People say, `is that even possible?` We just do it.

formed an LLC, bought themselves a 3D printer, rented a
1,300-square-foot warehouse in Bucks County, and scrambled
for contacts in all realms of the 3D printing world.
PROTOTYPE
EARLY
PROTOTYPE
OFTEN
6 ENGINEERS, A 3D PRINTER AND A WAREHOUSE
By Julie Zeglen, 22
When the six founders of Oat Foundry greet me, I can’t
help but notice one of them is wearing an apron. After a
series of firm handshakes, we sit down for homemade brunch.
This warm welcome seems appropriate for a company that
calls itself a “collective,” not a firm, and that prizes strong
team ethos over individual, ladder climbing egos. We talk
shop over scrapple, soft-boiled eggs, and French press coffee.
Oat Foundry is a engineering design collective made up
of six recent graduates of Drexel University’s mechanical
engineering program: Mark Kuhn–24 (CEO), Sean
Rossiter–23 (President), Mike Courtney–23 (CTO), Luc
Tenthorey–23 (3D Printing Lead), James Vescio–24
(Manufacturing Lead) and John Halko–23 (Creative
Director). The guys found instant chemistry during their
senior capstone class where they were tasked with designing
and creating an invention—a pretzel vending machine.
The Oat Foundry sextet handles a minimum of three to
five projects at once, including commissions from large
companies, small-scale projects from individual hobbyists,
and personal creative ventures. “Oat Foundry” itself is an
anagram—a riddle, purposefully vague to encompass all the
types of work they do and the exploration of the unknown.
Rapid prototyping and reverse engineering is the team’s
MO. The more ‘out there’ the project, the more appealing
it is to the crew. When a fan of model trains approached
them to create a 3D model of an antiquated train, the group,
who are by no means railway buffs, set off to analyze original
blueprints from the Pennsylvania Railroad. And—voilà
(well, it wasn’t quite that easy), the client had a miniature
train built to scale.
“People will come in and shyly say they want to do this or
that, followed by, ‘Is that even possible?’ We don’t ever ask
that question. We just do it.”
The six individuals graduated college with robust résumés
populated with internships at major engineering companies,
the success of their senior capstone project, and pretty
stellar GPA’s. Transitioning to full-time jobs with benefits
and security would have been a cinch. It took great courage
to branch out on their own. “We’ve all worked for huge
companies—Lockheed Martin, Johnson and Johnson—
but we wanted to focus our work on having personal
relationships with clients,” says Rossiter. “Being really close
to the customers, the clients, and the products themselves,
is what makes our work unique and, in the end, makes us
most proud.”
There’s a downside to being your own boss(es)—big risks
could either mean big reward or big failure. “One of our
mantras is ‘prototype early, prototype often,’” Kuhn explains.
“You can come up with something and then fail at it a
couple times, but you have to figure out the solution. It’s
People say,‘is that even possible?’ We just do it.
“We realized that the project concept itself was less important than the team working on it,” says Kuhn. “We really
wanted to have a dynamite team—and to do that, we had
to draw on all of our individual strengths.”
While most other engineering grads plowed ahead with
job applications, the new six-man team stuck together. They
critical. The hard part is motivation. You have to motivate
yourself to get up and get to work at 7:30 a.m. and stay
until whatever project you’re working on is done.”
Photos by Rosie Wiegand, 21