Recent Open Source Ecology Weblog Posts
Steam Engine Prototype 1 Design
Towards the end of yesterday’s blog post, we mentioned our progress on the modern steam engine. This is part of our near-term development program (and part of Proposal 2011) towards upgrading our Power Cubes and the LifeTrac infrastructre to modern steam power. Yesterday we met with Robert Thomas, one of those rare individuals who builds steam and gasoline engines for fun. He built this steam tractor replica (23 hp) of a larger 1920s farm traction engine completely from scratch, including building the steam engine from heavy-walled pipe and cutting the gears:
Steam Tractor – 23 HP from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
We began a design session. Our conclusions from yesterday are to produce a proof-of-concept prototype of a modern steam engine involving Arduino to provide electronic steam injection. This is analogous to electronic fuel injection in cars. The concept looks like this. and can download this conceptual diagram in Dia here to collaborate on the design:
It is a single cylinder, 4” bore, single-acting uniflow steam engine. The inlet port is a solenoid valve operated by Arduino, with a sensor on the flywheel to provide timing. The materials cost is under $200.
Our proof-of-concept engine design is comparable to that of the hit-and-miss gas engines from the early 1900s. Actually, we were quite impressed with these when we saw them at the Northwest Missouri Steam and Gas Show last week. These are simple, 1-cylinder, water-box-radiator cooled gasoline engines which fire only when they need to – so in idle – they fire every few seconds. For anybody who lives off-grid – these are a perfect solution for a gas-sippind device that can run all day on about a gallon of gas. Does anybody know their more specific gas consumption rates. Here’s an example of one – in the 4 second clip, the engine fired only once if you listen and watch the air intake valve move:
Hit and Miss Engine from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
Here’s a basic diagram of the hit-and-miss:
Our concept simplifies the design tremendously. Strip the design down to a cylinder with flywheel, replacing the mechanical timing linkage with Arduino-controlled steam injection. This can’t get any simpler. People, it looks like we’ve got a workable DIY people’s engine design.
Outstanding questions – especially for the Arduino collaborators – are:
- What kind of position sensor is most suitable for timing purposes in this application?
- What is the maximum RPM that the Arduino sensor feedback loop will allow?
- What is the maximum RPM that the solenoid will allow?
We aim to run the steam engine in a hit-and-miss fashion – without injecting steam at every stroke. This solves the solenoid valve cycling speed issues. The hit-and-miss configuration is a low RPM device to begin with – such as 300 RPM in idle for the red engine above.
We have already showed you a similar concept in a blog post last year – from last year’s Steam Automobile Club of America meeting. This was a steam bicycle with electronic steam injection via hydraulic solenoids:
Steam Motor Bikes – Part 6 from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
The steam bicycle above ran at 800 RPM, and there were issues with the solenoid. The developer used a hydraulic solenoid adapted for steam use – but mentioned that he expected issues with solenoid lifetime due to its design for lower temperature operation.
Water corrosion and high temperature issues may be resolved readily by using an external solenoid linked to a proper, steam-handling valve – such as a piston or even poppet valve. We would like suggestions on the best solenoid to use for this purpose, as we have not yet looked into solenoid availability. All that we know is that cycle times for solenoids are on the order of 50 ms, which is perfectly acceptable for a simple electronically-controlled steam engine running in hit-and-miss operation. Regarding the valve itself – this is old technology and requires little development effort.
Our goal with Prototype 1 is to demonstrate a lifetime-design, low-speed steam engine for remote power applications – and we will fuel it with pelletized biomass. It is an efficient uniflow design, and because it is single-acting, it is the least complicated design possible. Our approach here may be a breakthrough for remote power applications. We have not seen any low-cost, workable, affordable, appropriate technology, remote power system out there yet. The closest in this game is the Tinytech rebellion in India.
Prototype II and onwards will feature multiple cylinders and higher speed and power. We are pursuing our usual design-for-hypermodularity. This means that we aim to bring forth a veritable Steam Engine Construction Set, such that anyone can build their own engines. With this in place, you and your grandmother can then birth raw slave-power – while reducing the number of real slaves in the world.
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GVCS Technical Development Process
Continuing with Proposal 2011 for the rapid deployment of the remaining 39 GVCS technologies in a rapid, parallel fashion by year-end 2011 – here is an overview of the Technical Development Process, which is applicable to the development of each of the technologies. This template is a tactical simplification and further refinement of the Open Source Product Development Pipeline method. At best – after the required developments are made in our collaborative development infrastructure by mid 2011 – the remaining 38 projects can be approached in parallel according to this Technical Development Process. You can also download the source file in Dia and get involved in collaborative development of this Process.
We will climax Proposal 2011 with lucid explanation of our work via Explainer Videos, followed by a clear definition of tasks to be done for each project (as begun in the template above according to the general timeline and budget presented in a former post), together with an explicit procedure for accomplishing the same.
The general concept implied in the organizational development proposition of the last post involves building up our productive capacity to accommodate 4 flexible fabricators (existing space accommodates 2) – in addition to pulling in crowd-supported funding such as the True Fans. Such fabrication capacity would allow us to bootstrap-fund the project at a $40k/month level. The assumptions are that: (1), in addition to The Liberator open source CEB press – the LifeTrac open source tractor has reached full product release status; (2), it takes 2 weeks to produce a LifeTrac or The Liberator; (2) $5k net earnings arise from the production of each machine. We believe that 5000 True Fans (we have 122 at present) is an optimistic but realistic goal after a successful viral marketing campaign powered by our forthcoming Explainer Video. This leaves us with about $500k allocated to the proposed GVCS burndown. This is quite a bit short of the $2M required for project completion (about $15k per each of the 3 prototypes required in a rapid deployment scenario for a Full Product Release) – but history tells us that other miracles can happen.
On top of The Liberator, there are 18 heavy equipment technologies related to agriculture, construction, power, and utility functions in the GVCS. Prototyping of OSE-spec variants may be outsourced readily to a custom fabricator such as the local Sweiger Shop, who has significant experience with all types of agriculture, construction, and other utility machinery. These 18 technologies are: (1), LifeTrac; (2), MicroTrac; (3), Bulldozer; (4), Sawmill; (5), Well-drilling Rig; (6), Soil Pulverizer; (7), Auger; (8), Tiller; (9), Cement Mixer; (10), Mower; (11) Haying Equipment; (12) Pelletizer; (13) Hammer Mill; (14) Agricultural Spader; (15) Seeder; (16) Trencher; (17) Agricultural Combine, and (18) Backhoe.
This means that if we had money to cover materials and $50/hour in labor – we could go to Sweiger Shop and other custom fabricators and have them complete the 18 prototypes in a matter of months. Each prototype would require several hours of design discussion, followed by $2k per week of labor for 1 person at $50/hour. This process could be paralleled with a number of fabricators for massive scaling of the development effort. The prerequisite would be the availability of design drawings for each device. This takes about 2 weeks per device, but can be paralleled massively by remote, global collaboration.
CAD drawings are a key to documentation, as is other technical writing, bills of materials, analysis of fabrication ergonomics, and video documentation.
The 18 pieces of heavy equipment are low-hanging fruit, because fabricators with the required skill and experience may be identified readily.
The remaining part of the GVCS involves the Solar Turbine, modern steam angine, the open source fab lab, and other agricultural processes. Developing these is not as straighforward as the heavy equipment – wherein there is very few intellectual property barriers involved. For these latter pieces of the GVCS, there are several barriers to overcome.
- For the Solar Turbine, our experience so far has shown that the intellectual property issues make discovery of integrated system design a formidable task requiring a well-organized effort.
- For the modern steam engine, there are so few practitioners involved, and much confusion abounds in the field. The technology went out of circulation in the 1930s, and is for practical purposes, a dead field.
- RepLab and other power equipment involves automation and power electronics, and are our next frontier for open-sourcing. We already have some experience on automation with The Liberator.
- Other items, such as freeze-dried fruit powders, are also surrounded with lots of proprietary protection.
In essence, our barriers to further development involve highly technical information, which industry likes to keep to themselves. This is not to fear – as a subject matter expert collaborators (see graph) can shed years of light on the subject in a matter of hours if one has the eyes to see and ears to hear. As a case in point, we’re visiting a person who built and uses steam tractors – to download years of wisdom on design and fabrication of a modern steam engine. We just met this guy last weak at the Northwest Missouri Steam and Gas Show. We don’t fully understand the definition of a ‘modern steam engine’, but this will emerge as we get into the work. All we know is that our experience has been favorable in terms of taming technology for human use – and this should be no exception. At that steam meet – there were running steam devices everywhere, and steam actually looked like the normal thing to do.
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Organizational Development
What is this new flurry of organizational diagrams, started in the last blog post? We are planning OSE Proposal 2011, with a goal to deploy the remaining 39 technologies of the Global Village Construction Set in a radically rapid, parallel development fashion involving $2M in funding and 1 year in time. You can download this graph source here (in Dia) to make improvements, as this is work in progress, and Proposal 2011 is meant to be a collaborative process. Yes, you can involve yourself directly in building a new world.
The graph summarizes the organizational tasks required for Factor e Farm to build its infrastructure to handle 12 on-site people and to handle widespread global collaboration – by the first half of 2011. Key tasks in this involve explaining our work to a broad audience, recruiting a wider development team, building an internet platform, building additional physical infrastructure at Factor e Farm, and funding the whole package. We have had a major upsurge of involvement and support, and our goals, while admittedly optimistic, are definitely not impossible.
This package involves further open-sourcing of critical infrastructure technologies up to Full Product Release; living and testing our developments; collaborating globally; and building an initial community of 5 onsite people. We are refactoring civilization at Factor e Farm.
Ragarding the recruiting of on-site people, the farmer, builder, and engineer are critical on-site people who are contributing directly to the demonstration that a minimum 5 person team can attain a high standard of living with a 100% autarkic production of food, fuel, energy, housing, and essential technologies for comfortable living. These 3 people are in addition to a custom fabricator and general resource developer, already part of the Factor e Farm community. See the Economy in a Box presentation, second half – for a further explanation of the roles of the 5 person team. This is intended to be a direct demonstration of a lifestyle where an awake set of individuals may thrive upon 2 hours of daily labor – at a cost of living of around $25 per month and initial capitalization of $30k-$100k (depending on access to land), while attaining unprecedented quality of life free of geopolitical compromise. This is intended to demonstrate a feasibility of replicable lifestyles based on not ‘making a living,’ but rather, ‘pursuing one’s true interests and passions’ on one’s path of evolving to freedom – where the tasks required for meeting the community’s ‘creature comforts’ are attained with minimum effort.
The broader package involves developing an advanced industrial economy in a box that may be replicated inexpensively anywhere around the world, according to Permakent. Subscribe.
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GVCS Project Management
Devin from Sarapis Foundation for post-scarcity economic development has informed us of Scrum, an agile project management process for developing complex projects – which we could apply to our open source product development pipeline method.
Our response to this is this burndown graph for deploying the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). See a larger picture on the wiki.
The left axis is work remaining, and the x axis is time. 2012 is approaching, so it’s high time to tidy up the GVCS. It’s only two million dollars. RepLab is the open source Fab Lab. If you would like to improve the above Burndown Graph, please download the source file (in Dia format; both the file and source images must be in the same directory) from our repository.This winter, if not sooner, will bring some major proposal writing. We’ve done enough feasibility study work to understand what works and what doesn’t. The next steps are explaining our work, gathering a team, funding the work, and doing rapid, parallel development.
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MicroTrac Challenge
We have recently shown the initial test drive of LifeTrac Prototype II. The 3D model in Blender corresponds exactly to the machine built – the point being that the models in Blender are useful as actual design drawings from which others can replicate a build. The design may be scaled – meaning that the same components may be used on a machine of a different size. This implies that a MicroTrac may be based on the same design. See our previous work on MicroTrac – which is based on one driving wheel.
We are proposing MicroTrac Prototype II to be a small version of LifeTrac, as opposed to the one-wheel drive version. Stability and traction issues need to be resolved on the one-wheel design, so a good solution may be to do another simple box with wheels, like LifeTrac Prototype II. If we use the same or similar components, that means that parts will be interchangeable between the two machines – consistent with our principles of radical modularity.
This is our MicroTrac Challenge – for you to design the best, smallest implementation for MicroTrac Prototype II, built around the components of LifeTrac Prototype II. If you have no skill or experience in building a working tractor, this could be your start in your career as a design-builder of open source tractors. We have a design that works – and it may be modified easily – so our Blender drawing may constitute an Open Source Tractor Construction Set. It may even be used to build larger machines, in which case 3/8″x4″x4″ steel tubing may be used instead of 1/4″ wall tubing, or tubing larger than 4″ may be used.
Who is up for the challenge? The Blender drawings are downloadable. So download them, play with them, and create a small version of LifeTrac. We will build (in real life) the smallest successful design – which should be around 4×4 feet in floor area – or smaller if possible. If someone comes up with a successful design – we’ll be one step towards funding and building it – and it’s a great opportunity for remote collaboration.
Here are some design considerations and explanations of LifeTrac II for those interested in proposing a design for the MicroTrac. As a starting point – simply take the LifeTrac II design – shorten the frame members and loaders, and there you go. You will run into issues of how to narrow the wheel base while using the same wheel mounting strategy as we used.
See the Appropedia description of LifeTrac II as a start. The design features radical design-for-disassembly and modularity. Wheel motors, hoses, valves, and power units are modules that can be connected and disconnected readily for use in other applications or for service. The frame bolts together.
- One hydraulic motor drives each wheel in LifeTrac. The same could apply to MicroTrac. Microtrac may do well with 2 wheel motors.
- Motors are coupled via 6-spline, 1-3/8″ PTO type spline couplers for ready disconnectability.
- Frame is 1/4″x4″x4″ square tubing.
- Skid steering is used. Tracks will be added to LifeTrac for added traction. Same principles apply to MicroTrac.
- 3 PowerCubes may be mounted on LifeTrac. For MictroTrac, one 18 hp power cube will be ample power.
- 2 loaders will be used on LifeTrac II. MicroTrac could do with one.
- 4-wheel or 3-wheel configurations will work for MicroTrac.
- To narrow down the wheel base, hydrauilic moters may be staggered, such that the wheels are staggered slightly.
- Smaller wheels other than 16″ truck tires may be used in Microtrac.
- Wheel chains may be desirable on MicroTrac for added traction.
- Plates are bolted to the frame to mount bearings and motors.
What else could we say? Please ask questions if you have any, and let’s make MicroTrac a collaborative design challenge. Please pass this on to the likes of Engineers Without Borders, Science for Humanity, organic farmers, sustainable builders, and other supporters of the resilience movement. The vision is to produce an open source equivalent comparable to, though larger, more flexible, and more powerful than, the BCS Tiller.
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Karl Hess on Alternative Technology
This clip is a very concise and well-spoken discussion on technology for meeting true human needs. Its clarity blew me away. The video should be updated to the possibility of creating modern, small scale industrial economies that can be replicated inexpensively around the world – from local resources. That’s our proposed contribution to humanity.
In our Explainer Video, we should strive for a similar level of impact, in an even shorter presentation.
Kent – one of our True Fans, has passed on the clip above, plus this exciting email on possible speaking engagements.
(EDIT: see the full article for this video with subtitles in other languages)
Our little Karl Hess Club meetings in Culver City are great for the
local mostly penniless libertarianoids in L.A. who don’t mind the food
at Dinah’s chicken. (Some are Libertarian Party members or else like me
are not in the Party of Principle on principle).
The Konkin-Rothbard Club the RCF is taking over and renaming the Karl
Hess Community Technology Forum will be more ambitious at whatever new
location in Orange County we decide on, but for now has about the same
attendance and composition as the L.A. area club. See this Karl Hess
video on alternative or appropriate technology.
There are smaller clubs and scheduled informal gatherings around L.A.
and the San Fernando Valley. Speaking at the Hess clubs or any of these
other meetings would likely be underwhelming for the purpose of getting
the word out about OSE projects.
Organizing a special meeting somewhere would also probably be a
disappointment to a flown in speaker. But Neil reminded me today that
I’m on an Alongside Night movie
http://jneilschulman.rationalreview.com/2010/07/kevin-sorbo-raises-up-alongside-night-movie/
panel with him plus actors Kevin Sorbo and Erick Avari at Libertopia.
http://libertopia.org/home
Celebrities such as Ray Bradbury, Stan Lee and others will be at
http://www.hollywoodxpo.com/home which members of Libertopia may attend.
Libertopia speakers include Mutualist blogger
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/ and Center for a Stateless Society
http://c4ss.org researcher Kevin Carson, whose book The Homebrew
Industrial Revolution http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com/
devotes a chapter to Open Source Ecology. So your projects will have
some proponents already on the ground.
I will strongly suggest that RCF buy an exhibitor table at Libertopia,
at which we would be happy to display literature for your projects, with
our “affiliate ID” or whatever so that we get credit for any sales.
I can’t make any guarantees about getting you on as a speaker at
Libertopia at this instant, but I’m asking J. Neil Schulman to wield his
influence with the Libertopia organizers on your behalf. If they have an
open slot, then the RCF will look into transportation and hotel
possibilities.
Please let me know if Friday, Oct. 15 through Sunday, Oct. 17 works with
your schedule.
Kent
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LifeTrac Prototype II Test Drive
This is a rendering of Prototype II of the open source, design-for-disassembly tractor, LifeTrac. You can download the source in Blender format.
This is the reality of the completed frame, with the wheels and wheel motors, minus the PowerCube engine unit.
Now hang the 18 horsepower PowerCube I on the rear of the frame, and take it for the first test drive.
LifeTrac II Test Drive from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
This insane freak purrs like a cat and rips the ground. Major success.We have now demonstrated a workable design with LifeTrac II. Can it be any simpler? We took out the articulated joint that was present in LifeTrac I, since OSE Specifications prioritize simplicity. Skid steering may not be as elegant as articulated steering, but it works just as well. Moreover, a fixed wheel base allows us to mount tracks on the wheels, such that the obtainable traction surpasses that possible with LifeTrac I – which cannot accomodate tracks because of its articulated joint.
The frame is bolted together from 1/4″x4″x4″ mild steel square tubing. A hydraulic motor is mounted on each wheel. Quick-connect hoses run from each motor to the control valve. The PowerCube connects to the control valve with two additional quick-connect hoses.
The flexibility of the design is extraordinary – wheel motors are detachable and have quick couplers. The valve is detachable and has quick couplers. The hoses have quick couplers. This means that all these hydraulic components may be used elsewhere, as part of a flexible Lego set for real technology. Moreover, the quick disconnects allow this tractor to operate in 2 wheel drive and 4 wheel drive.
We know of no other machine in this world which features this level of part interchangeability or modularity. This is a feature that allows one to control equipment costs to the lowest possible – not only by repurposing components, but being able to service or repair the machine readily.
It turns out that 18 horsepower – or a single PowerCube unit – is quite satisfactory for driving this basic tractor. The next step is to build tracks to connect the wheel pair on each side, such that traction is never lost on uneven terrain.
If you would like to build the above tractor, the Blender drawings of 23rd of August, 2010, are exactly what we built as far as the frame above. We may shorten the wheel base if we have problems with skid steering – so this is a consideration for any early adopters out there. This was our price ticket:
This is about a buck fifty per pound of the 2214 lb machine, or about the going price of tomatoes. That is without the PowerCube. If you use an off-shelf 18 hp engine – the price may be $1225 ($500 for 18 hp engine + $200 pump + $225 frame + $300 balance of system). The total is then $4808.
Now we add the front loader:
Heavy duty front loader arm metal (3/8″x3″x6″ rectangular tube) – $500
Cylinders – $600
Control valve – $200
Hoses – $100
Couplers and fittings – $100
Quick Attach plate – $150Cushion valve – $66
TOTAL FRONT LOADER COST – $1716
Now add the rear loader:
Rear Loader Cylinders – $520
Heavy duty rear loader arm metal (3/8″x3″x6″ rectangular tube)- $340
Selector valve (4) – $180
Quick attach plate – $150
Cushion valve – $66
TOTAL REAR LOADER COST – $1256
Overall cost for a dual loader tractor – wheel base of about 7×7 feet, designed to handle 3 Power Cubes, for a power limit up to approximately 150 hp – $6550 without the PowerCubes. Design is absolutely scalable, such that a half-size version – or MicroTrac, may be made – and it can be designed readily from our Blender model drawings.
Now here’s the good part. We aim to develop the induction furnace within 2 years, with which we will be able to produce all tractor structure and components, minus the rubber parts, from scrap steel. This means that we will demonstrated how to build a tractor at the cost of scrap metal plus rubber, plus energy to run the induction furnace. This should be about $1k in materials such as hoses and hydraulic seals, plus labor. This indicates a possibility of closing the industrial divide between the developed and developing worlds.
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Crowd Funding Update
Here is an update on the crowd funding. The LifeTrac Completion and PowerCube Prototype II funding baskets are filled. The Liberator and Soil Pulverizer Prototype II baskets are still low. On August 18, with less than a week to go, we’re at $1795 of $4700 – or at 38% of our goal. We were at $1175 after 4 days of beginnining this campaign. We can still pull off some magic.
We need to fill these baskets to be able to pursue our building adventures of this year. The way we look at it – this year’s building adventures will serve to demonstrate the feasibility of building high-quality, scalable, low-cost accommodations. We want to be able to accommodate up to 12 Dedicated Project Visitors and full-time participants by next year – which is key to our plan for upgrading operations along the lines of scalable, open source product development. So chip in. If we don’t get the resources in time, that means that we’ll just have to spend more time soliciting donations from friends and supporters.
Yesterday we had a photo shoot on the 150 ton hole puncher – which is getting published in Make Magazine.
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True Fans Video Introductions
Adam Mitchell, one of our new True Fans, will be joining us at Factor e Farm for a one month Dedicated Project Visit on October 18. At that time, we’ll be towards the end of CEB construction, and we will also be working on developing our True Fans and supporters network. We are discussing ways to get our True Fans more involved. Check out Adam’s comments on his vision for collaboration:
True Fan Introduction from Adam Mitchell on Vimeo.
As the Truest of Fans, here is my own introduction. It’s a decent and juicy overview of ongoing work, and there are some personal comments as well.
Marcin’s Personal Introduction to the True Fans from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
Who will be the next True Fan or or other respondent – to do a video response, to introduce themselves, or to pump in some inspiring comments? We will gladly consider blogging your video if appropriate.
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100 True Fans Reached
We are pleased to announce that we have reached 100 True Fans in our 1000 True Fans – 1000 Global Villages campaign. Are we at a tipping point, thanks to all of the support we have been getting? You can read some testimonials from existing True Fans here.
We are working on a 2-minute Explainer Video for the Global Village Construction Set – for purposes of recruiting more True Fans, for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge application, for Kickstarter, and for a general purpose media blitz in the near future. There has been an increasing number of quality collaboration offers, so things are clearly picking up. There are exciting updates on the ground as well, as in the last post.
We would like to announce our True Fans Doubling Campaign. We would like to double our True Fans support base within 30 days.
To achieve this – we are asking each of our True Fans to commit 1 hour of time to this task over the next 30 days. We’re asking all of our audiences to do the same. Please talk to your friends – and invite them to subscribe to the True Fans. We can double our population if only 100 people succeed in pulling in a friend. A web search of people blogging about our work may also be a good place to find supporters. We have two related pages on the wiki: Links to Our Work, and In the News – so feel free to put up other links there as well.
We have also had demand for True Fans membership at a higher rate of support than the basic $10/month subscription. As such, we are introducing the True Fans Gold and True Fans Platinum subscriptions – at $20 and $50 per month, respectively. We will be counting these as 2 and 5 True Fans equivalents in our tally of True Fan numbers. This subscription button is featured here on the blog for the first time – with all the three choices – and you can also go to the Support page on the wiki.
Subscription Options
Standard : $10.00USD – monthly
Gold : $20.00USD – monthly
Platinum : $50.00USD – monthly
Here is a graph of our True Fan numbers. The recent increase is noteworthy. Will this increase be temporary, or are we going to continue climbing?
Help us by passing this on to your friends and telling them more about us.
The reality is – we can easily handle, responsibly, budgets of about $10k within our existing infrastructure. Right now we are at $1.5-$3k budgets per month. The entire cost of developing the GVCS is about $2 million. $10k/month implies 10 years to finish. Our near term (within 2 years) goal is budgets of $100k per month. These are the realistic figures of what’s required. For the potential world-changing effects – this is peanuts. Once the GVCS package is in effect, the next phase involves negotiating socio-political consequences.
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LifeTrac II Update
We are making good progress on LifeTrac – Prototype II of the open source tractor. We have managed to fund its completion via crowd funding. We’ve got just about all the parts in, including hydraulic components. We will use Power Cube Protype I as the initial power source. After completing the frame, the next tasks are wheel mounting, as well as installation of the hydraulics and of the Power Cube. Here is the progress on various wheel mounting and loader arm mounting components. This is another beautiful production by Sean:
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Technical Description of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS)
We are hot on the pursuit of a powerful 2-minute Explainer Video about the GVCS, which may be used not only to clarify the concept in general, but which may also assist in: (1), our application to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge; (2), recruiting of 1000 True Fans; (3) Kickstarter, and others. We have the support of Encyclopedia Pictura in this venture.
We’ve been told that a lot of our material right now could be misunderstood as too ‘collapse-centric’ for many – so we want the video to be as open to different political stripes as it possibly can be without compromising the core concepts. When we are ready with the video, we will reach out to a number of venues with an invitation to participate in a media blitz with the goal of getting the True Fans and other campaigns moving in a big way.
The following is a technical description of the GVCS, which is intended to be a point of departure for writing a video script. This is a first cut, and we’ll follow the evolution of this statement in the responses to this post, so please comment.
GVCS Technical Description: The GVCS is an open source tool set of hardware and software sufficient for creating sustainable and adaptable (resilient), post-scarcity communities. The GVCS aims to create advanced civilization based on open source, global information flows, and localized material resources and skills (cf. material resources of the entire globe). To achieve this, we focus on unleashing key production processes (industries) to a smaller scale – by converting existing means of production to their improved, open source counterparts. The optimizations sought in the physical products and infrastructures used by society include: (1), integrated, lifetime, modular, scalable, systems design (2), simplicity and transparency; (3), 5-10-fold reduction in the cost of living; (4) 10-fold decrease in the energy used by civilization; (5) internalizatoin of responsibility for political consequences. The GVCS concept utilizes proven principles of division of labor, flexible and digital fabrication, and open business models – for distributing economically-significant means of production. By focusing on strategic use of non-strategic, local resources – enabled by modern technology – the GVCS promotes the creation of autonomous economies, decoupled from geopolitical compromise by design. The GVCS is merely a practical attempt at optimizing human organization towards an effective scale – by availing the infrastructure technologies, necessary skill sets, documentation, and training necessary for this task. The application of the GVCS is the creation of a network of globally-connected, parallel economies – such that they constitute realistic, model options for living and working for anyone interested in a more healthy, balanced, integrated, and meaningful lifestyle. Via division of labor and unleashed productivity, the GVCS is meant to enable groups of as little as 4 people (custom fabricator, architect/builder, agroecologist, and energy engineer) to guarantee their prosperity. This group may provide 100% of the food, fuel, energy, and housing needs from on-site resources in 2 hours per day of labor – as a material foundation towards an unprecedented quality of life and unleashed creativity. This prosperity package is intended to work up to the unit scale of a few hundred people per community, where multiple units of this scale constitute larger human settlements.
The GVCS is currently in a globally-collaborative development phase, with 1 full product release out of a basic package of 40. The 40-piece tool set includes an open source fab lab, RepLab, which allows new communities to build their equipment base from scratch at the cost of scrap steel and human labor – starting with an investment of approximately $20k in the RepLab tools. While the initial set of the 40 technologies is well bounded – technological recursion may be pursued by applying RepLab to produce not only the technologies themselves – but also their components, and finally, the feed-stocks for those components. The eventual goal is using on-site resources to produce high-appropriate-technology civilization, where global trade is an option, not a necessity. The recursion may extend up to processes such as smelting of aluminum from clay, or smelting of silicon from sand – for boot-strapping self-replicability of the entire package without the need for external capitalization. The main present challenge is clarifying the above possibility to gain support.
The above is made feasible by the standard 5-10-fold cost reduction of open source economic development, as well as the 10-fold energy requirement decrease inherent to lifetime/systems design of physical infrastructures. In particular, solar concentrator power energy and renewable biomass energy thus become feasible throughout most of the world as a foundation for modern civilization. With widely-available, decent(ralized) energy – the above technological capacity is made possible – literally for turning ‘dirt and sticks’ into the substance of advanced civilization.
The GVCS is designed to be applicable in any location where soil, sunshine, and water are found. The completion of the GVCS introduces the possibility of closing the industrial divide between the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds.The GVCS is a radical deperture whereby individuals are empowered to take responsibility for the world around them – as creators instead of consumers- as a prerequisite for evolving to freedom.
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Buckminster Fuller Challenge
The Buckminster Fuller Challenge from Buckminster Fuller Institute on Vimeo.
Brandin Watson, one of our collaborators, has volunteered to take the lead on writing the application for us. Here are his words: As was briefly mentioned in a previous post, we will be entering into the upcoming Buckminster Fuller Challenge. While the competition in this prestigious contest is very tough, we feel strongly that it will be worthwhile to present Open Source Ecology to the jury and see if we can’t come away with a victory. The winners of the Challenge will be awarded $100,000 to invest into their projects. It should come as no surprise to most that such a prize would be an incredible boost to Open Source Ecology and accelerate the pace of our program. In addition, simply being a finalist will greatly increase the profile of our work to the world at large. We believe that our work is exactly the kind of work that the Buckminster Fuller Institute is looking for. In fact, many of the people that are involved in Open Source Ecology can cite Buckminster Fuller as a key inspiration for their involvement. Even if we do not win, entering this contest will be a great exercise for us in refining our message in order to reach out to a wider audience. And after all, as the saying goes, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained!” I will be taking on the bulk of the entry in the form of writing the essays and filling out the forms. However, another important part of the entry is a two-minute video which describes as clearly as possible what our endeavour is all about. The very packed schedule of work on site at Factor e Farm means that those of us on site will not have enough spare time to produce the video here in time for the October 4th deadline. So in answer to this problem we are currently considering two potential solutions. The first is our hope that there is someone among this blog’s readers who would be willing to help us out by becoming an active collaborator in this undertaking by producing the needed short video for us. We are looking for someone with professional grade skills, the necessary free time and a real commitment and understanding of what we are trying to accomplish. The resources that this person would have available are all the videos which we have previously posted. They would have to edit a short but comprehensive narrative or “explainer” video about what we are already accomplishing and where we are headed down the road. It would be a bit of a challenge but is absolutely possible. The Explainer Video genre is an important concept – see this for an example of a group who is in the business of selling clear, concise explanations. Isaiah, one of our True Fans and a professional movie producer, suggested that we add the Explainer Video genre to our repertoire of documentation productions. If no one with the needed skills is able to step up then we are strongly considering another option. That other option is asking for the crowd funding donations necessary to hire an independent professional to produce this video for us. It would be a relatively easy thing for a professional to develop a video which has a utility beyond just entering this one competition. We could actually use a short, high quality video that explains our work in a concise way for promoting our ideas to the general public. Think of it as a “two-minute elevator speech with moving images” simillar to what the people at CommonCraft do. We know that what we are doing with Open Source Ecology is essential but we also want for a lot more people to hear about it so that we can get more people contributing. Effective marketing and promotion are an absolutely vital aspect of any collaborative undertaking and it is hard to find something that is by its essence more collaborative in nature than Open Source Ecology! This second option has a lot of appeal to us for that reason. Even if we do not end up winning the Buckminster Fuller Challenge this year, having a video like that will be really useful and a worthwhile investment. We are currently pricing around to see how much it would cost if we have to hire the work out. However, we are really hoping that there is someone out there with the skills that can step up and volunteer to do this short piece. We understand that is a lot to ask though and not everyone can produce professional quality videos. However, if you are interested in helping out or have any other advice then please get in touch with us as soon as possible. We are going to wait a week while we see if anyone comes forward and also while we continue to price the work in case we have to hire someone. It seems that in this situation, as in many others that we have encountered here so far, we have a dilemma similar to the old “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” problem. While there are many talented and interesting people getting involved with projects such as Open Source Ecology all over the world, by far the greatest majority of individuals with the most professional experience remain in the “business as usual” paradigm. With more professional involvement in Open Source Ecology today, we will be better able to attract professional involvement in Open Source Ecology in the future. However as things stand now, especially in regards to producing promotional material, the most productive route may very be to hire the professionals to get the ball rolling. We will see what develops. Look for another post with more information on this soon, and please wish us luck. Personally, I think that this is a great opportunity to push limits of the collaborative development process. Not only is Brandin taking a lead on writing the contest submission for us – but also – we are exploring the frontiers of collaboration at the interface of crowd funding for funding professional assistance. We will definitely generate useful explanatory material in the process. Direct feedback on the feasibility would come from votes with your wallets. With our transparency, you will be able to see direct results. I think the practice of crowd funding of professional assistance is underutilized in the field of open source economic development, and this attempt is an experiment in that direction. This may or may not work, but it certainly is an intended part of the replicable, scalable, open source product development method.
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100 More Fruit Trees and Update
We just planted out 100 more fruit trees – which we grafted back in spring. We upgraded the string trimmer to a chain, mowed down a path, planted, fertilized, and mulched heavily:
Regarding the funding baskets deployed 2 weeks ago in our progress update, thank you to everyone who donated. Here’s the present status:
As of today, the Power Cube II is over the brim, and the others need work. The total collected so far is $1575, or 34% of the total $4700, which is decent for the half-way point of the month funding period. Read the announcement to get excited about what we are doing – and then chip in if you can. We’ve got more vision than money, still, though we think this can turn around any day if we get a couple of sales from our first Full Product Release. It appears that this will take more than passive marketing on our side – but we are now well-positioned to produce The Liberator, with our new 150 ton hole puncher and heavy-duty drill press added to our capacity pool.
We’ll be migrating to beex.org for crowd funding purposes – as one of our True Fans is behind this platform, and we are discussing how beex.org can provide support in collaboration, networking, and branding towards the goals of post-scarcity economics.
Back to the agriculture report – we grafted half of the existing trees on rootstocks from our nursery, and the other half was donated apple rootstocks. We got about 90% success rate on the apples – even though some of the scionwood was already starting to bud out. By keeping the apples in a cool place as it was warming up, they made it well.
Our orchard needs some major mowing, and we need an agriculture person here in general. We prioritize tech development, because things like the Full Produce Release of the high-performance Compressed Earth brick press put us on the map – more so than growing apples or sweet potatoes. We look forward to the day when we can provide healthy food, though – as we certainly miss it – and are reduced to the big box stores for most of our food at present. Yet the local option is preferable, as a simple part of resilient community infrastructure – from bread, milk, cheese, chicken, veggies, fruits, oil, flour, seedcrop, grain, ferment, salsa, processing… We’ve done a little bit of salsa and pickled cucumbers in vinegar this year, we pickled deer, made comfrey and jewelweed salve, and we do make the Factor e Bread – report on that forthcoming. We still have a long way on the food – but all it takes is the doing.
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Solar Village 2010 Update
Construction should start at Factor e Farm on about September 1. Out of nowhere, one of our readers from Germany produced this 3D walk-through of the CEB house that Will and I drew up in Qcad in 2D:
The 3D walkthrough is this:
Solar Village 2010 in 3D from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
Sound track credit – Mind Field by DJ Blue. Game engine editor used was Sauerbraten.
This led to a very interesting discussion regarding reality and virtual reality, and how massive multiplayer online gaming – believe it or not – could help save the world?
Start with this encouraging viewpoint from TED – that gaming can save the world – which for me was an eye-opener:
So the short story is, there are people making an honest effort to make gaming useful to society. In particular, one of our new collaborators, Isaiah Saxon, has proposed a new social media “real-world gaming” platform dedicated to the DIY movement, and is working on a major, mainstream movie, DIY in 3D: Make Your Own America. These are exciting times of convergence.
Back to the CEB house. The current concept is still a design concept like in the above visualization:
- Double CEB walls, with 1-2 feet of hammer-milled straw for insulation
- CEB floors
- CEB stove – though we’d need help on this to get it done right
- CEB rainwater catchment cistern – or at least a small prototype
- Wood trusses for the roof as shown here
We have other CEB house plans from Susan, one of our True Fans. We’ll consider these more ambitious plans if we feel confident about our resources and about our building team.
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Open Source Product Development Pipeline
We have proposed the scalable, Open Source Product Development Pipeline methodology over a year ago. It’s merely a formalization of an actual process, which we follow loosely, in the creation of open business models. The number of responses on the Pipeline post indicates clearly that we’re talking only to ourselves.
What are the challenges to a scalable, open product development methodology – which has the power to transform the entire globe to an open economic system – within a few years, if not months? Open-sourcing the entire economy is a well-bounded problem, if done collaboratively.
Of course we cannot look to existing power players to lead this task. Thus, this task is relegated to the peer-to-peer decentralists – of which there are many in the ranks of the movements for open source software, open source hardware, transition towns, economic localization, and resilient communities, among many others. So why is this not happening? I don’t think many people find eating their own dogfood – in the sense of entering the subsilience lifestyle – a savory proposition.
Most people do not see that the world in general is very close to availing the Maker, subsilience lifestyle to everybody. Read Plenitude, read The Homebrew Industrial Revolution, and read The Unplugged. Zombie – wake up and smell the coffee.
The subsilient eating of our own dogfood is close to our hearts here, and it does connect closely to the hairball conceptual diagram above. Allow me to give you a personal view of how the scalable, open product development process really works.
Today, I sit-on-ass documenting The Liberator Master Bill of Materials. This is hard work, but it must be done for easy access to The Liberator, and it must be done only once. Sean and I will do complete video documentation of the build starting next week.
Add Will to the picture. He produced the complete 3D CAD, and we went from there to produce the complete bill of materials for the open source tractor. We got design review from the local fab shop, and they helped in the design of the 150 ton hole puncher – for stramlining fabrication, which we already tested in a fabrication task. We bought the materials for the tractor, and now it’s time to build. For additional resources, we put up crowd funding baskets, and they are filling to support our work. Add Sean to the picture. Sean is documenting, and we put up plenty of video updates on our blog for transparency. The prototypes are coming out one after another.
The above demonstrates a basic process of design-build-fund-review-test-document-iterate cycle. It’s our daily life. To go faster, we only need to have more people. We’re doing the above with only 2 technical developers.
Add further resources and people, and this could really scale. Can we find more people who care deeply about the world – and can do things like design, CAD, building, using the phone, writing down Bill of Materials, documenting, welding, networking, drilling, baking bread,pickling, pipping the pips, working the land, and so forth? These are all generalist skills, which take only desire to acquire, based on a motivation of resilience. Look what we’re doing with 2 people – and imagine what we could be doing with 10 or 20. I think, personally, that with about 10-20 people specializing in generalizations, our quality of life here could explode. I also believe that if we build a community of about 200, we could sustain a technology base up to microchip fabrication at the level of 1990s computers.
People and resources are still key. Now we have 92 True Fans, and things are looking good. For other updates – we will transition to beex.org for crowd funding support – because those folks are particularly interested in post-scarcity economic development, and they are offering marketing and collaboration incubation services. Another collaborator volunteered to apply to the Buckminster Fuller Institute Challenge for us. It appears that we’ll have a Dedicated Project Visit on developing our True Fans program. Another collaborator wants to co-auther an academic paper on transformation towards resilient communities, and we may be presenting at Resilience 2011. We are still planning on the northern California tour, in November. The influx of positive assistance offers is on the rise – which means that more of them will go to fruition. These are indeed exciting times, and as we always say around here, we ain’t seen nuthin yet.
Join us. We like to say, just quit whatever you’re doing, and join this game. We did. We wish it were that easy for others. For clarity – when we say join us – we mean for some serious work, starting with a Dedicated Project Visit.
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Strings Attached: Open Source String Trimmer
When the ragweeds grow to 12 feet at Factor e Farm, I guess it’s time to mow the lawn.
In the usual bootstrapping fashion – today’s experiment was building and using an 8-foot diameter string trimmer powered by LifeTrac, with 1/2″ wire for the cutter. Did you ever wonder what it would be like to supersize a string trimmer? We do not recommend that you do this at home.
This video shows fabrication of the string trimmer, with assistance from our recently open-sourced 150 ton hole puncher – in practical use for the first time. The trimer is then taken into the field – for some powerful exterior trim.
Music by DLDN Instrumental care of ccmixter.org.
Supersized String Trimmer from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
The video shows how we took the hole puncher for its first field test in actual production, this time with a 3/4″ hole die for punching 1/4″ steel. We made the single-string rotor for the string trimmer from a spare soil pulverizer tine.We were taking it easy on the hole puncher until we are sure we’re not going to crack the dies from misalignment or other caveats. We still don’t have the stripper installed on the hole puncher, so we have to take the metal off manually off the punch element once a hole is punched.
A string trimmer is essentially a rotor with a string attached. We bolted the 1/2″ wire after punching the holes. The inner part of the rotor is stiff – made of 1/4″x3″ steel 24 inches long - such that centrifugal force allows the wire to extend outwards instead of getting wrapped around itself upon startup.
The performance of the initial string trimmer prototype shows promising results. A number of improvements need to be made:
- We used braided, 1/2″ wire. At he end of the day, the wire has unbraided, even though we weded the ends to prevent unbraiding. This needs to be corrected – perhaps by running a bead of weld along its length to prevent wire separation. Another option would be using a chain for the cutting element.
- The rotor starts to vibrate excessively when in heavy brush. This is an artifact of our existing quick attach plate, which has manually-insered pins for locking. Since the pin holes are oversized, small implements like the Unversal Rotor tend to wobble. This point will be addressed with our improved version of the quick attach plate with LifeTrac II.
- Additional safety features are desirable. The spinning string is almost invisible, and awareness of this must be maintained to avoid injury. Some kind of safety guard should always be used – whether it be keeping distance, using the trimmer with tractor remote control – or more traditional ways such as additional guards on the tractor or on the trimmer.
It could be that the super-sized string trimmer should be replaced by a mower like this:
We have this brush hog, and it’s converted for use with LifeTrac by eliminating the PTO shaft and adding a quick-attach hydraulic motor from our LifeTrac infrastructure:
We have not yet tried this brush hog since modifying it this past winter, but it looks like we will use it soon unless we get the super-sized trimmer bugs worked out.
In summary, the super-sized trimmer is a low-cost, brute force way to go for rough mow-down of vegetative growth. It certainly works. It could probably be a quite effective in-situ shredder – for example for hay bales. One could scale this device to a large number of whacking strings, or chains.
We recommend the concept because it is a good example of using existing infrastructure. The basic trimmer costs about $20 to make – because the other components are part of the LifeTrac infrastructure already. It can also be scaled at negligible cost – perhaps up to 12 feet diameter for use with LifeTrac. This is significantly larger than the 5-foot diameter brush hog cut width. The super-sized trimmer practicality depends on the heavy, multipurpose build of the Universal Rotor – the motor for the trimmer. In the limit of a super-heavy build on the Universal Rotor – the string trimmer can gain extra scalability or flexibility. The purpose of the Universal Rotor is to accommodate all types of imaginable purposes.
Our existing prototype of the Universal Rotor is only Prototype I. We’ll be returning to an improved version thereof as soon as we get a chance. We’ve yet to run it as a tiller, cultivator, and post-hole digger, metal cutoff saw, tree saw, washing machine (though the honey extractor, interestingly, could probably double as a washing machine auger if automatic reciprocation controls are added), and possibly stump grinder. Outside of the post-hole digger and washing machine function, the other tasks require one to address considerable structural and other creative challenges.
Everything on this planet spins in one way or another, down to electrons. The Universal Rotor and open source string trimmer are a part of this important trend.
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Pipping and Growing
Here is an update on the first set of pips from Hexahatch v2.0.
Here is an update on the other peeps of Factor e Farm. In a few days, Sean and I will begin full fabrication documentation video on the next copy of The Liberator open source CEB press, where the funding basket for it is filling as we speak.
Open Source People from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
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Getting Ready To Build: A Better Future
Things have been spectacular with William so far. We have basically managed to scale our progress twofold. Since he’s been here, we’ve seen full product release of the open source CEB press, The Liberator, and we’ve had significant progress on the open source tractor, LifeTrac Prototype II. We also deployed the first prototype of the heavy duty, open source drill press, which we’re now using as part of our fabrication infrastructure. We just reported on Prototype I of the 150 ton hole puncher . We look forward to using these tools towards optimizing production runs of The Liberator. We also got the first working prototype of Hexahatch, the automated chicken incubator, in operation. Four pips hatched as of now, and we have 70 eggs in there at present. We also deployed Prototype I of a honey extractor. Plus, Sean is on-site for the summer gathering documentary material, and his LifeTrac II update is choice. Also, if you haven’t seen our Economy in a Box presentation, check it out for some of the most recent thoughts. People are beginning to talk about us in mainstream books.
This leaves us in a good position to start construction of Solar Village 2010. Design work is occurring in the background. We need to build another CEB press, since we sold our first one. We have had a number of apparently serious inquiries, but so far, no money has crossed the table. We suspect that people want to see real product come out of the machine – ie, houses. Maureen still has not used her machine, and we’ve been busy in the developments of the above paragraph. Plus, we still need to finish LifeTrac Prototype II, build Power Cube Prototype II, and build the Soil Pulverizer Prototype II – all in preparation for building, which we were hoping would begin on August 15. We just burned $3800 to procure LifeTrac II parts, and we’re out of cash. We’d like to announce here that we are returning to the crowd-based funding baskets – with which we had decent success in our previous session of village-building adventures. Now this is Take Two on CEB construction, where Take One was a great learning experience. Now we’ve got Will with experience in brick laying, we’ve got mature technology on the CEB press, and Prototype II is forthcoming on both the Soil Pulverizer and LifeTrac. The CEB Build is straightforward, now that we have Full Product Release. This means that we can predict how long it will take to fabricate – about 2 weeks. We already have the hydraulic cylinders. The $2500 covers the balance of materials – minus some outsourced labor costs which we can now avoid because we have the hole puncher ready to use. The price structure for materials was around $3600 for The Liberator Beta v2.0 – and now we expect about $500 savings by doing hole punching in house. We do not expect to change anything on The Liberator build, as it’s a stable release. We may omit the soil sensor, since we found out that for practical considerations, activation of the hopper shaker works best when it is pre-set – such that the hopper is shaken after every brick pressing cycle.
Another note on The Liberator build is that if we are building one, it takes about the same amount of time to build two machines at the same time. That’s the nature of flexible fabrication ergonomics. Thus, if you know somebody who wants to buy one, send them our way.
The soil pulverizer Prototype II budget covers primarily the structural steel for the rotor and bucket, plus a larger PTO motor. The improvements in Prototype II include: (1), improved motor coupling to attain quicker slip-on attachment of interchangeable motors without using coupler pins; (2), 60% increase in torque on the motor over the former 6.15 cubic inch motor; (3), smaller bucket and reduced pulverizer width to improve weight balance and structural robustness, and (4), height control stops to maintain the pulverizer at the correct soil depth. Points (2), (3), and (4) are intended to address stalling of the motor – a problem which we had frequently when the pulverizer was moving forward too fast or going in too deep. Overall, these improvements are intended to combine for a more robust device that requires less skill to operate – such that it is more user-friendly and such that it can attain widespread use. It is worth mentioning that nobody else that we know of is utilizing the same soil pulverizer strategy – relegating this function to dedicated, stationary soil pulverizers. Our experience with Prototype I of the Soil Pulverizer has demonstrated that the design like ours – with integrated digging, pulverizer, and dumping functionality – is indeed sound. We believe that it can lead to a simplified CEB infrastructure – both in the equipment requirements and ergonomics of brick pressing. See further discussion on this point in our Soil Pulverizer blog post. Because we have demonstrated the feasibility and attractiveness of our approach, we don’t really understand why nobody else is using the same. We suspect that the flexibility of our modular design of LifeTrac make our approach feasible.
The Power Cube II budget covers the structural steel, hydraulic filters and bypass, hoses, quick couplers, and battery. We already have a 17.5 hp gas engine. Any engine size can be used, but we’re choosing a small one for reasons of cost and easy sourcing. Indeed, if you have a large lawnmower, we suggest ripping out the engine and upgrading to a more flexible LifeTrac Power Cube. Improvements over Power Cube I include: (1), a frame-integrated hydraulic reservoir and gas tank; (2), addition of a pressure bypass in case of accidental hose disconnection; (3), 2 sets of quick-attach fingers for moving or attaching to the quick connect plate of a tractor, so that the Power Cube can be moved or attached to one tractor with another tractor – instead of using hoists and human muscles; and (4), quick-attach hydraulic pump, so that larger or smaller pumps can provide either more fluid or more pressure, as needed. Point (1) eliminates the bulky hydraulic reservoir and gas tank of Prototype I, allowing for looser packing of the remaining components into the cube lattice. The overall improvements, in addition to the safety feature, focus around a much more transparent-looking design with easier interchangeability of the Power Cube between different devices. Power Cube II should also be easier to fabricate because of the additional space. Note also that we intend to replace the gasoline engine with a modern steam engine after we deploy the latter. We believe that the steam engine has not only caused the industrial revolution, but also that it carries tremendous significance for decentralizing power and producing decent(ralized) electricity. The steam engine may be powered by local biomass pellets, or solar concentrators – both of which are non-strategic resources. If you do not believe that deployment of a modern steam engine is an extremely worthwhile endeavor, then you are probably under the influence of centralization propaganda. The decentralization aspect of steam engines comes more from access to fuel, not from ease of fabrication – because a good steam engine is only slightly easier to fabricate than an internal combustion engine.
Finally, the LifeTrac II budget involves completion of quick-attach plates, fabrication of steel wheel tracks for added traction, and outsourcing wheel coupler lathing, since our open source lathe has not reached practical functionality. Improvements on LifeTrac II include: (1), monolithic design, as opposed to articulated design, for ease of fabrication; (2), dual loaders, for doubling implement-handling capacity; (3) quick-connect wheel motors, such that these can be used on other devices as needed; (4), quick-connect hydraulic control valves – such that these can also be used in other applications; (5) quick-attach Power Cubes as the engine units – feasibility of which we have already demonstrated; (6) stackability of Power Cubes, where 1-3 Power Cubes (18-54 hp) are a good match for the tractor, and up to 6 can be attached to the tractor for up to 250 horsepower (not practical, but possible, with larger Power Cubes); (7), wheel tracks for extra traction, which was not possible in the articulating LifeTrac I, (8), improved quick-attach plate coupling mechanism for automatic locking of implements in place with a lever, and (9), cross-ties on wheel-mounting plates for added strength, which may be required for forceful skid-steering. The above improvements for flexibility make LifeTrac II a true life-size lego set – for real equipment. Complete with the dual-loader, is this a flexible dream machine – possibly to rise as the Peoples’ Tractor?
In summary, the Tractor-CEB-Soil Pulverizer – and the infrastructure for their fabrication – is an important product package that should be taken to Full Product Release as soon as possible. Only the CEB has reached Release status, so there’s much work ahead. If we get more people like William to join us, we can really put the operations into high gear.
Our prospects are looking good. We have already had initial discussion with one of our partners on setting up an open source flexible fabrication facility for producing tractors, CEB presses, and soil pulverizers. Fabrication of these constitutes a small but robust economic development package relevant to addressing the agriculture, housing, power, and fabrication issues of resilient community development. We are in discussion on this package with high level officials of a particular South American country, which is apparently interested in genuine progress – free of IMF-type swindles. We are leaving the details of this out deliberately, as there are no promises here and the discussions are young. We know from experience that open source economic development is a high-risk endeavor, and there are many dead ends on the path to glory. However, it is quite encouraging that there exists at least one political leadership on this planet that is willing to even consider the type of economic transformation that is the substance of OSE. If we don’t score at this time, then it’s only a matter of time – as our work is based on creating the substance of prosperity, free of compromise.
The stakes are high. We are positioning the tractor-CEB-soil pulverizer package with the above in mind. The recent additions of the open source drill press and hole puncher to the open source Fab Lab, RepLab, are substantial progress towards closing the industrial divide between and within nations. Our initial negotiations as above may lead to a first, economically-significant instance of open business model replication. Careful documentation would be built into such a package, as such documentation is somewhat lacking at present for lack of resources.
People – the above is worth supporting. Contribute to these projects, and you can certainly feel good about contributing to the generation of significant results. Thanks for your support in advance, and we look forward to an exciting Take Two on CEB construction.
Guitar improvisation credits: Up the Dark Mountain We Go, by Lucas Gonzalez
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Open Source 150 Ton Hole Puncher
Our infrastructure for flexible fabrication along the lines of the Open Source Fab Lab, RepLab, is evolving nicely. We reported recently on Prototype I the heavy duty, open source, drill press, and here we are reporting on Prototype I deployment of our 150 ton hole puncher. Both of these are critical to fabrication ergonomics optimization for resilient communities in general, and, in particular – for Factor e Farm’s present fabrication of The Liberator open source CEB press and the LifeTrac open source tractor. For comparison, see earlier notes about our off-grid flex fab facility in a blog post from 2 years ago.
Here is a video on the hole puncher, with explanations.
Open Source Metal Hole Puncher – Prototype I from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
The implementation required a high level of attention to the extreme heavy build and die positioning precision requirements – much more than anything we’ve done with the open source tractor, automated CEB press, or other devices. This is our first device that required at least some consideration of structural engineering – beyond brute-force overbuild. The local fab shop helped on the design. You can download the dxf design file at our design repository.
Regarding the hole puncher, the video showed the first hole punched – a humble 1/2″ hole in 1/4″ steel. The machine is designed for punching 1.5″ holes in 1″ thick steel, which we will test after procuring a larger die set. Future work involves adding a metal shear blade – a big scissor for trimming slabs of 1″ steel up to 12″ wide. In case you don’t know why this is relevant – a combination ironworker machine like this is the center of any flexible fabrication shop. This is especially relevant to lifetime, Design-for-Disassembly (DfD) products such as ours – which focus on holes and bolts instead of welding as the principal method of achieving lifetime DfD.
Imagine if we could also produce our own dimensional metal sections. Imagine down the road – with our induction furnace, we’ll roll our own steel from melted scrap and build new civilization – in a workshop of about 2000 square feet in size – at the cost of scrap steel plus pelletized biomass as fuel. Does that sound too simple?
Regarding the present cost of the hole puncher — our bill of materials for the hole puncher is:
- Hydraulic cylinder: $285
- Main frame materials – $315
- Materials for dies and holders – $62
- Main puncher pin and guides materials – $170
- Welding gas and wire – $50
Total came out to $882 in materials, plus $200 for outsourced labor because we don’t yet have our open source lathe. The labor was metal cutting and lathing of the main pressing pin – which consisted of a 1.5″ threaded shaft drilled into the press pin. For comparison – comparable ironworker machines with metal shearing and other functions included cost about $18k. Once again, ours is another major stride at cost reduction.
If we had to list the 10 key tools of a flex fab workshop, these are: acetylene torch, MIG welder, drill press, lathe, CNC torch table, 3D printer, hole puncher/metal shear, plus induction furnace, hot metal working, CNC mill, and small mill/drill for making circuits. We’ve built everything to date here with a torch, welder, and drill, while outsourcing lathe work. This shows that a small tool set can do a lot, even without the more advanced components. Access to induction furnace/hot working would allow us to reinvent civilization from scrap steel, in ample supply from anthropogenic detritus.
Note that all these Top 10 should be open source for the world to become a better place. Distributive economics are founded upon open-sourcing the means of significant production – especially of machines that can make other machines.
To pump this topic further to a level of geopolitical consequences – our basic claim is that for post scarcity, resilient communities that exist on the smallest possible scale for purposes of internalizing responsibility – the main enabling feature is open source, flexible fabrication. The hippies running off into the woods didn’t get this point right, and various modern branches of technological utopians have not gotten the point about appropriate, modern technology – ie, advanced technology without design-for-failure bells and whistles.
There is a number of progresssive economic movements at play – which go by names such as relocalization, post-scarcity production, transition towns, transhumanists, resilient communities, Venus Project, sustainable development, or ‘ousting invading colonials’. Self-determination is a common thread, and we see that effective means of open source production are the foundation for self-determination. Nobody that we know of has an explicit plan for what an appropriate technology base for the future may look like, though Community for Tomorrow proposes explicit, tangible solutions that are closest in nature to the ‘opensource the entire, critical infrastructure of society’ message that we propose.
Indeed, modern discussion of appropriate technology has degenerated to the applications of third world aid, or has disappeared altogether. The more integrated point of view on this would be to discuss closure of the industrial divide between the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds – or not causing the problems of wealth disparity in the first place. Post-scarcity economics are a practical outcome of appropriate technology, as the waste cycle is replaced with lifetime design. We discussed this somewhat in our last blog post
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