solenoid design. It easily splits in half; one side is the electromagnet and the other is the plunger/gear assembly.

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3d printed octopus made from our recycled filament. — 3D printed octopus made from our recycled filament. 80% virgin PLA, 20% recycled PLA.

Graphite MK2 base assembly — Graphite MK2 prototype from late 2024. This still used the old servo motors instead of electromagnets.

Filament recycler extrusion line with cooling loop — Our filament recycler mid-test. Smells like hot PLA and ambition.

Early CAD model of the solenoid that would later go into MK3

Pile of scrap and test prints on a workbench — Electromagnet and yolk assembly for our latest solenoid clutch design. Made of enameled wire, 3D printed polycarbonate, and watercut mild steel plate.

Our compute farm — Closet compute farm made of ~12 crappy salvaged computers. Over 50 cores in total. Used for algorithmic trading.

Dumb Alpha performance — Performance metrics and analysis for Dumb Alpha, our quant model. Click here to read more.

Dual-Position Solenoid Clutch

A clutch design for cable-driven robotics. We combined proprietary magnet layouts with a unique locking yoke mechanism to deliver strong actuation and manufacturability. The whole module fits in a ~75×75×40 mm envelope. With short 12 amp pulses, the clutch can snap on with serious force without cooking itself.

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Graphite MK 3

Single-motor transmission-powered robot arm with solenoid clutches and Dyneema cables. All the complexity lives in the base, which keeps the arm light and easy to move. Swappable arm layouts let us adapt it for different jobs and experiments.

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Dumb Alpha

A distributed predictive modeling platform for financial analysis. Uses Euclidean distance calculations, z-score normalization, and k-nearest neighbors to generate trading signals. At peak it cleared ~40% profit over a 3-month live window trading derivatives before we shut it down to focus on building, not babysitting.

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3D Print recycler

A project focused on 3D print recycling and sustainable design. We built a relatively affordable filament recycler that can process failed prints and scrap plastic into usable filament. It holds roughly ±0.05 mm diameter tolerance and can recycle PLA, ABS, PETG, and more.

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About Us

Formally created in 2025, Dumb Ass Design Co. has basically been in motion since 2021. The first ugly version of Dumb Alpha came out during the pandemic, and the chaos has only escalated from there.

In 2023, when we actually hit profitability with some trading experiments, that helped fund projects that felt less soulless. That same summer, the first version of Graphite was born. It started as an attempt at a normal, affordable 3D-printed robot arm. Then we overcomplicated it by centralizing all the power in the base and adding features no reasonable person asked for. Over the next year and a half, that idea evolved into a modular, reconfigurable platform that we think can change how lightweight robotics is done.

By 2025, filing patents and pulling in collaborators basically forced us to incorporate. Our pile of inventions kept growing: 3D print recycling, metal casting, aeronautics experiments. Each new member dragged their own obsessive project into the collective.

We are not large. There are only three of us. But we cover a stupidly wide range: business, mechanical design, software, electronics, manufacturing. We’re aggressive about pushing each other’s work forward and past whatever boundary it had last week.

Now, with 8+ provisional patents filed and a stack of active R&D, Dumb Ass Design Co. is only getting louder. We’re always hunting for co-conspirators. Bonus points if you’ve already built yourself a secret lab.

Our Toolkit

Engineering

Fusion 360SolidWorksModelingPrototyping

Built with duct tape and determination

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Programming

PythonJavaScriptNumPyArduino/ESP32JavaWebDev

Fueled by caffeine and stubbornness

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Electronics

PCB DesignSensors & ActuatorsPower SystemsEmbeddedMCUs

Probably good enough

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Manufacturing

CNCMetal Casting3D PrintingWeldingQCLaser

Making dumb things out of other dumb things

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Finance

QuantAlgo TradingRiskResearchData

Diamond hands and spreadsheets

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Get In Touch

Questions, collaborations, or trade secrets? Drop us a line:

hello@dumbassdesign.com @dumbassdesign