Kathleen Gallagher

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Imagine inserting your hand into a glove and clenching it while watching a 26-foot-long, hydraulically activated hand mimic your every move. As your fingers tighten into a fist, the giant hand effortlessly crushes a large automobile.

Hand of Man, an interactive, 16,000-ton hulk of metal, made its debut in 2008 at the Burning Man Festival, a community art festival in the Nevada desert. Later this week, it will come to Wisconsin for Maker Faire Milwaukee at Wisconsin State Fair Park in West Allis.

Attendees will get the chance to play with Hand of Man and a host of other "eye-popping" technologies, inventions and arts and crafts, said Carrie Wettstein, a Maker Faire Milwaukee producer and chief operating officer of Betty Brinn Children’s Museum, which got involved because of the impact such fairs are having on education.

This is the third Maker Faire that will be held in Milwaukee. Last year's event attracted 54,000 people over two days, Wettstein said.

"We call it the greatest show and tell on earth; it's a family-friendly festival of invention and creativity," she said.

And it's free.

Maker Faire Milwaukee, in fact, is the largest free-admission faire in the country and one of the biggest free admission faires in the world, Wettstein said. There is a cost for some events, but free admission is made possible by Brady Corp. and other sponsors, she said.

"The whole point of a Maker Faire is it's free to exhibit and free to attend," said Tom Gralewicz, a co-founder of Milwaukee Makerspace, which is hosting the fair with the children's museum. "It's a chance for people who are doing creative and interesting things to show them to the world."

Those creative and interesting things range from the old recliner Gralewicz is working on motorizing to 3-D printing, glow-in-the-dark slime and a giant sine wave generator that makes balls look like they're floating in air.

Many of the technologies that will be at Maker Faire Milwaukee are empowering people to do things differently, Wettstein said. New materials, tools and techniques, for example, along with open source resources, have potential to change manufacturing processes.

"There's a huge opportunity to customize, do short runs and rapid prototyping," Wettstein said. "You don't have to print a million of something to make it viable anymore. You can make five."

The first Maker Faire, in the San Francisco area in 2006, was produced by Make magazine, which is also involved in the Milwaukee event. Since then, the fairs have multiplied, with 114 faires of various sizes in 2014, according to Maker Media Inc., the parent company of the magazine and the fairs.

There will be more than 200 exhibitors at the Milwaukee fair. Some highlights are:

Jake Bissen, a member of Milwaukee Makerspace who crafted his own suit of armor, will battle lightning bolts generated by a tesla coil.

Ten teams with souped-up Power Wheels toy cars will race against each other.

Kids will have an opportunity to participate in the "Nerdy Derby," a miniature car building and racing competition.

Teams participating in the GE Design and Build Challenge on Saturday will receive instructions, a work space and tools, access to a rack of raw and repurposed materials and time to create. Winning team members each will receive a $100 Visa gift card, Maker Faire Milwaukee T-shirts, and a custom-made trophy.

Three performers will write code in real-time to create the instruments they use during a live concert

A daylong workshop for teachers during which they will learn how to integrate tinkering and technology-related activities into their classrooms. Cost is $130.

Maker Faire Milwaukee will take place at Wisconsin State Fair Park on Saturday, Sept. 24, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, Sept. 25, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free, but some activities have costs.