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 theirinternal 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 longbefore 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".