The field testing of The Liberator Beta v2.0 is complete. If you look back at the 8-12 brick per minute goals in the last link, you’ll observe that we surpassed this with 13-16 bricks per minute in practice. I love it when a plan comes together. This deserves a veritable press release, no pun intended.
We will report on compressive strength tests for stabilized and unstabilized bricks in the next blog post, and then we’re ready to ship our first product to Maureen. As one of the last tests, we demonstrate here that The Liberator, about 1600 lb of weight, fits on the back of a 1/2 ton pickup truck. One would probably want to use a larger pickup truck because of the weight, and take off the hopper in traveling so that the center of mass is lowered. The machine is design-for-disassembly, and today, we’ll begin packing it – so it will turn into a package about 2 feet high on a 3′x6′ pallet.
In the picture above, the legs are placed in the inner mounting position, 4 feet apart. During brick pressing, the legs are moved into the outer position for added stability at 6 foot separation.
Speed trials on our automatic, open source CEB press, The Liberator, are complete. We achieved a maximum brick pressing rate of 16 bricks per minute, or less than 3 seconds per brick. We have run sufficient tests and worked out the bugs in the control scheme, and the results are as optimistic as predicted. After optimization-modifications of the CEB controls and control code, we have gained several bricks per minute in performance – primarily because of running the two hydraulic cylinders contemporaneously, as opposed to sequentially. We predicted this based on initial results from over a week ago. Here we show a half-minute video demonstrating the furious speeds achieved. We are pressing 2.5″x6″x12″ bricks in the first part of the clip, and 3.5″x6″x12″ bricks in the second part – with rates of 16 and 13 bricks per minute, respectively. The power source is LifeTrac at 24 gallons per minute of hydraulic flow:
Read more about these results and control strategy. (more…)
It was raining for a week straight, and this Thursday, we finally documented initial field operations with our open source CEB press – The Liberator Beta v2.0. We used the soil pulverizer to pulverize the soil, and we used the tooth-bar bucket to load the machine:
The run shown displays a pressing rate of 11 bricks per minute, using LifeTrac on medium-high throttle as the power source. These encouraging results also pointed to the need of certain adjustments for control optimization. These changes should allow us to achieve about 2-5 pressing rate improvement over the above result, and they should also allow for easier adjustment of brick size and of brick compression. (more…)
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 that of 4″ (4″x6″x12″) bricks. The thin bricks are the size of bricks one would press for making CEB floors. We ran the machine dry (without soil) in order to obtain baseline data. Results from runs with soil should be 5-10% lower if our calculations are correct.
This test run yielded 13 bricks per minute with LifeTrac as the power source, for the 2″ tall bricks. See this insanity in this one minute video:
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 activating the grate shaker. We’re building on Arduino and RepRap electronics.
The process of adapting, packaging, programming, and debugging the system was one detail after another and took much longer than expected. It requires unskilled labor with a brain – my new term for problemsolving work when one has no prior experience in the art. This is a highly prized skill at Factor e Farm – and also the key to building resilient, post-scarcity communities.
The overview of the automation system is described in this 5 minute video. The CEB machine is half-assembled without the 6-foot wide hopper to show the workings.
The next step is to run the system at the rated hydraulic flow of 28 gallons per minute, to verify the predictions proposed in the initial automation work. It’s time for the rubber to hit the road.
The CEB automation for the Liberator Beta 2.0 open source CEB press builds on other open source projects. We are using: (1), power drivers from the RepRap project for driving the solenoid valves; (2), Arduino as the controller-brain for the brick-pressing logic; and (3), a Ubuntu 8.04 Linux laptop for programming the logic. The advantage of this approach is that utilizing existing modules builds on mountains of prior work and documentation. In the limit of an open source economy – one would in principle be able to take well-documented and available parts, components, and modules to become a Maker of all the surrounding world. This is a deep part of autonomy and of evolution to freedom.
Here is a video on how the different modules are used in the prototype 2 electronics for the CEB press. You can buy the Arduino and the driver from Makerbot Industries. We use Hall effect sensors to detect the position of the hydraulic cylinders.
These electronics are then packaged in a waterproof electrical box:
The drivers are red, and the Arduino is attached below the green breakout board. The design is transparent and modular, and allows for easy access and disconnection of components for trouble-shooting. We will test this in the field shortly, so that our first CEB press product can move out the door.
We’re now in production of the open source, Compressed Earth Block (CEB) press. Here we document the fabrication ergonomics for the first steps in the build. This is for those of you considering replication.
It took 11.5 hours to cut the steel for The Liberator Beta v2.0 CEB press according to this cut list. This involved punching some of the holes, shearing, and bending – care of the local fab shop.
It took 2 hours to build the grate. Here is the grate with spacers between rebar prior to welding:
So far, the total is 15.5 hours of fabrication. If we had a hole puncher, we could probably save ourselves 2 hours of outsourced labor. So here’s our design of the hole puncher, to be built – as part of an ironworker machine:
The dxf files are here, so you can download them and continue the design if you want to get involved. This is an invitation to collaboration, starting with the wiki. First part of the ironworker is a hole puncher, and second step is metal shears for up to 12 inch wide metal, 1″ thick. The shears could save us a few more hours of outsourced labor.
There are holes on the u-channel that don’t lend themselves to hole punching, so these will be drilled using the FeF Multimachine in-the-making.
If we had RepTab, the open source torch table up and running already – we could cut the 1/8″ sheet in about 5 minutes at the rated cutting speed of our 60 amp plasma cutter. So here’s a case for spending 2 dedicated weeks to get RepTab shaken down into full running condition.
In the meantime, William has been learning MIG welding in preparation for his arrival in May. Here’s a video:
He is also learning QCad, so we’ll hit the ground running on design and build of a new civilization.
William Cleaver will be joining us at Factor e Farm on May 1 for a Dedicated Project Visit. He’s coming from across the big pond – from the United Kingdom – and we are planning for a 3 month stay.
William is not a novice to creative dexterity – he’s involved in repair and demolition of industrial chimney stacks and natural draught cooling towers – at heights. See for yourself:
He has experience with various tools, welding brickwork, ropework, woodwork, and general shop. He’s traveled the world, studied Romance languages, taught English in Chile, and is certified to teach high ropes courses. He is now showing great interest in the deeper message of post-scarcity, resilient community creation.
We discussed the following tentative plan, with both of us working in the shop and as needed:
May – Work on finishing or building Sawmill/LifeTrac II/MicroTrac II/ anciliary implements for construction – all in preparation for building.
June – begin building autonomous, zero energy housing with solar space. Experiment with CEB floors, CEB masonry stove and chimney, stabilized bricks, stabilized reject lime bricks, stabilized brick walkway and driveway, stabilized retaining walls, and others. We plan on winter food garden and sprouting in the solar space. If progress on the steam engine goes well, we’ll aim to install combined heat and power on the masonry stove.
July – continue building until comfortable accommodations for the winter are ready for several people.
We’re looking at building zero energy homes that look tentatively like this:
Other than this, William is learning Kdenlive on Linux for movie editing, as well as and QCad for CAD work. These are staple tools now at Factor e Farm. William will begin preparing some of the technical drawings for the sawmill, so we can collaborate on making that happen over distance until his arrival.
We do want to consider bringing in additional help from the CEB general contractor, Floyd (see last blog post). We will consider hosting a CEB workshop if progress is good. If the CEB fabrication is going well – there could be resources generated to really get things moving forward, and continue to build more structures. I think now is the beginning of really settling into the land – and getting the place to look half-way presentable. We’re open to all kinds of ideas, such as the proposed CEB vault construction and others – but we’d need other people to get involved to push those projects forward. Otherwise, we’re sticking to basics and all types of experiments in the process.
We are farmer scientists - working to develop a world class research center for decentralization technologies using open source permaculture and technology to work together for providing basic needs and self replicating the entire operation at the cost of scrap metal. We seek societal transformation through interconnected self-sufficient villages and homes. This is a stepping stone to transcending survival and evolving to freedom. Factor e Farm is the land-based facility where we put this theory, Open Source Ecology, into practice. More
This is the bright iridescent future of a global sustainable village, un-tethered by the soul sucking vacuum of neoliberal globalization. Combining ecology and open source ideas, the folks at Open Source Ecology seem to have hit the nail on the head…a well articulated vision for enabling communities all over the planet to partake in global trade of information goods and services, but not be forced into the prisoner’s delima of globalized corporate capitalism. — Greg Landua, Global Village Institute at ‘The Farm’
