MechE
| MechE | |
|---|---|
 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 |
| Created by | Molecular Reality Corporation |
| In-universe information | |
| 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, 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".[1] The founder's essay of 2025 introduced the same class as the Gearhead: "You love beautiful machines and making them."[2] 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."[2]
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.[3] 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".[3] 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.[3] 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".[3]
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.[4] The console it designed in 2022, the demonpore 64, drove a 3D-printed syringe pump with a stepper motor.[5] 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.[6]
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.[7] 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."[8]
Related classes
The help file divides the company's engineering between MechE, for "hardware/fluidics", and Sparky, for "electrical engineering".[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b "EQBio-OS help: Gamification & Epic Quest Bio". Molecular Reality Corporation. 2026.
- ^ a b Kemmishtree (2025). "How to Play Epic Quest Bio". epicquest.bio.
- ^ a b c d "Company records". Molecular Reality Corporation. October 2026.
- ^ "Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality". Molecular Reality Corporation. August 2026.
- ^ Kemmishtree (March 28, 2026). "2022 sci-tech overview". EQBio-OS.
- ^ Quartermaster (April 25, 2026). "provision carousel". EQBio-OS.
- ^ "MR1 Nanopore Reader". GitHub. October 16, 2026.
- ^ Dev Okonkwo-Hale (October 17, 2026). "Molecular Reality Open-Sources a Nanopore Reader It Has Not Built Yet". The Picoampere.