View source for MechE

{{Short description|Character class in Epic Quest Bio}}
{{Infobox character
| name = MechE
| image = class-meche.png
| caption = The MechE poster, one of nine class posters in the header of the company's member software
| first_appearance = "How to Play Epic Quest Bio" (2025), as Gearhead
| creator = [[Molecular Reality Corporation]]
| occupation = "hardware/fluidics"
| affiliation = [[Molecular Streaming Corps]]
| former_name = Gearhead
| color = Orange (RGB 255, 155, 55)
}}
'''MechE''', the usual abbreviation for a mechanical engineer, is one of the nine [[Character classes of Epic Quest Bio|character classes]] of [[Epic Quest Bio]], the role-playing game through which [[Molecular Reality Corporation]] organizes its work. The help file of the company's member software defines it as "hardware/fluidics".<ref name="help">{{cite web |title=EQBio-OS help: Gamification & Epic Quest Bio |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=2026}}</ref> The founder's essay of 2025 introduced the same class as the Gearhead: "You love beautiful machines and making them."<ref name="essay">{{cite web |title=How to Play Epic Quest Bio |author=Kemmishtree |website=epicquest.bio |date=2025}}</ref> A [[Player Scientist]] may take it as a major or a minor class.

== Origins ==
The essay, "How to Play Epic Quest Bio", was the landing text of epicquest.bio in 2025. Its Gearhead, given "a problem and access to a machine shop", will "figure it out", and the paragraph describes the job: "In this quest, you're making the widgets and boxes and actuators that let the rest of the world send molecules through tiny holes and measure what happens. You're basically the party's blacksmith, except your forge runs on 3D printer filament and G-code."<ref name="essay" />

The company's database keeps that name. Gearhead is the seventh of the eight original classes there, with the color 255, 155, 55 in RGB, an orange, the placeholder description "The Gearhead class is vital to the mission. [Edit this description in the Command Deck]" and a flat icon of a smiling orange cog that waves.<ref name="records">{{cite web |title=Company records |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=2026-10}}</ref> The other name is almost as old. In May 2025 the founder considered "mecky" before settling on MechE, and a design draft of that month listed "MechE (Mechanical Engineer)" among fourteen classes, with the titles "The Architect of Atoms, The Sculptor of Solids, The Gizmo Grandmaster" and a mentor named Professor Quentin "Cogsmith" Quibble. Its duties ran from "flow cell/cartridge innovation" to "physical prototyping".<ref name="records" /> The help file and the posters of June 2026 both use MechE.

== Poster ==
The poster, 3,720 by 3,746 pixels, puts green letters outlined in yellow against a pale teal sky. Below them a floating mass of green growth, studded with red cells and topped with laboratory glassware, hangs over a flat green plain, trailing black cables to the ground, with a pale dome rising behind it.<ref name="records" /> A member who clicks the poster opens the company's chat, [[LabChat]], with "MechE question:" already typed.

== Work of the class ==
Two large quests on the company's list called for the class, and both have been switched off. "device design", worth 85,000 experience points, was "A major task requiring discussion and long-term coordination. Requires expertise in mechanical design engineering." "MR series design development", a pool of 700,000 points, covered "Designing, building, shipping molecular streaming devices in the MR series".<ref name="records" />

The company's founding idea is mechanical. A [[juxtapore]] is a pore formed between two surfaces that slide past each other, so that moving them changes the opening; the company calls this [[sliding occlusion]].<ref name="faq">{{cite web |url=https://molecularreality.com/FAQ |title=Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=2026-08}}</ref> The console it designed in 2022, the [[demonpore 64]], drove a 3D-printed syringe pump with a stepper motor.<ref name="overview">{{cite web |title=2022 sci-tech overview |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-28}}</ref> In April 2026 the company's hardware persona, [[The Quartermaster]], posted photographs of older parts, among them a tall stack of machined plates, an old piezoelectric stage with a chip glued to the tip of a rail, and small 3D-printed flow cells and pushers.<ref name="carousel">{{cite web |title=provision carousel |author=Quartermaster |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-04-25}}</ref>

Its open desktop design, the [[MR1 Nanopore Reader]], is a stack of four modules: a pump module powered over USB-C, with two peristaltic pumps and two pressure sensors; a reader holding the main circuit board; a hexagonal flow-cell cartridge; and a small amplifier board directly beneath the cartridge. The cartridge, about 22 mm tall, holds a silicon chip 4 mm square, turned 45 degrees, in a cast silicone gasket between milled polypropylene plates. A cap screws down over the stack through a ratchet that limits the clamping torque to 0.5 N·m, and the pump firmware keeps the flow between 0.5 and 150 microliters per minute. A trace around the wet area, the "[[weep moat]]", detects leaking salt water and shuts down the pumps and the bias voltage.<ref name="mr1">{{cite web |url=https://github.com/EpicQuestBio/MR1 |title=MR1 Nanopore Reader |website=GitHub |date=2026-10-16}}</ref> The parts are modeled in code and checked by automated tests, and a badge on the repository reads "Tests-100 Passing (0 Collisions)". The project's own summary of its status is "Designed. Simulated. Built and measured: not yet."<ref name="pico">{{cite news |title=Molecular Reality Open-Sources a Nanopore Reader It Has Not Built Yet |work=The Picoampere |author=Dev Okonkwo-Hale |date=2026-10-17 |url=/press/picoampere/2026/10/17/mr1-open-source}}</ref>

== Related classes ==
The help file divides the company's engineering between MechE, for "hardware/fluidics", and [[Sparky]], for "electrical engineering".<ref name="help" />

== See also ==
* [[Microfluidics]]
* [[List of Molecular Reality Corporation hardware]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

{{Navbox
| name = Character classes of Epic Quest Bio
| title = [[Character classes of Epic Quest Bio]]
| group1 = Classes
| list1 = [[ByteBender]] · [[Cleric (Epic Quest Bio)|Cleric]] · [[Ludician]] · [[Magic User (Epic Quest Bio)|Magic User]] · [[MechE]] · [[Rogue (Epic Quest Bio)|Rogue]] · [[Scientist (Epic Quest Bio)|Scientist]] · [[Sparky]] · [[Warrior (Epic Quest Bio)|Warrior]]
| group2 = Earlier names
| list2 = Barbarian · Bytebender · Gearhead · Sciencer · Spellbinder
| group3 = Related
| list3 = [[Player Scientist]] · [[Molecular Streaming Corps]] · [[Experience points (Epic Quest Bio)]] · [[The Disclosure Crawl]]
}}

[[Category:Character classes of Epic Quest Bio]]