Factor E Farm Blog

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) ...

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Dear True Fans Backers, and Supporters,

I finally have a chance to emerge from full construction duty – 17,000 bricks pressed and countdown in our last week of brick pressing with cold weather producing diminishing returns. With Floyd recruited as our new construction manager, the building program is now in good hands, and I can focus on documentation and delivery of the OSE Christmas Gift to the World.

On the construction front, the roofs will go on first on both the workshop and living units. We will then build CEB columns around temporary posts. Then we can fill walls and work free from rain – and upon external walls being laid – we will do finishing work free from the cold. (more…)

Dear True Fans Backers, and Supporters, I finally have a chance to emerge from full construction duty – 17,000 bricks pressed and countdown in our last week of brick pressing with cold weather producing diminishing returns. With Floyd recruited as our new construction manager, the building program is now in good hands, and I can ...

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October of 2011 marks the first ever replication of a complete Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) machine by an independent third party – the manual version of The Liberator CEB Press. This is a time of historical significance for the GVCS. Congratulations to James Slade of Texas.

See more pictures and a video of James’ work. You can also see his brick pressing samples.

A total of 3 replications of GVCS tools is currently taking place – see wiki for details. After we publish the Christmas Gift to the World, I expect about 100 independent replications by year-end of next year.

I am glad to report that I added a new category to this blog – Replication. We are using the Replication page on the wiki to record all other examples. Please post other examples there. If you do add content, please provide supporting information, pictures, and videos – and feel free to email me regarding collaboration.

October of 2011 marks the first ever replication of a complete Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) machine by an independent third party - the manual version of The Liberator CEB Press. This is a time of historical significance for the GVCS. Congratulations to James Slade of Texas. See more pictures and a video of James' ...

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Dear Supporters, thanks for your explosive support on our Global Village Construction Set Kickstarter Campaign, we have reached our goal of $40k, with 15 days left. There is also no sign of slowing down, so pass this on to your friends:

Update on final result:

I have been asked several times now regarding the greater context of the GVCS, in terms of the resources required to complete the 50 GVCS tools. I am now a Senior TED Fellow, and combined with my present application for the Shuttleworth Fellowship, I aim to secure the necessary resources and propel this project to completion on schedule by year-end 2012. That is, with support of many caring people like yourselves, who continue to pour their energy into the project through all of its trials – and a total amount of resources as follows. (more…)

Dear Supporters, thanks for your explosive support on our Global Village Construction Set Kickstarter Campaign, we have reached our goal of $40k, with 15 days left. There is also no sign of slowing down, so pass this on to your friends:   Update on final result: I have been asked several times now regarding the greater context ...

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I am applying for the Shuttleworth Foundation fellowship. If successful, this brings in $360k of resources to the project by March, 2012. Listen to this personal intro for the Fellowship, discussing the concept of Distributive Enterprise:

I am applying for the Shuttleworth Foundation fellowship. If successful, this brings in $360k of resources to the project by March, 2012. Listen to this personal intro for the Fellowship, discussing the concept of Distributive Enterprise:

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Dear True Fans and Supporters, the emergency construction crowd funding is a major success – $19.7k of $20k as of 2 PM, Sep. 15, 2011, a little under 7 days from emergency campaign start (the ChipIn at $5,209 as of this time reflects only a part of the donations)

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We hired for bulldozing and excavation for next Thursday, as our open source bulldozer is not developed yet. The dimensional sawmill, two soil pulverizers, plus tractor loader-mounted cement mixer are being built. Power Cubes are being finished. Roof trusses and a sample stringers for the workshop have been built. The site is partly cleared with a LifeTrac box blade, and corners are marked. See OSE Shop 2011 for more.

Dear True Fans and Supporters, the emergency construction crowd funding is a major success - $19.7k of $20k as of 2 PM, Sep. 15, 2011, a little under 7 days from emergency campaign start (the ChipIn at $5,209 as of this time reflects only a part of the donations) . . . We hired for bulldozing and excavation ...

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Dear True Fans and Supporters, we have fallen into a general video and documentation blackhole over the last 4 months. People are asking for news. We haven’t been idle:

Dear True Fans and Supporters from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

You can read the transcript here. I am promising a weekly update as we are going on the final countdown towards the Rollout Plan for the Global Village Construction Set.

Standard : $10.00USD – monthly Gold : $20.00USD – monthly Gold Extra : $30.00USD – monthly Platinum : $50.00USD – monthly Angel : $100.00USD – monthly

To reach the documentation blackhole escape velocity, I further report: (more…)

Dear True Fans and Supporters, we have fallen into a general video and documentation blackhole over the last 4 months. People are asking for news. We haven't been idle: Dear True Fans and Supporters from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo. You can read the transcript here. I am promising a weekly update as we are going on ...

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Yesterday we received an offer from a potential donor – offering a substantial, yearly donation. This got me thinking about our nonprofit sector strategy, as this offer is within the tax-exempt status of the nonprofit sector. So I wrote up a summary of our current organizational development positioning. Please take the time to read it – it’s an exciting episode of an organization undergoing nonlinear growth on all fronts, and it gives insight both to our status and tribulations.  I am also calling out for a collaborator to take on the role of our Nonprofit Director – see the Recruitment Announcement at the end of the above link. We’re looking for a committed individual, capable of taking the initiative to organize this potential goldmine. We’re looking for pioneers to create history.

Yesterday we received an offer from a potential donor - offering a substantial, yearly donation. This got me thinking about our nonprofit sector strategy, as this offer is within the tax-exempt status of the nonprofit sector. So I wrote up a summary of our current organizational development positioning. Please take the time to read ...

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The Open Source CNC Torch Table has achieved first fire and is now cutting parts for the open source tractor:

Open Source CNC Torch Table: First Fire from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo. Sound track is Epic 1 by Joe Post, True Fan.

This is a sample cut through 1/2″ steel. It’s remarkably smooth, prior to cleaning the slag off the edges:

(more…)

The Open Source CNC Torch Table has achieved first fire and is now cutting parts for the open source tractor: Open Source CNC Torch Table: First Fire from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo. Sound track is Epic 1 by Joe Post, True Fan. This is a sample cut through 1/2" steel. It's remarkably smooth, prior to ...

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Ladies and gentlemen, we have a breakthrough on the Solar Turbine project. We are adopting the Solar Fire concentrator technology as our official solar energy platform. OSE and Solar Fire are entering into partnership – with a single purpose of creating a state-of-art, replicable, open source platform for solar concentrator power applied to electricity, space heating, and process heat. Prototyping done already by Solar Fire indicates that electrical production can be attained by such a system at a $0.5-$1 system materials cost per peak watt – if combined with a modern steam engine as the heat engine. This is about a factor of 10 lower than photovoltaics. See Eerik Wissenz, Solar Fire project leader, introduce the latest successful prototype of 32 square meter solar capture area:

(more…)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a breakthrough on the Solar Turbine project. We are adopting the Solar Fire concentrator technology as our official solar energy platform. OSE and Solar Fire are entering into partnership - with a single purpose of creating a state-of-art, replicable, open source platform for solar concentrator power applied to electricity, ...

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