Heavy Duty Lathes, Chickens, Heavy Hoes, MicroTracs, and Soil Pulverizers
Any good village should not go without the above. The heavy duty, 12″ chuck, 20 hp, open source lathe design is complete. Yes, 20 hp from LifeTrac. It’s $360 in parts – which is awesome because because these things sell for thousands....
Second Prototypes: LifeTrac, CEB – Plus MicroTrac
Lots of progress here. On the ground, we’re completing Hexacube 2 today for interim housing, with our friend O.R.. On the technology development pipeline, we published specifications for the steam engine, pyrolysis oil production, flash steam generator,...
Large Hopper Mechanism
Based on some feedback from the CEB Hopper Problem Statement in the last post, here is a conceptual solution. This solution is readily doable using techniques available to us, and requires an additional ~$400 in CEB infrastructure material costs. We can...
Development Update
There’s nothing as valuable for us at this point in our organizational evolution as completing the full CEB product cycle, to take the CEB press from prototype to market. We spawned some publicity, and much is happening in the background. The viral...
CEB, Hexacube, and Hexayurt: Side by Side
We are posting a video update on the CEB flex fab workshop addition, plus news on the first Hexacube solar cubicle that we built in the short time that Nate and Ama were here on a visit. There is interesting information on our newly built stove –...
Lifetime Design Buildings at Forty Three Cents Per Square Foot
We have demonstrated $4/sq. ft. costs for lifetime building in the last post – based on using on-site earth as a low cost building material. When our CEB machine is optimized to 3000 bricks per day, this option becomes really attractive as a viable...
It’s Over Our Heads
The roof is coming into place quickly. We will have the entire structure closed off – including a living roof covered with soil and straw – hopefully by today. Through major catastrophe – a part of the wall collapsing because the bricks...
The Brick that Broke the Camel’s Back
I have a lot to say about where I am, about what I’m doing, about what I’m feeling and about bricks. And no pictures to say it with. So, please be persistent and listen to what I have to say and perhaps we’ll all be the wiser for it....
Supernatural Wall
The CEB wall is not only made from local earth, but it also has composted manure mortar. This was not our first choice, but part of emergency Plan B. The ground is pretty much frozen here, and we can no longer make earth slurry mortar. In our case, mortar...
First Open Source CEB Wall Section Laid
Here is the process of laying up CEB blocks for our digital fabrication facility:
