Community Supported Manufacturing

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Tue 31 Mar 2009

Casting at The Crucible

Posted by Mathew

Nick DiPhillipo pulls slag out of a crucible

I just got back from The Crucible in Oakland, CA where I spoke to Nick DiPhillipo.  Nick constructed their foundry and has designed and built foundry equipment such as kilns and cupola furnaces at The Crucible, UC Santa Cruz, Artworks in Berkeley, and elsewhere.    We talked about setting up a basic foundry, electric induction furnaces, and appropriate technology.
Nick recommended some great sources of further information I want to pass on:  Steve Hurst’s book Metal Casting: Appropriate Technology in the Small Foundry and the publishing houses Development Publications and Lindsay Publications.   Steve Hurst’s book talks about doing lost wax with bee’s wax and using cow dung mortar in mold making.  I’m really excited.

According to Nick, Factor E should get started by building  a training setup:  A gas-fired crucible in the 10-30lb range plus the infrastructure for lost wax casting- A ceramic slurry batch mixer and a system for melting the wax out.  Building an induction furnace is by all means possible, but the crucible furnace is a great system for small casting and is simple to build and operate.  It’s something that will continue to get use even with an induction furnace around.
Induction is definitely the only way to go if we want to do serious work with iron and steel.  The Crucible used someone else’s home-made induction furnace to cast the stainless steel funnels in the kiln (I’m going to try to contact the individual who designed and built this induction furnace).

Ok, well I’m headed back to the East Coast. Thanks for all the help, California.

Categories: Permafacture

[4] Comments

Sat 7 Mar 2009

Perspectives on Local Economic Power

Posted by Marcin

Here’s something to think about regarding our recent refocus on locally produced fuel and steam engines at Factor e Farm.

Energy is slave labor without the slaves. At Factor e Farm, doomsday peak oil scenarios are not particularly threatening because we know that a high standard of living can be attained readily by using technology that is 100 years old and which can be grown locally. Here’s how.

Pyrolysis oil fuel can be produced locally from biomass, reportedly at yields of up to 75%. There are already personal pyrolysis oil fuel makers on the market. Couple that to a Babington burner, which can burn crude oils of any kind. Add a steam engine, and we have 100% locally grown power – with modern steam engine efficiencies comparable to gasoline engines but lower than diesel engines. Fab this steam engine with the open source lathe, hot off the press at Factor e Farm, and you have local economic power, in both senses of the phrase. (more…)

Categories: Community Supported Manufacturing, Flash Steam Generator, Peak Oil, Pyrolysis Oil, Steam Engine Construction Set

[8] Comments

Sun 22 Feb 2009

Solar Power Generator Update

Posted by Marcin

Today, someone passed on an important link. The Swiss company Nolaris is building a solar concentrator power system that matches the Factor e Farm Solar Power Generator very closely. In particular – both systems use flat mirrors in a linear fresnel configuration, and a water-filled collector tube. Nolaris is using a turbine, while we are using a steam engine as the heat engine of choice. The point of this blog post is to demonstrate to the disbelievers that our approach to solar power generation is sound. To clarify, we believe that a linear flat mirror system has the highest potential for replicability on the kW unit of scalability, given the simplicity of the approach. See the video from Nolaris, in French, with sprinkles of English in the encounter with the Arabs.

Another solar conentrator power developer fellow from France told me about a parabolic trough system that he is putting into production in 2009, via Chinese mass production. We will collaborate on developing a steam engine, since that’s an area of common ground. (more…)

Categories: Community Supported Manufacturing, Solar Power Generator

[9] Comments

Fri 13 Feb 2009

Torch Table Day 2

Posted by Marcin

We’ve returned to the torch table after a long hiatus since the December 9 blog post
on the topic. CEB press digital fabrication is the goal. My goal is to spend noon to six PM every day until the thing is built. Here are some 3D pictures, which you can also see on the wiki torch table development page. The annotated description and the project log are on the wiki as well. 3D design is in open source Blender, by Jeremy. Comments on this are welcome. I’m sending this out for review now, and you can keep up with evolution at the wiki.

(more…)

Categories: Open Engineering, Permafacture, Torch Table

1 Comment

Fri 6 Feb 2009

Factor e Live Distillations – Part 10 – Community Supported Production

Posted by Marcin

This episode covers the basic economic model of Factor e Farm. It is Community Supported Production (CSP) with two parts: Manufacturing (CSM) and Agriculture (CSA). It is permaculture and permafacture in one. We’re a replicable, vertically integrated, open source, community-supported flexible fabrication model – for short. View on. Transcript is found below the video.

And when you’re done viewing, support our work by subscribing to be a True Fan – at 33 cents per day for the next two years, or $10/month.

(more…)

Categories: 1000 True Fans - 1000 Global Villages, Community Supported Manufacturing, Factor e Live Distillations

[2] Comments

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