I'd recommend checking out your local community of hackerspaces [1] and/or hardware meetups [2] to meet others to discuss your idea with. The "new type of mate

I'd recommend checking out your local community of hackerspaces [1] and/or hardware meetups [2] to meet others to discuss your idea with. The "new type of material" is probably going to be really difficult, but you can check out Material Connexxion [3] and MatWeb [4] to see if something is already available. Also, there's a lot of product designers and engineers on UpWork / CAD Crowd [5] that will do quick consulting calls for like $20-$100/hr. [1] https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces [2] https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1qwBGJ5jUOf-zquVwwbUDHQUHxVs&msa=0&ll=2.5188564855283175%2C0&z=2 https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1qwBGJ5jUOf-zquVw... [3] https://materialconnexion.com/ https://materialconnexion.com/ [4] https://www.matweb.com/ https://www.matweb.com/ [5] https://www.cadcrowd.com/ https://www.cadcrowd.com/