Dovetails nicely with the whole Right To Repair shit that farmers are currently having to go through with John Deere.
Open Source Tractor
61–70 of 213 posts
Re: Open Source Tractor
#62Patents 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
Modeling a tractor in CAD isn't the issue. Manufacturing it is.
A 25 year old tractor design (probably out to 75+ year old tractors even) still has hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure and tooling behind it. Molds or dies for a single part can easily reach into 6 figures, without taking into account the $10 million injection molding machine.
The simplifications you could do would be limited, as every design decision affects the placement and access to a dozen other parts.
Take a part like this, which is for a Deere 750 (small tractor) released in 1989: https://www.compactractorparts.com/tractor-parts/john-deere/...
I could model that in CAD in under an hour. Lining up manufacturing is a minimum 12 month process with preexisting relationships, and would take upwards of $250k to get in the door. This also doesn't take into account the "societal collapse" angle - post-apocalypse there's no way to make that yourself, and manufacturers in China would presumably no longer be an option.
Re: Open Source Tractor
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Not sure, but we definitely made extensive use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers when I was growing up. Of course, to your point, that doesn’t mean that kind of exposure is safe.
Re: Open Source Tractor
#64Is there something equivalent to a small robot? An open source platform for an all terrain outdoor robotic platform would be pretty useful as well
Re: Open Source Tractor
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Are the people likely to use this already working unprotected around pesticides? If so, what difference would it make that they’re now sitting in a tractor? If not, why would having a tractor cause then to start? Or is your guess that they’re swapping from a tractor with protection?
Re: Open Source Tractor
#66Patents 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
It's not just about patents - it's about easy, cheap building with limited access to tools and materials.
Re: Open Source Tractor
#67This is truly mind blowing. For some odd reason my mind kept the "Open Source" limited to digital tech spaces, but it's not!
another related term is Free Culture, in analogy to Free Software
Re: Open Source Tractor
#68We need more projects like this.
Re: Open Source Tractor
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's conceptually gridbeam. https://gridbeam.xyz/ General construction kit for real world applications. In theory you could take a machine apart and use the beams for some other machine. A smaller kit could build any of the machine designs as needed.
It's surprisingly hard to find information about grid-beam online. I got this book years ago. Never really did anything with it, but it has a lot more examples: https://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Grid-Beam-Constructing/dp/0... The problem with grid-beam is that it really only seems to make sense if you A) have lots of grid-beams in various sizes already, and B) are making, taking apart, and repurposing things frequentl…
I've built a ton of stuff with grid beam. I never drilled my own holes. For big stuff, like making office furniture [1], I buy "pre-drilled" aluminum beams from McMaster-Carr [2]. I would buy lots of long lengths, then cut down to the required size as needed. And years ago, I also "miniaturized" grid beam down to Lego-compatible, 3D printable components that I use for prototyping [3].
The grid beam book talks a lot about what you need to make beams from scratch. You don't have to do that. You can buy (or print!) beams and get to work right away.
[1]: https://twitter.com/hugs/status/707381021646323712
[2]: https://www.mcmaster.com/8809T7-8809T21/
[3]: https://bitbeam.org/
Re: Open Source Tractor
#70i 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…
> its certainly lacking.
I'm so old I remember Microsoft's white papers on how shitty Linux was, how it couldn't do this and that, etc.
But the cool thing was, like this tractor, you could fix it yourself.