51–60 of 213 posts
You're going to have little two man shops in Africa and Asia cranking these out and changing agriculture in their part of the world.
This demonstrates the power of open source. These engineers are to be commended.
I 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, sinc…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'd imagine you also need repositories of processes and assembly instructions.
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…
> no lights. this is a nonstarter for every farmer that wakes up at 4 am.
Not to dismiss those concerns but I would say they could be addressed in later versions of this machine. For lighting, after-market solutions or even duct taping a powerful flashlight or two would do the trick.
The market is that of farmers with little to no mechanization. The aim is to be made out of readily available materials and to be as simple to repair as possible.
I 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.
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.
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 frequently. Without A, making grid beams is a lot more work than just purpose-cutting your pieces, and without B, you don't really have a reason to drill all those extra holes.
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…
Are you sure? In Switzerland, most farms I know have at least one dusty three-phase power outlet somewhere in a shed. Sometimes just 16A, but that should be sufficient for many use cases.
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…
> some guy in Missouri to even consider designing his own bakery oven when you can get them on Alibaba for $500 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 ha…
For some odd reason my mind kept the "Open Source" limited to digital tech spaces, but it's not!