Hey, I’m Karsten 👋
I’m a mechanical engineer from Juneau, Alaska who loves building things that live in the real world – from aurora film scanners and 3D-printed terrain maps to home energy repairs and self-hosted servers.
I care about using engineering to support Alaskan communities, especially around energy, resilience, and infrastructure.
Mechanical Engineer • Alaska-Raised • Tinkerer
Resume 💾
If you’re here for my resume, here you go:
You can also check out the resume page for a quick overview.
Featured Projects
These are a few projects that show how I like to work.
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Northern Exposure – Aurora Film Digitizer
Designed and built a stepper-driven machine to digitize archival 35 mm aurora film using an astronomy camera, Arduino motion control, and a Python dashboard.
→ Senior Design - Aurora Film Scanner -
3D-Printed Maps of Alaskan Communities
Built a Python and CAD-based pipeline for turning DEM and topobathymetric data into 3D-printable terrain models with scaled bases and dovetail joints.
→ 3D Printed Map of Juneau, Alaska -
Fujitsu Heat Pump Grille Gear Replacement
Reverse-engineered and 3D-printed a replacement gear to repair a broken heat-pump grille mechanism in the field, restoring operation without replacing the unit.
→ Fujitsu Heat Pump Grille Gear Replacement -
Home Lab & Self-Hosted Services
Maintain a Linux home server stack (Jellyfin, Homarr, Tailscale, AdGuard, game servers) as a playground for networking, Docker, and system reliability.
→ Home Lab and Self-Hosted Services
Tinkering & Smaller Builds
I also like making smaller tools and toys and documenting them when I can:
You can browse everything on the Projects page.