I am also a 2012 TED Senior Fellow – which I mentioned previously only in passing.  I am now one of 12 individuals selected from  the pool of 40 of the 2011 TED and TEDGlobal Fellows- to continue their TED Fellowship for another 2 years. This is important because TED provides major publicity.  My talk was featured as #6 in Best of TED for 2011, and the talk already has 671,000 views. The TED Senior Fellowship offers further speaking opportunities at the TED Conference. I am invited both to TED and TED Global, for a total of 4 conferences over the next 2 years. I am planning on giving a TED talk on the GVCS developments at TED Global.

These 2 distinctions are largely responsible for our ~$560k budget for first quarter of 2012, with which we intend to produce 12 further prototypes. See the Status Brief on the wiki for continuing prototyping updates. Aaron Makaruk, our resource developer, is working on $10M of grant applications by mid-year, from which we would like to see a 10% success rate. The goal is still to finish the 50 GVCS tools up to beta release status by December 21, 2012.

This requires a much more robust organizational infrastructure to manage a significant parallel development process. It seems to me that we will build up to that slowly, such that by mid-year, we will really accelerate. This is a rough Organizational Map that we are currently developing, and the next step will be recruiting.

I think that retired professionals with experience in business management, engineering management, and construction management will be key players in our effort. I think that we can find good candidates from SCORE. Shuttleworth Foundation is helping us find a Recruiter. I will continue to work with Shuttleworth Foundation, the TED community, and Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation from Kansas City, and others on getting the proper structure in place – while remaining true to our core.

We need to recruit an Executive Director to run the overall organization, Factor e Farm Director to manage the on-site efforts, and a Project Director to work with Project Leaders for the 50 technologies.

With the Fellowships, resource development, Kickstarter, and True Fans support – we are well on our way – helping the world evolve to freedom.

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This is an update for the Ironworker prototype 2.

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We have just installed the quick connect wheels on the tractor and have been testing them with success for the past week. These can be attached/released from the tractor in under 5 minutes by turning a cam lock and loosening two large bolts. The significance is that detachable wheels allow not only easy service of the drive system – but more importantly – allow the wheels to be part of a more general equipment infrastructure. Detachable wheels can be interchanged between the tractor, microtractor, bulldozer. truck, or even car. Combined with interchangeable power units and interchangeable parts, this gets us one step closer to a life-size Lego set for real equipment.

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You can read more about the quick connect wheels on the wiki. We just ran a successful design challenge on these, discussed in the last post. We have the whole fabrication process as a series of YouTube clips totaling 15 minutes (anyone volunteering to compose them remotely into a meaningful video instructional?). Roger Olson drew up the quick attach wheel assembly in Autodesk Inventor. Here is the PDF file.

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The design is OSE Specifications-compliant in its simplicity. Two pins are required to remove the wheels. Stock 1/2″ mild steel is used throughout, with minimal fabrication. My only question is pin alignment, but if they are tapered, they can be punched in and out easily – as they are readily accessible. If there is any looseness, a cam can be added readily to the pins, to tighten the assembly against the frame. Moreover, it would require to a holding mechanism to hold this in place as the pins are inserted – so just one person can take the wheels on and off. All these issues are readily implementable.

So Marcus will be receiving a GVCS and GrabCAD t-shirt – and an invitation to the Build Naturally Workshop. Marcus may even get a chance to ride in the upgraded LifeTrac that he helped to design – and lay bricks in the Hybric CEB microhouse:

We have already began prototyping the quick attach wheels for the tractor – expected to be finished by Jan. 2. This is an older design, worth trying as a baseline. So far it appears to be working well, and may be modified based on the other GrabCAD ideas.

GrabCAD is proving to be an excellent platform.  It stretches one’s imagination – providing a diversity of concepts from around the world. While ideas were slow to come in at first, they pulled through at the end. I am amazed at the amount of time that the 14 contributors spent. The other entries provide excellent design ideas – and deserve refactoring on the OSE wiki as meaningful contributions to LifeTrac development. They provide ideas that should be studied at the very least, and some of the other quick attach wheel models or parts thereof should be built as well.

An interesting revelation for me is that the Quick Connect Wheel is an implementation of the Universal Rotor.  Therefore, solving the quick connect wheels also solves the Universal Rotor design.  That is a great example of the modularity – brining us closer to the life-size Lego set for real machines.

We also have the Ironworker Machine up as a GrabCAD challenge – and I look forward to tapping more talent via GrabCAD as we hit the ground running in January.  Some projects that lend themselves to ready design are the pelletizer, pellet gasifier burner, backhoe, bulldozer, truck frame – anything with not too much complexity. There should be a platform like this for electronics as well. Happy New Year.

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Open Source Ecology is a movement for creating the open source economy. The means is creating distributive enterprise based on open source design of products and services. The focus is clear: to introduce material post-scarcity as  a practical option via open source economic development – starting with the 50 Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) tools as a core kernel. Our tactical platform for deployment is the the GVCS – a core enabling kernel for a wide array of enterprises and infrastructures. We are attempting the impossible: opensourcing all 50 of the GVCS technologies by December 21, 2011. We already secured $1/2M to make this happen, so we guarantee that at least 18 of the 50 technologies will reach Beta product release. We are positioned to hit the ground running in 2012, while wrapping up LifeTrac impreovements, with 9 project leaders and a basic plan of prototyping 14 machines in parallel (we are busy recruiting 5 more technical project leaders). We will come out on schedule if a protype emerges on one month cycle in each project. See the OSE Enterprise Plan.

Project Co-Founder Duties

The Project Co-Founder is an individual who shares both high level executive duties and daily tasks with the Project Founder – in running Open Source Ecology development at the global headquarters – Factor e Farm in Missouri, USA. This includes strategic development, organizational development, and prototyping – both in organizational and hands-on aspects. It is a full time job, and the Co-Founder is required to live on-site during the 2012 development phase.

Philosophy: Intrinsic Motivation and Extraordinary Goals

 We are looking for a Co-Founder who is motivated intrinsically by higher purpose – as in Daniel Pink’s TED talk on the surprising science of motivation. This means someone who values: (1) autonomy – desire to drive one’s own life; (2) mastery – getting better at something that matters; and (3), purpose – yearning to do something in service to something much greater than oneself.

Regarding pay – I thought about the issue of pay structure at length – and came up with this conclusion. Even though we now have the resources to hire someone for this position, I feel that it is not in the best long-term interest of the project to do so. Instead, I  suggest that the Co-Founder be a volunteer position, just like I am a volunteer. At factor e Farm, there are only volunteers – defined as people with intrinsic motivation who are not empoyees, but partners who are generating their own resources while working on a common vision of a post-scarcity society.

The general critique of not paying somebody is that we would not recruit the high level talent necessary for success. I am convinced, however – that by not paying somebody – we will do even better. I don’t think that money can buy the type of ethical and practcal motivation required for the leadership of the OSE movement.

My expectation is that the Co-Founder comes in to the project as a startup entrepreneur – with both the resources and resourcefulness that will take the project into a higher gear. That is how I started. And what if a great candidate comes in – but is broke? I would question whether that person had the type of resourcefulness – clarity on the greater purpose – critical to project leadership. Such resourcefulness is a sign of one’s basic responsibility and entrepreneurial qualities. When the greater purpose and clarity is present, all else solves itself.

I am looking for somebody who has a mindset of abundance: that anything is possible, and that we can always expand our resources and grow. I am looking for someone who understands that the challenge is not the absence of resources – but the clarity, focus, and creativity of how to secure them and manage them wisely. At the same time, this job requires somebody well-grounded in practice + wise management of resources + frugality that allows existing resources to be used as directly on the creation of a post-scarcity economy as possible – while avoiding any booby-traps of bureaucratic bloat.

I am looking for  a candidate nothing short of a movement entrepreneur – someone who uses technology as a digitally-savvy outsider to create new sources of power by mobilizing the voices of many. In our case, that refers to one who facilitates the transition to a distributive economy – by developing a kernel of essential open product design – distilled from the technical contributions of many. This means, first: a person who uses institutional power, but doesn’t get institutionalized. Second, it means someone who builds  a movement, not a cult of personality – meaning a movement that distributes power – as opposed to concentrating it in a charismatic leader. Third, it means building for the long term – not creating an ephemeral internet meme.

The Co-Founder must be part of the deeper message that OSE is bringing to the world. We want to live the example – even in the early stages – of what the economy beyond artificial material scarcity would look like. Factor e Farm is such an experiment – and admittedly so – we are only now pulling out of pervasive material scarcity. In essence – the 21st century is a time where with the wise use of technology – people can regain the ability to follow their deepest pursuits – as opposed to trying to put bread on the table – as in today’s mainstream of artificial material scarcity. I clarify that I am not suggesting that the welfare state is the answer – but a state of affairs based on the highest human productivity and responsibility. I am talking about a state that returns to ideals such as those found in the early American experiment – a republic where individuals, their autonomy, responsibility – are respected. America (or fill in any country in which you reside) is losing its productivity on essential items, but creative solutions are around the corner to reinvent the local economy.

Therefore, the Co-Founder must be a generalist who enjoys the DIY ethic and is excited by participation in their own sustenance – by appreciating that such power is key not only to one’s own autonomy – but to autonomy in the greater world. Political implications are significant.

We want to empower  individuals to unleash their creative and productive powers, and we want to lead by example. We are making a claim that the best solution to a robust economy comes from an interdisciplinary approach – one of intensifying the economic capacity of any community – by intensifying information density available to and used by any community – via access to open source enterprise. The limit of this is a complete economy – and therefore autonomy on the community scale. This is not free – it comes with individuals being reskilled and reconnected – to nature and their means of survival – as a deepest form of reconnection, as a form of checks-and-balances – between humans and nature – and between humans and other humans. The implication is that individuals, to be truly empowered – not at the cost of others or at the cost of nature – have to be connected as close as possible – to their means  of survival.

The cost is not particularly high – as it should take 1-2 hours per day for an individual to provide their needs of survival. This involves mainly food production – as that is the main aspect of our survival that needs constant attention. The rest – housing, energy, and technology – are minor if these are provided by machines that follow lifetime design – and if these amchines are used with wisdom of not wasting resources.  Thus, we are not returning to the toil of repetitive labor associated with production. The only remaining barrier to widespread adoption is merely social status – perceptions that physical labor is for peons. We believe instead that real work as such is honorable – as it builds character and provides autonomy.

We thus encourage that a person at Factor e Farm spend 1-2 hours per day on survival, and the rest can be devoted to higher purpose. We want to live this at Factor e Farm, even in our early days of today.

Do we? In a way – yes – in so far as all of us here spend all of our time pursuing higher purpose. At the same time, we are pioneers and startup entrepreneurs , so we ‘work’ all day. And we don’t have food and energy autonomy yet – so we haven’t proved the data point of 1-2 hours of work per day. However, each of us believes that we can achieve the post-scarcity condition rather readily, and that we can demonstrate a widely adaptable pattern that can be adopted by the rest of the world.

We lack the experience to know that this is impossible, and we have the experience that knows that we should try.

The point remains – that in order to be responsible, we want to engage in as much productive activity for survival as possible – and with appropriate tools – the cost of living goes to negligible. It is expected from Factor e Farm participants that they have a DIY ethic of engaging with their means of existence.

By developing further infrastructure tools – we aim to demonstrate that startup – of a productive farm, manufacturing operation, or whole community – would cost, say $100k, as opposed to $1M. And taken to the extreme, with division of labor and metal melting of steel from scrap – this cost goes down to $10k or so – while retaining industrial efficiency that allows for a modern standard of living – and about 10x more free time than the existing economy.

Mainstream beliefs dictate that specialization is a more efficient route, and we are experimenting to prove that flexible fabrication - is more efficient. Pure specialization is more efficient under certain condition of technological capacity and information access of a system in question. At the same time, the efficiency of specialization discounts the inefficiency of large scale at which trade occurs (mainly global geopolitics), and relies on the fallacy of  per-capita wealth increase – where the reality is that the actual distribution of wealth is decreasing (ie, there is a larger relative number of destitute people today than at any time in history).  Specialization is valid under the assumption of proprietary information and large capitalization costs. Open source reduces these barriers, allowing productive capacity on a smaller scale. How much smaller? We aim to demonstrate that a 200 acre nominal parcel can attain modern civilization (ie, the unprecedented requirement of 1-2 hours per day of labor for the populace, and pursuit of higher purpose in the majority of the time). This is the order of Factor e Farm. As Co-Founder, you are expected to respect this as the prime objective of the Factor e Farm – not in an abstract sense – but as a near-term (~3 year) objective – which includes the smelting of silicon and extraction of aluminum from clay as realistic, on-site processes.

Practical Skill Requirements

The above was more of the philosophical description of needs for the Co-Founder. More practically, we are looking for:

• A high level of effectiveness and followthrough on accomplishing stated goals
• Excellent communication, organizing, and project management skills
• Technological and computer literacy – enabling quick understanding of key issues
• Creative problem solving, interdisciplinary approach, fearlessness in boundary crossing
• Ability to be bold and to publish early and often
• Ability to involve others and to play part on a greater team
• Ability to take on initiative and to take responsibility for their living/working environment

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We are proud to release version 0.01 of the Civilization Starter Kit DVD – our OSE Christmas Gift to the World for 2011.

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Generation 3 is now under evaluation at Factor e Farm and at Creation Flame. Generation 1 electronics included 2 solenoid driver boards borrowed from the RepRap project, and is robust but not recommended due to unnecessary complexity. Generation 2 included consolidation of the 2 driver boards into one, in surface mount format, and is proven in field testing with over 100 hours of brick pressing. Generation 1 and 2 included the breakout board, and the Generation 3 redesign eliminates the need for the breakout board by including sensor connections right on the driver board. This reduces controller complexity and cost significantly over Generation 2.

Furthermore, the organization of the controller box has been streamlined, the materials required for the sensor unit have been reduced, and the electro-hydraulic integration now assembles more intuitively.

We aim to reduce the complexity of the CEB controller to the point that a novice could build it in a few hours from available parts. The video shows evidence that this is possible. This way, the average non-expert can build, maintain, and troubleshoot the controller with ease.

First-hand etching of the revised solenoid driver board (see 20 videos of this process on YouTube playlist) established that the toner transfer process (melting ink from a printed sheet of glossy paper to a copper clad board using an iron) succeeded inconsistently despite meticulous efforts. Consequently, we are opting to mill circuit boards using an open source CNC circuit mill.

Anyone who has built a proven CNC circuit mill such as Snaplock - if you are interested in directly engaging in collaborative replication of the machine you have constructed (either I would travel to your area or you would arrive onsite at Factor e Farm) – please contact me at ykang404@gmail.com.

Yoonseo Kang

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Practical Post Scarcity from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

This is the core of Open Source Ecology’s work on the Global Village Construction Set. Scenes from hay baling onwards are developments taking place at Factor e Farm in Missouri, USA. This is part of going the last mile on the construction toolkit part of the Global Village construction set.

We are busy preparing the Civilization Starter Kit DVD. The latest need is professional fabrication drawings – the step beyond documenting the complete fabrication procedure. See sample fabrication drawing - a compact, information-packed format. Compare this to a sample fabrication procedure on the CEB press, which is much more expanded. We currently have complete 3D CAD of the CEB Press, and most of the Tractor and Pulverizer. The Power Cube is primarily in Sketchup.

If you can help us on the fabrication drawings, starting with the CEB press – let us know. We would like this to be done by Dec. 25. 2011.  We are looking for volunteers or paid professionals. The Kickstarter funding can be allocated for this purpose as needed. The timing is tight. While we will have full fabrication procedures, we don’t know if professional fabrication drawings will be done by Christmas. In that case, they will be added as soon as they are generated – as we would like to make replication as straightforward as possible. The professional fabrication drawings are what one can hand over to a metal fabricator to produce a machine anywhere in the world where fabrication shops exist. This capacity is worth millions, so help us share that with the world. Email me at opensourceecology at gmail dot com to help.

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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.

If you can come to FeF in the next two weeks – we need to draw up plans for the workshop and living units. We rented a house in town for 6 people, as our living units won’t be ready to move in until mid February. We still would like to compose full cad for the Dimensional Sawmill and Loader Mounted Cement Mixer.  We also need a full embodied energy calculation for our construction. The biggest task is composing crystal clear instructionals. If you do CAD, email me or Mike so we can pass on a few CAD tasks – generating parts drawings and fabrication drawings – where the latter are annotated parts drawings focusing on procedure rather than part dimensions.

In this update, I further emphasize the need for a Project Co-founder to join us at FeF full time as a startup instigator. The project is accelerating, and we need a superstar team. The infrastructure improvements at FeF  will provide space for 10 additional developers – on our way to a world class development facility. We’re cracking barriers to a lifestyle of meaning and contribution to the world. Boundary-smashing, radical iconoclasts only at this point on-site, please. We look forward to remote collaboration from others.

I am being explicit about full shakedown of our tool kit for agriculture, construction, and digital fabrication next year – as a dogfooding prerequisite for further progress – and proof of economic significance. We are looking for a full time farmer/scientist, master builder, and experienced fabricator/machinist to join us on site. Once again – as enterprise instigators, not employees. The reward will be significance of Nobel peace prize caliber at the end of the day – as cracking the post-scarcity economy solution is a deep solution for many world ills.

As a personal aside – I’ve been critiqued many times for my hyperfocus on the 50 GVCS tools, in that I prioritize technology over community. So let me clarify: it takes hyper-radical super-freaks to pull this off. It’s not a walk in the park – general rules of conduct here do not apply. Just today I had a lengthy discussion on the topic. My response is that we cannot even pretend to talk about community development – in a broad sense – unless we address the underlying material scarcity condition that pervades society and affects us in every way. It takes quite a crew to create the alternative –  committing for an intense but finite duration – until the job is done. It is in this context that I call out for completion by year end 2012. Personally – I want to move on to other things. I’ve been told that starting a family might be a good thing.

I am not blind to the power of mind of matter, as I am a meditator – but I strategically choose to postpone the community building aspect once the GVCS is complete. In the meantime – my pastime is delivery of product. I make this choice understanding the tactical resource-scarcity-based difficulty of pulling off this GVCS beehag. We are engaging the impossible on an even more ridiculous time frame. That’s why we will succeed. It is my pleasure that there are 5 die-hards here right now – converging here from their far-away lairs of comfort in the middle of winter – on a mission greater than themselves.

For me, the commitment means complete focus on gnerating economic power (the GVCS) from which we can lay a solid foundation for developing communities – which any interested person would be able to do anywhere. I would love it if someone else could demonstrate that they could generate sufficient resources to develop the GVCS on a 1 year time scale while enjoying a ‘normal lifestyle.’ That’s a contradiction, by definition, yet an expectation of many. Getting there is hard. Once the road is pioneered, everyone can repeat the same. If this is music to your ears – welcome home.

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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. Because the cylinder will be attaching to both the upper and lower arms, the simplest way for the blade to cut will be angularly, meaning it will be rotating about the pin. For an angular cut, I’ll need to know:

• How much force is necessary for this capacity
• What angle the blade will enter and leave the steel
• Where the blade will need to be vertically on the lower arm with relation to the cutting table.
• How thick the blade needs to be

One solution would be to find another ironworker and reverse-engineer the shear. If I can get the dimensions of the shearing arm on another 120 ton ironworker, I can derive the necessary force for shearing 1” x 12”, and imitate the blade placement.

The other option would be to find the necessary force and force placement via CAE analysis. If it helps, I know that it requires 120T applied vertically with a 6° blade rake to shear the 1”x12”.

The last thing I need is to know the necessary blade thickness.  If I find the thickness for the flat shear or angle blade, we will build our own blades by machining tool steel and getting it professionally hardened. If we can’t find the info, we will have to buy the blades and then copy them for a future prototype.  We have smaller capacity ironworkers at my grandfather’s shop, with a 1”x6” capacity, and 2 like this both have .75” thick blades. I’m not sure if the thickness would increase or not for a 12” cut.

My basic design will be done soon after I get this information, and then we will have it analyzed with CAE to make sure it will work.  My goal is to be able to start fabricating it by Christmas, with the prototype completed and documented by the end of January.

If any readers have access to another 120T ironworker, any of the blades, or know someone capable of doing the computer analysis, please contact me: Brianna (at) kufadesigns (dot) com. Also, if you have any good design ideas, don’t be afraid to contribute on the wiki page.

Worst case scenario, if I can’t find this info, I can make the blade move vertically, but this would require much more steel and a more complicated design, so this should be avoided if possible.

Thanks for your help,

Brianna Kufa

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I’d like to express the intentions of publishing what is meant to become one of the most important publications of this decade – and I am inviting as many of you to participate in this creation as possible. We have 2 weeks left. We are calling out for the Factor e Farm Winter Farm-Out:  crowd sourcing assistance from all over the world on the numerous tasks left.

The core deliverable is the 4 core machines as described in the Kickstarter – plans, instructionals, and construction results. The Factor e Team is working on this – from CAD to builds to instructionals. We will provide as many supporting extras as possible – analyses, modeling, videos, econbomic analysis, enterprise models, house plans, additional prototype designs, and more – depending  upon the results of the Factor e Farm-Out.

The ToC shows the extent of the first DVD release – at least 1000 human hours of work still needed to be compiled the wealth of designs, instructionals, and techniques. We currently have 5 people on site at Factor e Farm working on it, with 3 additional people doing construction. This is an active call to recruit at least 6 more for the next 2 weeks. We rented a house in town to assist in this process, as our housing is still missing a roof. If you are in the Kansas City area, please come on down to help us lay brick for a day or more – we are doing so under the roof of the workshop – rain, snow, or shine. Interestingly – one can still lay brick in subzero weather – if you use antifreeze to bond bricks. Next week, it will be highs in the 40s, so it’s relatively comfortable.

The scope of the DVD is not only a report of the 4 machines in the construction part of the tool kit – tractor, CEB press, soil pulverizer, and Power Cube – but also to collate all prototype results to date. This is intended to be a comprehensive report of up-to-date results. This includes construction techniques and results.

To help, please review the ToC for perspective, or go straight to the priority Task List. This is a dynamic list that will be updated constantly until Dec. 24.  The task list shows status and further details. Please review the tasks, offer your assistance, or pass this on to capable friends. Please tweet and blog this. We have funding that will be allocated if we can not find qualified volunteers. The tasks are varied – from further prototyping, documentation, architecture,  video, graphics, technical writing, organizing, planning, engineering, analysis, calculations, simulations, diagrams, refactoring, publishing, editing – you name it.

The DVD will be as good as the generosity of all the contributors in this mini Apollo program for the GVCS. If you contribute, you will be one of the Civilization Starter Kit DVD authors, acknowledged in the credits. History unfolds.

Here are the top 11 tasks that we need help with. Contact me at opensourceecology at gmail dot com to help.

1. Mike Apostol is working on the full professional CAD of the 4 machines.  See status, and then check out the needs and requests. Approximately 100 hours of assemblies and parts need to be turned into technical drawings on the CEB and Pulverizer. There are more for the tractor and Power Cube. Contact Mike Apostol to take on some of these drawings – mike.apostol at gmail dot com
   1. CEB has 28 assembly/weldment drawings and about 75 piece part drawings
   2. Pulverizer – 5 assemblies/weldments and 30 piece parts
2. SnapLock CNC Circuit Mill – We have etched improved solenoid controller boards for the CEB press with hit-and-miss success. We want to build the CNC Circuit Mill to help us mill these reliably, where the circuit mill does both the paths and through-holes. The only proven and reliable open source CNC circuit mill that we know of is SnapLock. If you have built one or know someone that has – we are interested in visiting with that person for a dedicated visit where we prepare everything beforehand, and do a build-out in a weekend. This could be me traveling for a visit, or someone coming to Factor e Farm for a brief Dedicated Project Visit. Email me if you can help on this.
3. Lead Editor for DVD – compiling content, editing, managing contributors. Managing fabrication procedure writing.
4. DVD production – interface design and DVD burn
5. Indexing of YouTube videos on my channel. Remote video editing can be done – CEB Construction, CEB fabrication, Power Cube fabrication, tractor fabrication, solenoid driver fabrication, soil pulverizer fabrication, and others. Contact me if you can write a script from existing documentation.
6. Product Ecology model animation explaining entire set
7. Product Ecology model animation explaining construction part of tool set
8. Architectural drawings for workshop and living unit, and model 40 square meter microhouse
9. Embodied energy calculations of construction process
10. CAE analysis on critical components of the 4 machines
11. Product manual production for 4 machines. Techical writing. Includes repair and troubleshooting, disassembly videos.

This is a start – let’s get going.

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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.

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