> My co-founder and I both went to school for Mechatronics Engineering, and one of
  > the biggest obstacles we have run into so far is that there just isn't as much
  > shared knowledge on the internet when we run into problems - unlike software.

Funny, that's partly how I picked mechanical engineering to study in college. I figured I should pick something that I wasn't already familiar with (like software) and instead study something not easily found on the internet. But that's a double-edged sword, as you have discovered, because (in college) it means you are intentionally choosing a topic that doesn't greatly benefit from the wonders of the web.

Well, at least there's cnczone. And mechatronics journals. There are a bunch of online marketplaces (including alibaba, mfg, or protomold or something), but that's not the same thing as institutional knowledge..