About COMUA

What we do

COMUA is a multidisciplinary workshop based at 2 route du Burgaud, 82600 Aucamville, in the Tarn-et-Garonne department. We combine four complementary practices:

• Precision conventional machining — turning and milling, digital readouts, accuracy to 1/100 mm. One-off parts and small batches.
• Welding and metalwork — TIG, MIG/MAG and stick welding on steel and stainless. Structural assemblies and repairs.
• Potter’s wheels — French design and manufacture of professional wheels (Louise, Rosa) and accessories, made to order.
• Software engineering — bespoke software development, R&D on compilers and high-performance computing, AI-agent optimisation.

The founder

COMUA was founded and is run by Régis Portalez, a graduate of École Polytechnique (X2006) with a Master 2 in Mathematics (Orsay). Fifteen years of experience in software development and R&D before founding the workshop:

• Microsoft (Redmond), 2012–2015 — software engineer.
• Altimesh (Paris), 2015–2020 — Research Engineer in GPU computing and CUDA compilation. Author on the NVIDIA Developer Blog.
• Qwant, 2020–2022 — Software Engineer L4, designing a distributed crawler in Rust.

Technical stack: C++, C#, Rust, TypeScript, CUDA, LLVM-IR. Publications indexed on Google Scholar and the NVIDIA Developer Blog. Freelance profile: Malt. Public code: github.com/JeWaVe. Public commentary: x-alternative.org.

The workshop

The Aucamville workshop is equipped for conventional machining and sheet-metal work:

• Ernault-Somua HN350 parallel lathe with digital readout
• Somua Z1C milling machine
• Bombled 1000 × 3 mm sheet-metal roll
• TIG, MIG/MAG and arc welding stations
• Assembly and inspection benches for potter’s wheel manufacture

We work with steel and stainless. No aluminium welding (aluminium wheel-heads are cast by a specialist partner).

Our partners

• Fonderie de Roanne — casts our Ø295 mm aluminium wheel-heads, a long-established French foundry.
• IMO Jeambrun — French manufacturer of the 550 W gear-motors fitted to Louise and Rosa.

Our commitments

• Made in France — every wheel is assembled in our workshop from mostly French components (IMO motor, Fonderie de Roanne wheel-head, structure machined and welded on site).
• Repairability — wheels are fully dismountable, spare parts are sold individually (wheel-head, pedal, splash pan, batts — including for Shimpo wheels and most wheels on the market), and the design favours standard components (metric screws, off-the-shelf bearings) to make any replacement straightforward.
• Open source — FreeCAD plans for the Louise wheel are published on github.com/comuafr/Louise for personal non-commercial use.
• Built to order — no idle stock: every wheel is manufactured on demand with a lead time of about a month, which enables customisation (colour, wheel-head options).