About Chuck Stemke

Chuck Stemke is the founder and Principal Member of Mountaintop Device and Product Design, LLC. He lives and works out of Palouse, Washington, a small town near the Idaho state line and also near two universities. He started the business in 2019 after working in the aerospace and defense industry for nearly 20 years.

Chuck is passionate about mechanical design and engineering documentation. Devices work better when they are designed simply and efficiently. Suppliers are able to produce quality parts when they are given unambiguous requirements. Technicians work better when they have clear instructions. Engineering teams make better decisions when individuals abandon their emotional attachments to their work, communicate openly with their peers, and respond to criticism with flexibility.

For most of his career, Chuck has been oriented toward the design of individual parts, and how they fit together into assemblies. This started in his first jobs doing assembly work, and continued through his years as a machinist - programming, setting up, and operating mills and lathes to produce hundreds of parts in a small, prototype machine shop.

Employed for nearly 20 years by General Atomics in San Diego, California, Chuck was promoted out of the machine shop and into a new career designing lasers, sensors, optical systems, and advanced electronics - proving concepts in laboratories, and then packaging them mainly for use in military aircraft. This was all during the post-September 11, 2001 period in which General Atomics, its Predator airplanes, and other products were in exceptionally strong demand.

Chuck’s division at GA was forced to transform, formalize, and professionalize its practices in order to meet the rigors of a manufacturer of military hardware. With a new focus on quality assurance, mechanical designers were sent to classes on Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T). Chuck immediately recognized the value and applicability of the GD&T system, and eventually earned his certification as a professional in this area.

Chuck moved to Palouse for personal reasons. He continued to work remotely for General Atomics for three years before setting out on his own. With Mountaintop Device and Product Design, LLC, Chuck applies the skills, experience, and insights he has accumulated to provide engineering services to companies, universities, and inventors in the Northwest and nationwide.