31–40 of 213 posts
I wonder why it's articulated. Edit: drive shaft wear. It just seems to be an extra complication and harder to steer if not hydraulic assisted.
i work on heavy equipment such as tractors, diesel trucks and excavators in the USA. this is an excellent start, but its a long way from a tractor. some of the pitfalls that need to be addressed: "Modular Power Unit" is undefined. can i run it on white gas? diesel? kerosene? what is the engine displacement? air cooled or liquid? If we mean to say this tractor is all-electric, keep in mind most small farms arent equip…
Lack of 3 point hitch and PTO would rule it out completely for me.
Hydraulic motors with PTO splined shafts are widely available like this: https://www.surpluscenter.com/Hydraulics/Hydraulic-Motors/Ag...
Of course, being older and wiser now I'm less excited about the fantasy of using my brains and grit to rebuild society after the coming apocalypse. And if you are a villager of some description trying to use machinery to improve your prospects you're probably better off buying something old and used, or cheap and Chinese. Over the last 10 years the number of (mostly Chinese) companies making okay-quality cheap industrial equipment of all types has grown massively, and I've seen this equipment being used more and more in the developing world. Cheap is relative, of course, and many places do not make it easy to buy anything due to payment infrastructure, shipping, and customs costs.
So on the one hand it's a bit silly for some guy in Missouri to even consider designing his own bakery oven when you can get them on Alibaba for $500. On the other, it's very cool and interesting, there's a lot to learn from the attempt, and there's a lot of actually useful designs already for certain situations. I wonder how much success they've had getting this information out to people who it could actually help?
Looks like it is made out of life-size meccano parts.
Man I remember reading about this in 2011 or so. I'm glad they're still doing well. It's an interesting project at the intersection of philanthropic eco-hippies and mechanical engineers which doesn't seem very common to me. Of course, being older and wiser now I'm less excited about the fantasy of using my brains and grit to rebuild society after the coming apocalypse. And if you are a villager of some description tr…
I see this project more as an experiment on how to make a functional and durable machine that is fixable when it breaks.
i work on heavy equipment such as tractors, diesel trucks and excavators in the USA. this is an excellent start, but its a long way from a tractor. some of the pitfalls that need to be addressed: "Modular Power Unit" is undefined. can i run it on white gas? diesel? kerosene? what is the engine displacement? air cooled or liquid? If we mean to say this tractor is all-electric, keep in mind most small farms arent equip…
It's been a while since I have read up on Open Source Ecology, but my memory is that modular power unit is a stand in for several options. One option is the power cube, which is a gas engine: https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/PowerCube I believe that the creator of the project uses these, and has said that there are alternatives in case gas is not available.
Man I remember reading about this in 2011 or so. I'm glad they're still doing well. It's an interesting project at the intersection of philanthropic eco-hippies and mechanical engineers which doesn't seem very common to me. Of course, being older and wiser now I'm less excited about the fantasy of using my brains and grit to rebuild society after the coming apocalypse. And if you are a villager of some description tr…
I don't think the makers of this machine believe this is a viable solution for farmers right now, but they realize that "buy it cheap from China" is becoming more and more of a problem in the long run and something that needs to be fixed. We'll have to give up on the "if it dies, just buy a new one, it's cheap anyway" philosophy sooner or later. I see this project more as an experiment on how to make a functional and…
While this solution appears fairly rudimentary, I think there's a real demand for more simplistic, compatible, and capable farm machinery when combines are a million a piece and tractors are a quarter that.
Man I remember reading about this in 2011 or so. I'm glad they're still doing well. It's an interesting project at the intersection of philanthropic eco-hippies and mechanical engineers which doesn't seem very common to me. Of course, being older and wiser now I'm less excited about the fantasy of using my brains and grit to rebuild society after the coming apocalypse. And if you are a villager of some description tr…
As someone who has worked in some parts of southern Africa decades ago, and who recently stopped buying off ali (for everything, but mostly beekeeping equipment) there is a Big Thing you are forgetting to tell: Right And Ability To Repair.
Secondhand nearly always means you can assure quality, because it has survived at least one owner. Probably decades of abuse and repairs. You can see where it was welded. You know it has survived years in heat, rain, mud and under stress.
You don't want that immersion pump of your irrigation, to break the moment you drove 150km home. Even if you can afford to buy 10 pumps and have 9 spares, you still need the time, travel and effort of replacing. Sometimes the Ali stuff is really good quality. Sometimes it isn't and there is no-way to tell.
As a beekeeper: having a hivetool break that moment the bees are becoming angry and you need to finish fast, is worth ten times that €18.00 I saved by ordering Chinese tools. Having a hive tip over because some chinese screws turned over and didn't hold a foot in place is worth a hundred times that €80 I saved by ordering a cheap Chinese knock-off.
I'm not saying Chinese fabrication equals bad quality. But I am saying that a lack of QA leads to varying quality. Which means it can be really good. But also that it can be poor. This downside risk is more than enough reason to often skip cheap Ali orders.
Man I remember reading about this in 2011 or so. I'm glad they're still doing well. It's an interesting project at the intersection of philanthropic eco-hippies and mechanical engineers which doesn't seem very common to me. Of course, being older and wiser now I'm less excited about the fantasy of using my brains and grit to rebuild society after the coming apocalypse. And if you are a villager of some description tr…
I don't think the makers of this machine believe this is a viable solution for farmers right now, but they realize that "buy it cheap from China" is becoming more and more of a problem in the long run and something that needs to be fixed. We'll have to give up on the "if it dies, just buy a new one, it's cheap anyway" philosophy sooner or later. I see this project more as an experiment on how to make a functional and…