Factor E Farm Blog

For those of you who do not know, I’ve been hard at work on the design of the open source Ironworker Prototype II and plan on building it this winter at my grandfather’s fabrication shop, Enniss Inc. I’m calling out to fellow fabricators and engineers to help with the Ironworker design, so we can place the design of this very important tool into the repository of common knowledge. For those of you not familiar with the importance of an ironworker machine – it is the heart of any custom metal fabrication shop – a shop that can build any of the mechanical devices of the Global Village Construction Set.

This prototype will be the second version of the Ironworker. As well as having the 120T punch, this prototype will be able to shear 1”x12” flat and 6”x6”x1/2” angle steel. There will be a “tool cavity,” a space below the punching arm to which many accessory tools can attach. This will enable the machine to not only have the features above, but also attachments like brakes, notchers, and rod shears.

Scotchman 120T Ironworker

I had another design nearly developed using a vertical shear, but trashed it when I realized how much better it could be with optional attachments. And now, I’m stuck.

The first design version (1.0) of Prototype II

I need help designing the lower arm and flat shear. (more…)

For those of you who do not know, I’ve been hard at work on the design of the open source Ironworker Prototype II and plan on building it this winter at my grandfather’s fabrication shop, Enniss Inc. I’m calling out to fellow fabricators and engineers to help with the Ironworker design, so we can place the ...

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The LifeTrac Design Challenge is now live at GrabCAD:

Pass this on to any engineer friends. This is our first attempt to solve a technical issue by means of a crowd engineering platform. I am hoping that this platform will be a significant contributor to the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) development effort. We will gain xperience from this first challenge, and we have already discussed with GrabCAD – on how to organize a real event where engineers are invited to a  to weekend dedicated to producing a real GVCS design.

See GrabCAD’s blog about this campaign.

The LifeTrac Design Challenge is now live at GrabCAD: Pass this on to any engineer friends. This is our first attempt to solve a technical issue by means of a crowd engineering platform. I am hoping that this platform will be a significant contributor to the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) development effort. We will ...

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We have just received a $100k award letter from The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. This means significant acceleration of prototype deployment of the Global Village Construction Set – making open blueprints accessible to everybody. Terra Foundation is our fiscal sponsor for the nonprofit sector.

With additional resources coming in, this is turning out to be a winter convergence at Factor e Farm as we prepare the OSE Christmas Gift to the World. James Slade is already here taking the tractor apart and making improvements:

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We have just received a $100k award letter from The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. This means significant acceleration of prototype deployment of the Global Village Construction Set - making open blueprints accessible to everybody. Terra Foundation is our fiscal sponsor for the nonprofit sector.   With additional resources coming in, this is turning out to be a ...

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Instructional video on the connection of LifeTrac valves to motors, cylinders, and Power Cubes.

• Stream & download at Archive.org
• Read the transcript

In order to make our videos more accessible, going forward we will be uploading to both Vimeo and Archive.org. Archive.org automatically transcodes media into a variety of formats (quicktime, h.264 & ogg). We hope this option will make it easier to not only watch our videos, but also to edit & remix them.

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Instructional video on the connection of LifeTrac valves to motors, cylinders, and Power Cubes. Stream & download at Archive.org Read the transcript In order to make our videos more accessible, going forward we will be uploading to both Vimeo and Archive.org. Archive.org automatically transcodes media into a variety of formats (quicktime, h.264 & ogg). We hope this ...

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My background is in Computer software & development, Technical writing, Hydraulics and electrical power control systems.  I have a small software consulting business in Dallas.

I found out about OSE mid 2011 and found their “Open Source” principles intriguing, as I have been a proponent of Open Source software for decades.

After corresponding with Marcin, I arrived Thursday, August 4, 2011 to start a Dedicated Project Visit, with focus on Power Cube documentation.

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My background is in Computer software & development, Technical writing, Hydraulics and electrical power control systems.  I have a small software consulting business in Dallas. I found out about OSE mid 2011 and found their "Open Source" principles intriguing, as I have been a proponent of Open Source software for decades. After corresponding with Marcin, I ...

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Want to get involved in Open Source Ecology, but don’t know how? Join us on IRC With this online chatroom, we’ll try to have onsite Factor e Farm people on throughout the day dishing out updates from Factor E Farm, along with tasks ranging from CAD to video editing to research to sourcing parts. This will ...

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We have created a Crowdmap to leverage the contributions of people worldwide who are helping bring the GVCS to completion. The point of the Crowdmap is to create a repository of information – collected via micro-contributions of content from people worldwide – which can subsequently be mined by GVCS project developers for useful development support. We encourage this to be used as a dumping ground of potentially relevant information – which can then be refined and filtered.

The focus of the Crowdmap is to:
* Identify potential developers and collaborators – all the subject matter experts, prototypers, managers, fabricators, CAD designers, reviewers, funders, and other potential supporters according to our Open Source Product Development Process
* Identify sourcing information, especially for hard to find parts like Steam engine piston rings.
* Identify other supporting information that can aid in the development of the 50 GVCS Technologies

See more information on this on our wiki and start contributing content. This is an easy route for contributing, and it can produce useful information that our Development Team can use.

We have created a Crowdmap to leverage the contributions of people worldwide who are helping bring the GVCS to completion. The point of the Crowdmap is to create a repository of information - collected via micro-contributions of content from people worldwide - which can subsequently be mined by GVCS project developers for useful development ...

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We’re now moving onto the next phase of GVCS development, beyond the work at Factor e Farm to a global collaboration of remote prototyping work funded by crowd sources and resource development via the nonprofit sector. We are collecting bids from global collaborators at the same time that further development and production is occurring at Factor e Farm, starting with 3 orders of the brick press – tractor – soil pulverizer. Our next steps are fabrication automation with tools like the CNC torch table for cutting parts and precision multimachine for fabricating  motors and engnines, which allows people to replicate our machines from CAM files, shared globally and built locally at a fraction of the cost of closed-source counterparts.

It seems that this year will be a great step forward as the several early adopters prove the feasibility of our products. We predict that many will follow as the machines are proven in the field and as CEB houses are built.

One subject matter expert that we have recruited from Berkeley, California, is Dan Granett, who runs  a design and prototyping shop. His background includes precision machining, and Dan has helped us years ago by initial design of the Tesla turbine, which was since superseded by the modern steam engine on grounds of efficiency.

Dan will be leading the precision CNC multimachine effort, which includes a mill, drill, and lathe, plus a surface grinder attachment, plus cold-cut an abrasive saws. We will add value to open design of high-performance hardware by developing low-cost, heavy-duty (2000+ lb of force), precision (1 mil) x-y-z drives based on open source dove-tails, precision acme, digital readout, and microcontroller feedback for backlash correction. Dan will be one of our first experiments in scaling the technical development of the project via remote prototyping collaboration.

We're now moving onto the next phase of GVCS development, beyond the work at Factor e Farm to a global collaboration of remote prototyping work funded by crowd sources and resource development via the nonprofit sector. We are collecting bids from global collaborators at the same time that further development and production is occurring ...

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Sean will publish his short documentary on Factor e Farm in a couple of weeks. These are some of the sights from summer 2010 as preview.

OSE: Timelapse Reel from Sean Church on Vimeo.

Sean will publish his short documentary on Factor e Farm in a couple of weeks. These are some of the sights from summer 2010 as preview. OSE: Timelapse Reel from Sean Church on Vimeo.

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Happy New Year!

Over the holidays, I got a chance to meet Juliet Schor (author of Plenitude) in New York City. Juliet teaches at Boston College, and she co-founded the Center for the New American Dream. She wrote about Factor e Farm in her recent book, Plenitude: The Economics of True Wealth. She recently got a McArthur Foundation grant to do a case study on Factor e Farm. What I love about Juliet is that her core message is a mouthpiece for the practical work of Factor e Farm. I feel like I am listening to myself speak when I listen to Juliet. Her core message is that we can improve the economic system far beyond its present morasse of inefficiency and artificial scarcity.

Juliet Schor and Plenitude from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.

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Happy New Year! Over the holidays, I got a chance to meet Juliet Schor (author of Plenitude) in New York City. Juliet teaches at Boston College, and she co-founded the Center for the New American Dream. She wrote about Factor e Farm in her recent book, Plenitude: The Economics of True Wealth. She recently got ...

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