Four years of Open Source Ecology at the Factor E Farm: a 4-year status report
See the 4-minute video with a summary progress report on the project and their ‘Global Village Construction Set’ (GVCS):
4 Years of Factor e Farm in 4 Minutes from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.
The ‘Crash Course‘ summarizes developments for newcomers and laypeople interested in supporting the project.
Founder Marcin Jakubowski adds:
“We’re now moving onto the next phase of GVCS development, beyond the work at Factor e Farm to a global collaboration of remote prototyping work funded by further crowd sources and resource development via the nonprofit sector. We are collecting bids from global collaborators at the same time as further development and production is occurring at Factor e Farm, starting with 3 orders of the brick press – tractor – soil pulverizer. Our next steps are fabrication automation with tools like the CNC torch table and precision multimachine for fabricating even the motors and engnines, which allows people to replicate our machines from CAM files, shared globally and built locally.
It seems that this year will be a great step as the several early adopters prove the feasibility of our products. We predict that many will follow as the machines are proven in the field and as CEB houses are built.”
March 29th, 2011 at 1:34 am
This is an exciting and inspiring project. I especially like the modular approach with a single mobile power plant (tractor) used to power all kinds of equipment. Of course, this is the way much farm equipment has been designed for ages. I hope the Factor e Farm folks are making their power take-off (PTO) interface compatible with existing standards to make their tractor and implements interchangeable with existing tractors and implements.
For people who live in post-industrial nations, I also want to encourage people to recycle/refurbish/purchase used equipment which is abundant. Recycling used equipment is the most cost-effective, energy-efficient, and material-conserving solution. Of course, many consumers don’t have the expertise to refurbish things but a lot of used equipment is available in working condition. There is a also an opportunity for people with the skills to build businesses around refurbishing and repairing used equipment, and this is a very green business model.