November 1 is when I have finally returned to complete the Compressed Earth Block (CEB) press. By November 30, we will have a working CEB press, spitting out between 3-5 bricks per minute. This is the holy grail of building, as the most advanced natural building method. Read more about this from one of the leaders in CEB Machines.
I’ve already done the frame over 2 months ago. A picture can be found here at the Worknets site. Today, I started with the compression plate. I’m cutting the metal and grinding it to size. Metal pieces are shown:
Tomorrow I’ll practice welding on 1/2″ steel. I’ll take the samples over to Sweiger Shop to have them check out the weld quality before I continue. I expect to have the compression plate done by tomorrow, including the mount for the top of the hydraulic cylinder. As such, we can connect to tractor hydraulics and start testing actual cylinder motion.
Great news from the Globalvillages Yahoo group is that Sasha established contact with the inventor of the AECT CEB machine. Sasha passed the contact on to me, so I have great resource for technical review as the machine unfolds.
Here’s the juicy stuff. The CEB is our first serious attempt at verifying the open source method of economic development. We are making an essential, widely applicable, fully open source, and economically significant device – so far it promises a Factor 10 reduction in price. The end point is a fully replicable business model for fabricating these machines, as a means to right livelihood for anyone interested. We aim to test the economic model ourselves, and utilize bricks in further building of our facility.
Open source flexible fabrication is the vision. Check out the technology development wiki. Evolve to freedom.
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-Marcin
