Archive for April, 2010
Monday, April 26th, 2010
PowerCube on LifeTrac
A universal mechanical power source is one of the key components of the Global Village Construcgtion Set – the set of building blocks for creating resilient communities. The basic concept is that instead of using a dedicated engine on a particular powered device – which means hundreds of engines required for a complete resilient …
13 Comments » - Posted in Accomplishments,Infrastructure,LifeTrac,MicroTrac,Power Cube by Marcin
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
The Liberator Beta 2.0: Machine Overview
Things are looking up on the fully automatic, open source, CEB press – The Liberator Beta v2.0.
We finally have the machine ready to run in field tests. The basic operational description is here, from the front:
and from the back:
Some noteworthy features are:
Full automatic controls usiing Arduino and RepRap components.
Machine runs from any external, hydraulic …
15 Comments » - Posted in Accomplishments,CEB Press Automation,Compressed Earth Block Press,Global Village Construction Set,Solar Village 2010 by Marcin
Saturday, April 17th, 2010
13 Bricks Per Minute… and Counting
Today’s goal was to determine maximum pressing rates attainable with The Liberator, the open source CEB press. We obtained data to verify some of the predicted rates shown in italics in this table.
To boost morale, we started by pressing thin, 2 inch bricks (2″x6″x12″) – as their rate of production is higher than …
10 Comments » - Posted in Accomplishments,CEB Press Automation,Compressed Earth Block Press,Construction,Solar Village 2010 by Marcin
Thursday, April 15th, 2010
CEB Automation with Sensors
For the last two months, we’ve been developing and implementing Prototype 2 automatic controls for the open source Compressed Eearth Brick (CEB) press. We had initial results from Prototype 1 controls, without sensors, back in November. This time, the motion is controlled fully by magnetic position sensors, and we added a soil sensor for …
No Comments » - Posted in CEB Press Automation,Compressed Earth Block Press,Global Village Construction Set by Marcin
Monday, April 12th, 2010
GVCS Project Timeline and Scalability
How long will it take to develop the Global Village Construction Set? It depends. It depends on the level of support that the project is able to attract. The toughest part of gathering support is explaining the project so that people wrap their head around the concept – to understand that it’s possible. It’s …
1 Comment » - Posted in Swadeshi Dialogues by Marcin
Sunday, April 11th, 2010
Masonry
William took a course on brick laying last week back in the UK, in preparation for the CEB construction adventures of Solar Village 2010 this year at Factor e Farm. Here is some documentation from his course:
In William’s words -
In preparation for building structures on the open source ecology farm, I thought it best …
4 Comments » - Posted in Dedicated Project Visits,Solar Village 2010 by Marcin
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
Swadeshi Dialogues 2: Neosubsistence
Neosubsistence refers to a lifestyle where we bypass commerce or business as usual and replace it with peoples’ true callings. This constitutes a novel economic experiment – one without precedent – one which requires us to drop all preconceptions of what the economy is all about. Neosubsistence is one of those words coined for …
6 Comments » - Posted in Swadeshi Dialogues by Marcin
Monday, April 5th, 2010
Springtime 2010
A week ago, the first signs of food plants appeared as winter passes away.
The pictures show: (1), lettuce from last year self-seeding; (2), garlic; (3), stinging nettles – a great salad green when steamed, or eat fresh after rolling to rid of stingers; (4), yellow currant; (5), raspberry; and (6), onion.
The 2 beehives totally …
2 Comments » - Posted in Natural History,Open Source Agroecology (OSA) by Marcin
Sunday, April 4th, 2010
Budding Out
The fruit propagation workshop went well. Two people showed up. 2 weeks later, these cherry trees are already budding out:
We got a donation of 50 more EMLA 111 apple rootstocks, which can be obtained from Willamette Nurseries for under 70 cents each. These are rooted branch cuttings, and look like this:
After grafting with a …
