Mix Your Perfect Paint Color with MESOMIX

Whether you’re an artist or someone who simply wants the walls of your house to not look like a patchwork of not-quite-the-same colors, properly mixing paints is important to the aesthetics of our wold. If your skills aren’t yet up to Renaissance painter levels, then the MESOMIX device by MakerBash is here to help.

This machine, which resembles a very nice 3D printer in design, sucks colored paints from four containers in order to combine them into whatever color of the rainbow you so desire. The project gives a good explanation of how colors are mixed using RGB — red, green, and blue shades — or via CMYK — cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black) techniques. In this application, an Arduino Uno is used to blend CMYK elements together, and includes a calibration program to properly set up each 3D-printed peristaltic pump.

Importantly, each of these pumps use a stepper motor to drive them, giving precise control over each color element. Once properly calibrated, MESOMIX can then be used to create whatever artistic result that you’d like via a USB-serial interface.

Be sure to check out the assembly process in the video below, including an impressive display of red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet produced with the device.

One safety note: the writeup indicates that this housing was made out of vinyl material on a laser cutter. This should generally be avoided as there is a potential to release toxic gasses when cutting this material.