CEB Press/Documentation Log

This article was created to mark status and progress on drafting complete, working documentation for building the CEB Press.

Progress to date (23 September 2011)
Howard Agnew began working on a word processing document in OpenOffice, intended to be published as a .PDF for general release, to create a complete document putting all information together for someone to build the CEB Press. Manufacturing instructions with accompanying diagrams, Bill of Materials including all materials and tools required to build the CEB Press, and any related information.

The documents need to be easily followed and understood by laypersons, so no assumptions should be made about the end-user's knowledge of machining, welding or other essential skills. The documentation should be made as clear, complete and un-intimidating as possible.

To that end, upon completing the manufacturing instructions for the first component of the CEB Press (the CEB Press/Manufacturing Instructions/Arms - primary), slight discrepancies were found in the presentation of information between diagram and text that could be confusing to unskilled builders: The dimensional measurements in the diagram were in feet-inches, and half of the dimensionals were measured from each edge out of necessity to avoid readability-impeding clutter from all dimensionals originating from the same edge; in the text documentation, all distance measurements to locate where the appropriate punch holes go, distances were measured in pure inches and all from the same edge. Per advice from Brianna, machinists prefer to work in pure inches (instead of feet-inches), so the solution was to alter the dimensional text on the Sketchup drawings so they read in pure inches, and right-edge measurement equivelancy was added in parenthesis for the punch hole location specifications in the text for the holes marked with right edge-originating dimensionals in the Sketchup diagrams.

Future updates to Sketchup diagrams for use in both the Wiki instruction articles and the word processing document should follow the convention of reading in inches only instead of feet-inches. Text should be carefully matched to the diagrams to avoid confusion.

Thus far, only the Primary Arms have gone through a thorough looking-over with a current builder (Brianna). Because the specifications and Sketchup models had been found to be obsolete, it is reasonable to expect specifications for all the parts are similarly out of date as well as the complete CEB Press Sketchup model.

Howard Agnew is currently a candidate to join the Factor e Farm prototyping center. When his move there is complete, his primary task and focus will be on achieving Marcin Jakubowski's goal of completing documentation by Christmas. Collaboration could prove crucial to achieving this goal, as the time needed to create individual models can be reduced with parallel Sketchup modelling on the parts when an on-the-ground person at Factor e Farm can acquire the newest specifications to update existing Sketchup models or make new drawings.

The immediate current status is that the word processing documentation page for the Primary Arms is complete, with updated Sketchup Models. The models need to replace the current ones displayed in the article page.

Updated specifications need to be obtained for the remaining parts. Going in order of the part header on the wiki, the next part to review and update is the Secondary Arms. Howard is awaiting updated specs from Brianna for this part.