We are currently reorganizing the work of Open Source Ecology to rapid parallel development of the remaining 50 technologies of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). Our goal is to have the entire set ready for replication within 2 years, and we think we can do that with a $2.4M budget over that time. The next stop in this adventure took me to Cleveland, to a presentation on the GVCS and further networking opportunities, organized by Glenn Gall, one of our True Fans.
Cleveland, Ohio, is an interesting place. Home of robber barrons of yesteryear, today Cleveland features 35% unemployment, and steel mills that are still in operation. I’m thinking immediately – what if a value-added steel mill were re-invented – where steel production is followed by flexible fabrication of tractors, cars, and renewable energy systems, and countless other items of high economic significance? That’s one possible application for the GVCS tools for reinventing local production.
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.
We have been invited to Seattle, Washingon, USA, to present at OpenUp – a new forum focusing on open source topics. We have dubbed OpenUp as the TED for Open Source in a previous post. Our thanks go to Thomas Becker, co-founder, for inviting us. Thom has also started Lastwear, the open source clothing company. Join us for the presentation on Tuesday, Otober 19, 2010, if you are in Seattle. It’s at the Maple Leaf Branch at 6:30 PM.
We will be discussing the next step after the Economy in a Box presentation. The Economy in a Box talk overviewed the case for post-scarcity, open source, resilient communities. The presentation summarized how the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) – an advanced industrial economy-in-a-box which may be replicated inexpensively anywhere in the world – provides the key building blocks for creating modern, resilient communities in a bootstrapping fashion. This time around, our presentation is called the Economy in a Box: Reaching Post-Scarcity Escape Velocity. We will push the limits of thinking and practice of how the GVCS can break the feasibility and cost barriers of building communities from the ground up. This presentation will cover a bold program of requirements which would allow replication cost to reach zero. If you don’t want to spend an average of $1M over your lifetime for your cost of living that includes only housing, food, and driving – then you may want to find out about our proposition to Buy Out at the Bottom for about $14k, to live happily ever after. This should be a decent and fun addition to our repertoire of evolutionary infotainment – which we believe is worthwhile because these are not pipe dreams – but realities that we’re substantiating with daily results from Factor e Farm.
We have finished the second prototype of the open source soil pulverizer – an important labor-saving device for soil-handling in CEB construction. It is useful because it combines digging-pulverizing-loading the CEB press in one device. See the fabrication and the first test run:
It should also be noted that the pulverizer action above is powered by a single, 18 horsepower Power Cube I. This is not bad at all for a lawnmower engine. Also, compare the present results with Prototype I to see the simplifications. For one, we have eliminated the hydraulic cylinder of Prototype I for opening the mouth. We replaced this cylinder with a simple, passive chain – which does the task automatically as the loader bucket is tilted down.
The Prototype II dxf design file, including swept motion analysis, is available for download.
It is encouraging to see a device that is now much closer to Full Product Release. Overall, the Pulverizer II is much more stiff and stable. The rotor rests on height adjustors, which also allow the rotor to jump over bumps since the down pressure is caused only by the weight of the rotor assembly. Moreover, the increased torque on the shortened tines prevented stalling of the rotor in hard, dry soil. This is so far quite pleasing – especially since we are using only 18 hp of power. The next step is adding the second Power Cube – the Power Cube Prototype II that we just finished. We’ll report on this topic next.
We are introducing here the prototype of the OSE Label- a product label for post-scarcity economics – pursuant to OSE Specifications and the OSE License for Post-Scarcity Economics. Here is the descriptive label for the Soil Pulverizer:
Note the low, dedicated parts cost of $200 for the Soil Pulverizer – made possible by utilizing a product ecology of other components that are already part of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) infrastructure. This is a further demonstration of how the GVCS is a set of Lego blocks for creating real infrastructures. If we consider the cost of the hydraulic motor and bucket, the total price for the Soil Pulverizer would be about $800 for materials.
If you are up for some more video, here is William’s footage of the Pulverizer test run with the real sounds:
Our work focuses on the creation of open source, resilient, post-scarcity communities, which rely on resource-based economies as opposed to debt-based funnymoney systems. This has captured the attention of at least one mainstream author. Here is a short video where Juliet Schor – author and Professor of Sociology at Boston College - discusses her new book, Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. Factor e Farm is included for about one minute, as an example of the concepts that she is discussing. We are just posting about 3 minutes of her talk, for context regarding her comments about us:
We posted the full video in a former post. We note for our readers that – while Professor Schor states that we are a resilient community – (more…)
We are currently in the phase of fabrication optimization for the high performance, open source, Compressed Earth Brick (CEB) press. This is our route to financial bootstrapping of the research and development efforts. We are looking for people interested in Dedicated Project Visits on flexible fabrication.
Flexible fabrication is a blend of a generally-equipped workshop with the hands of a multi-skilled fabricator. Flexible fabrication in the digital age implies the assist of digital fabrication. To take full advantage of available modern technology, the skilled digital craftsperson has to gain proficiency in the entire process chain from open source design and collaboration, CAD, build, electronics, programming, and other skills as needed.
From the standpoint of resilient communities and the neosubsistence lifestyle, the technology is not the end-all but merely a step to sustainable living. (more…)
We are now officially using Open+Pario as our project management and design repository for Open Source Ecology. The most active project at present is the CEB press, and we are beginning project management of the Open Source Induction Furnace. Anybody can view any of the projects – including design files, technical discussions, etc. The content is entirely transparent and open to the greater community.
If you want to get involved in any of the projects, you can sign up as a Project Member by registering and joining a given project. (more…)
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.
You can download the existing CAD files here. The files are in Polish, so they still need to be translated for the broader audience.
Meet your developers from the Co-Habitat Platform: Pawel Sroczynski and Remik Karbowiak. These guys are pretty good. They also developed a model open source, prefab, straw-bale house design, and they will be buildng it this year at a budget of $7k. I always thought that straw bale is too exotic in practice because of the huge labor requirements, but these guys are showing otherwise with OpenSTRAW:
Here is the building sequence. Click on the following images to enlarge:
Both the manual CEB press and the straw bale work are a major contribution to open source economic development – and to humanity. See their website for more information. Congratulations to the Co-Habitat team. We’d like to add the manual CEB press to the Factor e Farm product line as soon as the machine is tested in the field, and we may end up building some straw bale here after all.
From post-scarcity communities, open business models, open source tractors, land stewardship, to starting some serious building this year – here’s the latest:
If you are liking what you heard in the video, don’t forget to subscribe to the True Fans to help make the work happen sooner rather than later.
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
[Open Source Ecology] is yet another example of the many efforts underway to accelerate DIY technology development for Resilient Communities (The RC). As personal fabrication improves, these tinkering efforts will become MUCH more sophisticated at an ever decreasing cost. We (collectively, those of us engaged in decentralized thinking/action) are in the process of reinventing how the global economy is structured at a root level — good thing we didn’t ask permission. — John Robb, Global Guerrillas
