We break products on purpose so they survive reality.

Kiln & Signal is not an agency. We are a teardown crew: industrial designers, firmware hackers, and interaction weirdos who drag your idea through mud, heat, and user rage — then rebuild it shippable.

↯ Hardware↯ Firmware↯ Apps & HMI↯ Design for repair

00 / Anti-brief

Your roadmap is a fantasy. Let's shred it.

Most studios polish slides. We start with a hammer. Bring us a prototype, a napkin, or a failing SKU and we disassemble it live — materials, electronics, code, business model — in front of you.

No decks. No jargon sprints. You leave Day 2 with a working ugly thing you can drop, drown, and argue with. Illustrative example: a recent field radio went through 11 foam-core carcasses before tooling.

Now booking: 2 teardown slots for Nov–Dec 2026. One-week intensive, you keep all scraps.

Laptop with code and prototype electronics on a workbench

Lab bench, firmware bring-up. We code next to the mills, not in a separate building.

01 / Disassembly manual

Three violent steps to calm products.

01
Smelt
We melt assumptions. User shadowing in kitchens, vans, clinics. Teardown of competitors down to screws and glue. You watch.
02
Signal
We emit fast signals: foam, Arduino, clickable HMI in 48 hours. Tested to failure on camera. No precious pixels.
03
Kiln
We fire it hard: DFM, firmware hardening, repair manual, pilot run with a real factory. Then we hand you the keys.