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Eli Lewis

Eli Lewis

Manufacturing & Design Engineering student, Northwestern ’29

Shop trainer, Segal Prototyping & Fabrication Lab · Continuous improvement intern, Ely Tool (summer 2026) · Sole inventor, US 2025/0368466 A1

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Featured projects

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Close-ups, wheelchair to switch: rubber-lined clamp, ball-joint stack, foam clamp assembly, foam pad

PressAble: an adjustable, shock-absorbing switch mount

A low-cost highly-adjustable upgrade for a school's existing gooseneck switch mounts: quick, fine adjustment from two ball joints, and a foam buffer that absorbs hits from any direction.

human-centered-designuser-testingprototyping
Final plan for the main floor, modeled to scale in SketchUp. I discussed with the lead engineer to establish large moves and location for the new CNC machine (large upper left profile). I worked out everything in between--exact orientation, storage cabinets, worktables, manual machines. Colors: green = in final position, orange = planned, not yet moved, red = remove, purple = review, brown = work surface, yellow = keep contents. Large shaded margins = space needed to service a machine; white circles = 12, 8 and 5 ft gauges for checking the new hallway widths.

Shop floor relayout without a shutdown

Ely Tool: 5S layout planned in SketchUp and sequenced so a working custom-tooling shop never closed

facility-layout5s-leanstakeholder-coordination
The finished plane

Wooden Krenov-style hand plane

Krenov-style oak smoothing plane, sole flat to ±0.001 in, built under a professional woodworker's guidance

hand-tool-woodworkingtool-makingflatness-inspection
Finished handheld: GameCube-style controls around the built-in screen

Portable Wii built by soldering to 0.1 mm traces

Micro-soldering, motherboard trimming and 3D-printed enclosure assembly, built to the open-source Ashida design

micro-solderingelectronics-assemblyhardware-modding

About

I'm a manufacturing and design engineering student who has spent the last few years in shops: restoring machines, teaching kids to build, and most recently re-planning a custom-tooling shop floor and training students on mills and lathes. I like problems where the answer has to survive contact with real users, real tolerances and a real budget.

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Education
B.S. Manufacturing & Design Engineering (MaDE)
Northwestern University, expected 2029
Experience
Shop Trainer, Northwestern University — Segal Prototyping & Fabrication Lab
Sep 2026 – present
Currently
Shop trainer at Northwestern's Segal lab · applying for summer 2027 manufacturing and design engineering internships · building a workbench with my woodworking mentor