Mark Rehost is a maker/engineer, group well being employee, and a member of Milwaukee Makerspace. He’s additionally, clearly, a fan of Frank Herbert’s epic Dune. This weekend at Maker Faire Milwaukee he’ll be exhibiting his second era sand desk Arrakis following his unique foray into advanced patterning in sand, The Spice Should Move, each of which create patterns worthy of sand worms.
Says Mark of his path to Arrakis: I used to be born an engineer and pursued engineering as a profession from an early age. In highschool, I used to be a member of ham radio Explorer Publish 373 which met within the Bay View United Methodist Church, just a few blocks from one of many Milwaukee Makerspace places right this moment. I finally graduated from UW Milwaukee in 1981 with a level in electrical engineering and launched into a profession that moved me to Illinois, California, Japan, and Texas. After 22 years at Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu Microelectronics, and Texas Devices, company engineering and I had had sufficient of one another, and at 46 years previous I made a decision to reinvent myself.Six years of faculty adopted, and in 2011, on the tender age of 52 years, I graduated from the Arizona Faculty of Dentistry and Oral Well being. In 2012 I returned to the Milwaukee space to work in a group well being clinic and promptly joined the Milwaukee Makerspace. For the final 5 years, I’ve labored at Vivent Well being, a corporation that cares for HIV sufferers.
Work at all times interfered with my dwelling engineering tasks, and once I turned a dentist, working simply 4 days per week freed up an additional day for tasks. My first challenge on the Makerspace was designing and constructing a 3D printer that was a lot bigger than the kits that have been accessible on the time. Over the following few years, I designed and constructed two extra printers and managed the 3D printing space on the Makerspace.
I used the information of 3D printing mechanisms and electronics, gained on the Makerspace, to design and construct my first sand desk, The Spice Should Move, for show on the 2018 MakerFaire Milwaukee. There have been a lot of 3D-printed components within the mechanism. After that preliminary success, I wished to scale back the noise, enhance velocity, and construct the mechanism into a bit of furnishings I might use in my front room. The Arrakis sand desk that may be seen at MakerFaire Milwaukee this yr is the consequence.
He describes how present components have been used to create this distinctive art work for Maker Faire Milwaukee 2018 in Hackday and in an in depth weblog publish that serves as a challenge template: This can be a challenge that’s bought lots of off-the-shelf electronics and open supply software program to manage the mechanism. Not like most different sand tables you could have seen across the internet, this one is powered by servomotors that enable insane velocity and acceleration, working at very low to low noise degree, even at excessive speeds. The desk makes use of a redesigned and 3D-printed corexy mechanism with sliding PTFE bearings to maneuver a neodymium magnet that pulls a metal ball via a skinny layer of sand, forsaking fascinating patterns. The patterns are lit from low angles by pink and blue LED strips, lighting ridges pink on one aspect and blue on the opposite, with darkish shadows within the valleys between ridges.
One of the simplest ways to get a really feel for Rehost’s course of from begin to end is to move over to his weblog, through which he has detailed at nice size his inspiration, design, technical steps, and the adjustments over successive iterations.
