What would be the ballpark price of the materials for this?
Open Source Tractor
41–50 of 213 posts
Re: Open Source Tractor
#42i 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…
> Cab frame has no safety glass or panels, so the operator enjoys every rock and every tree branch :(. a shade canopy is a nice add as well.
These were luxuries only our nicest tractors had growing up ~20 years ago. I imagine the market for an Open Source Tractor can similarly make do without.
Re: Open Source Tractor
#43Ahh I was thinking about traktor the DJ software. The open source alternative for this would be mixxx: https://mixxx.org/
Re: Open Source Tractor
#44I wonder why the frame is made out of bolted beams with holes in them, are bolts and holed beams easy to find or something? I mean I can imagine that if you have the tools to build those, you'd have a welder as well. Granted, welding might be a bit more challenging than cutting beams and drilling holes.
Perforated steel tube is a readily available material and a ratchet is a cheaper and much lower skill tool than a welder. Also seems like customization is one of the project goals. I would imagine that if wanted to weld it instead the design would also work for you.
Where do you get 1/4 wall perforated tube? It sounds expensive compared to regular box tube straight from the mill. And each bolted connection made with graded fasteners is going to cost several dollars, which adds up very quickly.
A circular saw, a mag drill, and a stick welder could take you a long way on a project like this, and you could use regular steel plate, tube, angle bars, etc. I think a lot of cost and weight is being sacrificed in the name of "modularity", for questionable benefit.
Re: Open Source Tractor
#45I wonder why the frame is made out of bolted beams with holes in them, are bolts and holed beams easy to find or something? I mean I can imagine that if you have the tools to build those, you'd have a welder as well. Granted, welding might be a bit more challenging than cutting beams and drilling holes.
Perforated steel tube is a readily available material and a ratchet is a cheaper and much lower skill tool than a welder. Also seems like customization is one of the project goals. I would imagine that if wanted to weld it instead the design would also work for you.
For steel as thick as this, stick welding is very forgiving though. Big heatsinks, hard to melt through. Most people can probably learn to make (ugly but) strong enough welds in an afternoon.
Re: Open Source Tractor
#46i 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…
> Cab frame has no safety glass or panels, so the operator enjoys every rock and every tree branch :(. a shade canopy is a nice add as well. These were luxuries only our nicest tractors had growing up ~20 years ago. I imagine the market for an Open Source Tractor can similarly make do without.
Rocks and branches are a once-in-a-while problem. Dust is an everyday use problem, and in an era where everything is doused in pesticides and herbicides I don't think it's optional.
Re: Open Source Tractor
#47I genuinely wonder how it can compete against any existing tractors. You can order a brand new tractor for 5 grand [1].
Is this going to cost less or come with more capabilities?
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/4wd-wheel-farm-agricu...
Re: Open Source Tractor
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
The modular power unit is able to be swapped in and out of the various projects that require it that this team creates. Beyond that I don't know anything about it. There's also a compressed earth block machine and other things that use it. This team has been working on this since approximately 2011? It was started by a former nuclear engineer named Marcin Jakubowski. They're based out of Missouri and they dog-food th…
I just wanted to comment today that beside OSS, SciHub and Library Genesis we need Blueprint Hub to move Civilizarion forward. Happy that some people work on it.
What are modern blueprints, PDF?
Sounds like a fairly simple project.
Re: Open Source Tractor
#49I went looking for specialty equipment for moving logs a few years ago while researching a restoration project. That equipment is super expensive, so I went looking for a DIY solution, expecting to find something along the lines of the construction philosophy of the OST project. I know my way around a wrench and bolting something together is no problem for me. Especially if I can take it apart again to store it, since I'll need this thing about .75 times a year.
I didn't find it. What I found was a handful of farmer types who had welded up their own solutions, who stopped mid-how-to to espouse the liberating power of learning to weld mild steel on your own. Paying someone to weld for you is super expensive, and alarmingly so if you live far out of town.
We know from CivE disaster/case studies that bolts through square tubing - especially through the ends of square tubing - have failure modes that are not obvious even to construction workers, let alone you or I. Might be that the OST project should be considering welding as a base skill for assembling a tractor by hand. Especially if anyone is going to make it earn its living by dragging around heavy, high-friction things like dirt.
Re: Open Source Tractor
#50Patents expire after 20 years or so. Why not just take a 25 year old tractor, 3d model it, make your small improvements and updates, and then start working on value adds like parts pipelines, data & gps driven agriculture, etc