About Nathan Colebrook

Background & Experience

Nathan Colebrook has spent the last decade designing products that actually need to work. Industrial equipment. Consumer products. Automation systems. The kind of stuff where "close enough" isn't good enough, and failure means real consequences—not just a bad grade.

Most of his work has involved the unglamorous realities of mechanical engineering: parts that survive actual loading conditions instead of idealized simulations, tolerances manufacturing can hit consistently without heroic effort, troubleshooting why something failed in production despite passing every analysis. It's engineering with constraints—time, budget, manufacturability, regulations—where textbook solutions rarely work as written.

Working with junior engineers revealed a pattern. Solid theory. Strong fundamentals. But massive gaps in practical knowledge. The stuff experienced engineers use daily but schools don't explicitly teach. That gap—between what you learn in school and what you actually need to know—is why NewMech.tech exists.

Why NewMech.tech Exists

The same knowledge gaps kept appearing. Junior engineers who couldn't interpret GD&T correctly. Engineers who ran software without understanding when the results were nonsense. Smart people who didn't know when a simple calculation was sufficient versus when detailed analysis mattered. These aren't intelligence problems—they're gaps in what gets taught.

Everything on NewMech.tech comes from actual engineering work, not textbooks. It's the practical knowledge experienced engineers rely on but schools don't teach: how to think through design decisions when there's no single right answer, when approximations are good enough, what production actually cares about, and how to develop judgment that goes beyond following procedures.

The goal: get junior mechanical engineers competent faster. No fluff. No unnecessary complexity. Just the practical knowledge you actually need, organized so it makes sense.

Engineering Philosophy

Engineering is about making things work under actual constraints, not chasing theoretical perfection. Yes, you need strong fundamentals. But you also need to know when a simple approximation beats detailed analysis, when testing beats calculating, and how to explain technical decisions without drowning people in jargon.

That's how content here is structured. Plain language. Real-world context. When simplifications are made, they're stated explicitly instead of buried in assumptions. Tradeoffs are discussed openly. The focus stays on what actually matters in practice rather than theory that sounds impressive but doesn't translate to real work.

Beyond Engineering

Outside engineering, there's a lot of reading. Technical non-fiction mostly, but also history and anything about decision-making or systems thinking. How complex systems behave—mechanical, organizational, cognitive—turns out to be relevant everywhere.

Hands-on projects are constant. Woodworking. Fixing cars. Home improvement. Tinkering with mechanical things until they work properly. Same engineering mindset, different context: figure out how it works, diagnose what's wrong, build a solution with what's available.

Hiking and backpacking clear the head. Some of the best engineering insights show up on long hikes when your brain finally has space to work through problems without constant interruptions.

Teaching Approach

The teaching approach here is direct. Engineering isn't made to seem easier than it actually is, but there's no artificial complexity either. Break things down systematically. Explain clearly. Connect to real use. Focus on understanding rather than memorization.

Most people can learn difficult technical material if it's explained properly and structured logically. What stops them isn't intelligence—it's confusion from bad explanations, missing context, or gaps in prerequisites. NewMech.tech fixes this by building concepts step by step and explaining why engineering decisions are made, not just how to make them.

Commitment to Quality

Every piece of content on NewMech.tech is written and reviewed by Nathan personally. There's no outsourced content, no AI-generated filler, and no generic engineering advice copied from elsewhere. The information is based on direct engineering experience, refined through working with junior engineers, and structured to address real knowledge gaps.

The site is also free and always will be. No paywalls, no trial periods, no upsells. Engineering knowledge should be accessible to anyone willing to learn, regardless of their financial situation. The goal is to help junior engineers become competent practitioners, not to monetize their learning process.

Looking Forward

NewMech.tech continues to grow. New topics are added regularly based on feedback from junior engineers and observations from professional practice. The fundamentals section expands to cover more applied topics, the specializations guide helps engineers understand different career paths, and the career assessment continues to be refined based on real-world results.

The mission remains the same: bridge the gap between engineering school and effective professional practice by providing practical, clearly explained, technically accurate content that junior engineers actually need.

NewMech Development Roadmap

What's here now is the foundation. A lot more is coming. Deeper fundamentals content. More specialized topics. Interactive tools. Reference materials for specific engineering challenges that show up in the first few years.

New specializations get added with realistic career path information—what the work actually looks like, what skills matter, what to expect. The assessment tool keeps improving with better matching and more useful guidance. Fundamentals topics in development: tolerance stack-ups, structural loading, thermal design, material selection, failure investigation.

Eventually there will be case studies from real projects, worked examples showing complete design processes, and guides for common engineering tasks that textbooks skip. Same standard for everything: technically accurate, practically useful, clearly explained, focused on what actually matters.

What gets built next depends on user feedback and knowledge gaps that keep showing up. If you're a junior engineer struggling with something or need to develop a specific skill, that input influences priorities. The goal is building the resource that would have been most valuable during the transition from school to actual practice.

Get in Touch

If you have questions, feedback, or suggestions for topics to cover, reach out at contact@newmech.tech. Every email is read and considered. User feedback directly shapes what content gets created and how topics are explained.

You can also follow NewMech.tech on X @NewMech_tech for updates on new content and engineering insights.