Power Tool

Duration

Date

15 Weeks

Spring ‘26

From Consumer, To Redesign

Meet Gavin,

Gavin installs, repairs, and maintains pumps as a field service technician. He is an end user for most professional equipment.

The Problem

Gavin uses a Milwaukee angle grinder for many different purposes including general grinding, cutting, and cleaning. Often times using it for long periods of time, causing fatigue and overheating the tool.

Key Pain Points

Balance

Ergonomics

Temperature

After speaking with Gavin, we came up with these three main pain points that he experienced when using the grinder. The balance between the battery and the head, the ergonomics of the handle, and the tool often overheated after repeated use.

Benchmarking

Initial Concepts

Tear Down

Rebuild

Using the innards from the teardown I “rebuilt” the angle grinder by drawing over orthographic views of an angle grinder. These allowed me to get overall proportions and size down.

Initial Foam Models

Using the cabriole technique and the previous rebuilt sketches I was able to cut out these full size foam models to get specifics - mainly ergonomics - for my final model.