Lenexa, Kansas · Zach Minor & Michael Huffman
Two mechanical engineers who design, analyze, and build the one-off — training equipment, mechanisms, and machines that don't exist until somebody draws them.
Why us
If your family is going to train under it, the question that actually matters isn't how it looks. It's whether anyone can tell you what it takes to fail — and show their work.
Excellent hands, no analysis. They'll build you something beautiful and answer the safety question with confidence rather than with a number.
We run the load analysis, design to a conservative safety factor, and hand you the documentation with the finished piece. You get the object and the math behind it.
Fully capable of the analysis. Structured for commercial contracts, and priced accordingly — a residential one-off doesn't fit their model.
What we build
Low basement ceilings. A 32-inch door with a turn at the stairs. An awkward footprint. We design flat-pack bolted assemblies that carry in through a doorway and go together in the room — which puts equipment in spaces a welded frame physically cannot reach.
Two mechanisms that need to become one. An unusual movement path. A rehab-specific requirement nobody manufactures. If it can be drawn, analyzed, and fabricated, it can be built.
Black powder coat isn't the only option and doesn't belong in every space. Material, finish, and proportion get specified to the room the equipment lives in, not to a catalog default.
When the loads, the geometry, or the duty cycle exceed what consumer equipment is built for, the honest answer is a purpose-designed piece rather than a heavier version of the wrong thing.
Full engineering, fabrication, assembly, and install. Every commission is documented from CAD through the walkthrough, and the analysis goes home with the piece.
Experiments, mechanisms, kinetic pieces, and the occasional part that snapped in half. This is where we find out what's possible before a client's money is on the line — and it's the honest answer to "can you build that?"
Accessories we print in house, designed for the same reasons everything else here exists: the version we wanted didn't exist, so we drew it.
How a commission works
We don't quote a build we haven't designed. Discovery comes first, it's paid, and what it produces is yours whether or not we build anything.
We measure the space, define the requirement, and produce concept CAD and renders, a mechanism and materials plan, the load analysis, a validated build package, a fixed-price quote, and a timeline. You keep all of it regardless of what you decide next.
One structured round of changes against the discovery package. Scope is fixed here, in writing, so the price you agreed to is the price you pay.
Steel and aluminum cut and formed by our fabrication partners, then powder coated locally. Printed components, jigs, and fixtures are produced in house.
Everything is assembled and checked by us before it leaves. Hardware is specified for cyclic loading, and nothing critical hangs on a single fastener.
We deliver, assemble on site, and walk you through the piece — how it works, how it's maintained, and what the design was built to handle. The analysis documentation is handed over with it.
On timing: Blackridge is a two-person studio, not a production floor. We take one commission at a time and we take our time on it. Plan on roughly twelve weeks from discovery to install.
If you need equipment next month, buy a catalog rack — we'll happily tell you which one. If you want the piece that solves the problem properly, twelve weeks is what it costs.
Who you're hiring
We met building race cars at KU, where a design mistake shows up as a part failing on track in front of everyone. That habit — analyze it, test it, document it — is the whole reason this company exists.
Start a project
The more you can tell us about the requirement and the space, the more useful our first reply will be. We answer every inquiry within two business days.
Commissions start at $5,000. Discovery starts at $1,500 and is credited toward your build.
Blackridge Design LLC designs and manufactures custom equipment. We do not offer engineering services to the public.