Archive for November, 2008
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
Flurries on All Fronts
We experienced serious flurries today.
First, we had a flurry of $482 come in today – to almost meet our materials needs on the CEB addition – on the last day of November’s funding cycle.
Second, we experienced a flurry of hits on our website – where hits increased 27% over last month, and counting.Third, we …
3 Comments » - Posted in Accomplishments,Challenges,Compressed Earth Block Press by Marcin
Saturday, November 29th, 2008
Populating the CEB Addition
We have moved a 1600 pound battery bank and a 500 pound stove into the workshop addition:
Now, how about some walls and a roof? Please contribute – we are short on the building materials, and the month is coming to an end:
By the way, our blog views are growing 20% each month.
2 Comments » - Posted in Construction,Digital Fabrication by Marcin
Thursday, November 27th, 2008
CEB Field Performance Report – Factor e Live Part 11
After two weeks of brick pressing – we are done.
We pressed a total of five thousand, six hundred, and ninety one open source CEB bricks. We are using The Liberator – the open source, high performance (6 brick per minute), manually-loaded and controlled CEB press.
Here are some conclusions on production rates, machine performance and …
3 Comments » - Posted in Accomplishments,Compressed Earth Block Press by Marcin
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
5000 Bricks and Counting
We pressed 5000 CEB bricks by now. We have enough for 3 of 4 walls for our living-roofed flexible fabrication workshop addition.
At present, we collected funds to complete the roof, but not for any insulation or windows/doors. Please consider a donation below.
2 Comments » - Posted in Accomplishments,Compressed Earth Block Press by Marcin
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
3000 Bricks and Counting
Upon the suggestion of Reto Stauss of the nachhaltigBeobachtet blog, we have installed the ChipIn widget here for additional transparency in our crowd funding strategy. At the time of this post, we collected $1144, and still have $856 left to go in the November Funding Cycle for construction materials. We also have $1400 left …
5 Comments » - Posted in Compressed Earth Block Press,Construction,LifeTrac,Natural Building,Open Source Technology,Permaculture by Marcin
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
Solar Turbine Concept Up for Review
We have posted an updated conceptual drawing of the solar turbine collectors and reflectors at the OSE wiki.
Please study the drawings and comment here or at the wiki. Please pass this on to others who may be knowledgeable about the topic. A discussion of some of the features of the design are found in …
No Comments » - Posted in Open Engineering,Solar Turbine by Marcin
Sunday, November 16th, 2008
The Thousandth Brick: CEB Field Testing Report
Is The Liberator – the open source, high performance CEB machine – really worthy of its name?
Absolutely. We found that out as we pressed the one thousandth brick yesterday.
Bad weather, manpower, and equipment so far has restricted production runs to only 8 hours total of brick pressing – and we have pressed a …
1 Comment » - Posted in Compressed Earth Block Press,Construction by Marcin
Saturday, November 15th, 2008
Product Release Fund
With outstanding performance results on the CEB press, we are getting ever closer to the planned product release date of April 1, 2009. We are employing a Product Release Fund as part of our open source product release strategy, with the primary aim of addressing the freeloader dilemma in funding this open source project.
While …
11 Comments » - Posted in Product Release Fund by Marcin
Friday, November 14th, 2008
Solar Turbine Brochure – Community Supported Manufacturing
We are taking the Solar Turbine project to the next level. Nick Raaum is our Project Manager, and he will be arriving here in about 2 weeks. He has put in his 2 week’s notice for leaving his post as a performance engineer in a coal-fired power plant.
Here is a brochure on the Solar …
12 Comments » - Posted in Solar Turbine by Marcin
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
OSE Open Engineering Cycle
As we have recently begun parallel development of several open source Global Village Construction Set technologies (CEB, Solar Turbine, LifeTrac, Sawmill, CNC XYZ table), it is useful to formalize the OSE product development process. It is called the OSE Open Engineering Cycle (OEC). Note that engineering refers not only to typical hardware with nuts-bolts-electronics, …
