Factor E Farm Blog

We have just installed the quick connect wheels on the tractor and have been testing them with success for the past week. These can be attached/released from the tractor in under 5 minutes by turning a cam lock and loosening two large bolts. The significance is that detachable wheels allow not only easy service of the drive system – but more importantly – allow the wheels to be part of a more general equipment infrastructure. Detachable wheels can be interchanged between the tractor, microtractor, bulldozer. truck, or even car. Combined with interchangeable power units and interchangeable parts, this gets us one step closer to a life-size Lego set for real equipment.

.
.
.
You can read more about the quick connect wheels on the wiki. We just ran a successful design challenge on these, discussed in the last post. We have the whole fabrication process as a series of YouTube clips totaling 15 minutes (anyone volunteering to compose them remotely into a meaningful video instructional?). Roger Olson drew up the quick attach wheel assembly in Autodesk Inventor. Here is the PDF file.

We have just installed the quick connect wheels on the tractor and have been testing them with success for the past week. These can be attached/released from the tractor in under 5 minutes by turning a cam lock and loosening two large bolts. The significance is that detachable wheels allow not only easy service ...

No Comments

We put up a crowd design challenge at GrabCAD a few weeks ago – for LifeTrac IV - Quick Connect Wheels. The basic problem was: how do you design wheel assemblies for a tractor that can be taken on and off in under 5 minutes – for interchangeability or repair. We have gotten a number of excellent contributions – see results – and we are picking the design by Marcus as the winning choice:

(more…)

We put up a crowd design challenge at GrabCAD a few weeks ago - for LifeTrac IV - Quick Connect Wheels. The basic problem was: how do you design wheel assemblies for a tractor that can be taken on and off in under 5 minutes - for interchangeability or repair. We have gotten a number ...

[2] Comments

We are recruiting a Co-Founder to join the team at Factor e Farm. This blog post describes this offer. (we are also looking for project Advisors and Mentors, see last paragraph of this post)

Open Source Ecology is a movement for creating the open source economy. The means is creating distributive enterprise based on open source design of products and services. The focus is clear: to introduce material post-scarcity as  a practical option via open source economic development – starting with the 50 Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) tools as a core kernel. Our tactical platform for deployment is the the GVCS – a core enabling kernel for a wide array of enterprises and infrastructures. We are attempting the impossible: opensourcing all 50 of the GVCS technologies by December 21, 2011. We already secured $1/2M to make this happen, so we guarantee that at least 18 of the 50 technologies will reach Beta product release. We are positioned to hit the ground running in 2012, while wrapping up LifeTrac impreovements, with 9 project leaders and a basic plan of prototyping 14 machines in parallel (we are busy recruiting 5 more technical project leaders). We will come out on schedule if a protype emerges on one month cycle in each project. See the OSE Enterprise Plan.

Project Co-Founder Duties

The Project Co-Founder is an individual who shares both high level executive duties and daily tasks with the Project Founder – in running Open Source Ecology development at the global headquarters – Factor e Farm in Missouri, USA. This includes strategic development, organizational development, and prototyping – both in organizational and hands-on aspects. It is a full time job, and the Co-Founder is required to live on-site during the 2012 development phase. (more…)

We are recruiting a Co-Founder to join the team at Factor e Farm. This blog post describes this offer. (we are also looking for project Advisors and Mentors, see last paragraph of this post) Open Source Ecology is a movement for creating the open source economy. The means is creating distributive enterprise based on open ...

[3] Comments

Dear True Fans and Supporters -

We are proud to release version 0.01 of the Civilization Starter Kit DVD – our OSE Christmas Gift to the World for 2011.

Dear True Fans and Supporters - We are proud to release version 0.01 of the Civilization Starter Kit DVD - our OSE Christmas Gift to the World for 2011. While we could go on for weeks with improvements - our Publish Early and Often Policy dictates that today is the cutoff. The full DVD contents are now online, and we will ...

[14] Comments

The Global Village Construction Set TED talk has been selected as the Best of TED 2011 top 6 in the Huffington Post. Read Isaiah Saxon’s followup blog post. You can also comment there (407 comments as of this writing). There is also a #18ideas you can use if you want to share via Twitter. It is an honor to share the Open Source Ecology paradigm with the world.

The Global Village Construction Set TED talk has been selected as the Best of TED 2011 top 6 in the Huffington Post. Read Isaiah Saxon's followup blog post. You can also comment there (407 comments as of this writing). There is also a #18ideas you can use if you want to share via Twitter. It is an honor ...

[2] Comments

The Ironworker shear assembly challenge is now live at GrabCAD. See my prior post here, and note that we are funded to get this done. We are escalating the pace, and exploring the use of open source crowd engineering in the process. This is our second entry at GrabCAD, the first entry being the tractor. Let any engineer friends know!

The Ironworker shear assembly challenge is now live at GrabCAD. See my prior post here, and note that we are funded to get this done. We are escalating the pace, and exploring the use of open source crowd engineering in the process. This is our second entry at GrabCAD, the first entry being the ...

1 Comment

We need epic help on producing professional fabrication drawings for the OSE Christmas Gift to the World - full documentation of the first 4 tools of the Global Village Construction Set - the tools of construction. See full need description - suggested pages and standards for fabrication drawings - for the CEB Press. If you have ...

No Comments

Recently, the CEB Press electronics improved to the third major iteration, replacing Generation 2 electronics from September of this year. Generation 3 electronics consist of a revised solenoid driver board that eliminates the need for the Arduino breakout board.

Generation 3 is now under evaluation at Factor e Farm and at Creation Flame. Generation 1 electronics included 2 solenoid driver boards borrowed from the RepRap project, and is robust but not recommended due to unnecessary complexity. Generation 2 included consolidation of the 2 driver boards into one, in surface mount format, and is proven in field testing with over 100 hours of brick pressing. Generation 1 and 2 included the breakout board, and the Generation 3 redesign eliminates the need for the breakout board by including sensor connections right on the driver board. This reduces controller complexity and cost significantly over Generation 2.

Furthermore, the organization of the controller box has been streamlined, the materials required for the sensor unit have been reduced, and the electro-hydraulic integration now assembles more intuitively.

We aim to reduce the complexity of the CEB controller to the point that a novice could build it in a few hours from available parts. (more…)

Recently, the CEB Press electronics improved to the third major iteration, replacing Generation 2 electronics from September of this year. Generation 3 electronics consist of a revised solenoid driver board that eliminates the need for the Arduino breakout board. Generation 3 is now under evaluation at Factor e Farm and at Creation Flame. Generation 1 electronics included ...

No Comments

This is a well-made explanation of artificial material scarcity and how it can be addressed by open source economic development:

Practical Post Scarcity from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

This is the core of Open Source Ecology’s work on the Global Village Construction Set. Scenes from hay baling onwards are developments taking place at Factor e Farm in Missouri, USA. This is part of going the last mile on the construction toolkit part of the Global Village construction set.

We are busy preparing the Civilization Starter Kit DVD. The latest need is professional fabrication drawings – the step beyond documenting the complete fabrication procedure. See sample fabrication drawing - a compact, information-packed format. Compare this to a sample fabrication procedure on the CEB press, which is much more expanded. We currently have complete 3D CAD of the CEB Press, and most of the Tractor and Pulverizer. The Power Cube is primarily in Sketchup.

If you can help us on the fabrication drawings, starting with the CEB press – let us know. We would like this to be done by Dec. 25. 2011.  We are looking for volunteers or paid professionals. The Kickstarter funding can be allocated for this purpose as needed. The timing is tight. While we will have full fabrication procedures, we don’t know if professional fabrication drawings will be done by Christmas. In that case, they will be added as soon as they are generated – as we would like to make replication as straightforward as possible. The professional fabrication drawings are what one can hand over to a metal fabricator to produce a machine anywhere in the world where fabrication shops exist. This capacity is worth millions, so help us share that with the world. Email me at opensourceecology at gmail dot com to help.

This is a well-made explanation of artificial material scarcity and how it can be addressed by open source economic development: Practical Post Scarcity from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo. This is the core of Open Source Ecology's work on the Global Village Construction Set. Scenes from hay baling onwards are developments taking place at Factor e ...

[5] Comments

Progress on the Civilization Starter Kit has been steady,  including fuel to fund it. This is from September this year:

and we have generated $173k in December from Kickstarter, crowds, and foundations. There is no evidence of funding deceleration. If you give nonprofit sector donations, please consider us.

TED put the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) on the world stage – with almost 1/2M views of the GVCS TED  Talk by now.

We are becoming one of the most collaborative projects in the world. People can get involved locally at Factor e Farm (Dedicated Project Visits), people can contribute technical design to the Wiki, or make remote technical contributions as project proposals and bids for remote prototyping and development – whether directly on GVCS 50 development, resource development, documentation, design challenges, or many other supporting tasks. As we move forward, we gain the ability to pay others to opensource designs. I welcome the recruitment of a Project Co-Founder to help me allocate money – as more than money, we need qualified people to allocate and use that money.  For next year – we want a Farmer/Scientist to feed Factor e Farm with a full organic diet using our equipment; a Master Builder to house our increasing community; and Master Machinist/Fabricator to build out precision machining/digital fabrication/hot metal processing infrastructures. Yes, let’s finish the GVCS 50 by year-end 2012. If things continue as now, we’ll be done ahead of schedule.

We are building infrastructure to scale. The workshop is covered, and I already moved the FeF lathe into the new workshop. Framing for the living units is starting to go on.

We just achieved epic results on tractor fabrication in our new workshop. We documented the complete assembly from individual parts to full tractor: it took James Slade and Ian 8 hours to go from parts:

to a full tractor, while documenting.

The Civilization Starter Kit DVD v0.01 is moving along – section heads are working on parts of the Table of Contents.  We have more people arriving – Aaron to compose a Distributive Enterprise Business Plan for Earth, Luke to document the CNC Torch Table. Brianna is making progress on the ironworker, and buildout of new tractor drive system is approaching in 2 days. Great progress on steam engine – we have identified complete plans for an intensively/extensively scalable modern steam engine, and the heat exchanger/gasified burner to run it is coming along. (more…)

Progress on the Civilization Starter Kit has been steady,  including fuel to fund it. This is from September this year: and we have generated $173k in December from Kickstarter, crowds, and foundations. There is no evidence of funding deceleration. If you give nonprofit sector donations, please consider us. TED put the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) ...

[11] Comments