About
AutoPlane Technologies LLC is an American surface preparation company based in Payson, Arizona.
We are developing a new system for improving control, consistency, and repeatability in surface preparation. Our first focus is the automotive repair and refinishing industry, with potential applications in aerospace, marine, industrial manufacturing, and woodworking.
How it started
AutoPlane began on the shop floor.
After decades in the trades, Christopher Bleak kept running into the same problem: surface preparation still depended too heavily on feel, time, repetition, and correction. Skilled technicians could get the result, but the process was often slower and harder to repeat than it needed to be.
Christopher has spent his life building, repairing, and improving things with one goal in mind: to help people. Whether he was working with his hands, solving problems for customers, or taking care of people who needed help most, the pattern was always the same: find the problem, fix what could be fixed, and leave people better off than before.
Eventually, the question changed from "is there a better way?" to "why hasn't anyone built one?"
What started as one craftsman's frustration became a series of prototypes, shop testing, early customer interest, and a patent filing in progress.
The team
Christopher Bleak, Co-Founder
Christopher brings decades of hands-on experience in auto body, collision repair, automotive repair, and custom finishing. He has owned and operated shops in the region for many years, and his background includes time studying under Jon Kosmoski, founder of House of Kolor.
Long before AutoPlane, Christopher was inventing, modifying, and improving the things around him. His work has always been driven by the same instinct: solve the problem in front of you and help the person who needs it. In the trades, that often meant doing the extra work, charging less than the job was worth, or helping people who had no easy way to pay him back.
AutoPlane comes from that same place. It is not just an invention built for a market. It is a tool born from years of trying to make difficult work easier for the people doing it.
Dante Bernal, Co-Founder
Dante leads AutoPlane's product strategy, business development, and commercialization. He has helped move the company from early prototypes into shop validation, customer discovery, legal preparation, and early commercial traction.
His focus is turning the invention into a repeatable business: refining the product, building the sales process, organizing field feedback, and preparing AutoPlane for broader market entry.
Looking ahead
AutoPlane is building surface preparation technology for the people who do the work.
Our goal is simple: give technicians more control, help shops create more consistent results, and improve the process behind high-quality finishing.
Patent work is underway. More is coming.