Open Source Microfactory Script
We can convert rocks, plants, water, and sunlight into the substance of modern civilization. That's what modern industry is doing on the global scale already. We think it can be done better on the scale of a community. Like Shumacher and Gandhi, we think that Small is Beautiful - so we're developing the Open Source Microfactory.
What are the limits of the open source production – for enabling communities to capture local wealth and keep it from leaking out? What if every community could produce its own cars, windmills and solar energy equipment, food, even bioplastics and semiconductors?
Those of us who are paying attention to open source physical production have already seen a number of amazing results. These capacities now include 3D printing – such as the RepRap Project, which allows you to build a 3D printer for $400 in parts, whereas commercial printers used to cost $10k prior to the advent of RepRap. These include Protei – the open source, remote controlled oil-spill cleanup drones – which are to be run via a massive multiplayer online game? Or how about DIY Biology – open source tools for gene sequencing? Or open source MRI that can drive down the cost of healthcare in certain backward countries? (slide: the USA). How about an open source 5-axis CNC torch/router table (slide: this project from Kickstarter) or open source industrial robot (slide: OSE industrial robot icon)? Manufacturing tools are becoming open source, and we're contributing with the Open Source Micro-factory (slide: Microfactory Product Ecology) - a critical building block for any civilization-from-scratch building effort.
The Microfacotry involves the full production chain from melting metal (induction furnace icon) to precision machining (cnc multimachine) and automation (industrial robot) and many processes in between. It includes other computer-controlled fabrication tools (reprap, torch table, circuit maker, industrial robot, laser cutter icons). Our machines are designed such that machines can make replicas of themselves - becoming self-replicating (slide: cnc multimachine + induction furnace working on scrap metal yield cnc multimachine and induction furnace (simplified replication graphic)). We are including circuit makers (slide: circuit maker slide) to make the electronics required to make some of the machines, and we are including an induction furnace to generate steel from scrap. This allows us to make all the parts for building tools like tractors and cars, (slide: add onto the induction furnace slide the engines, motors, generators, one by one) their engines, motors, and power generators, – at the cost of scrap metal plus human skill. This is intended for a new, robust productive engine of Industry 2.0 – a scenario of distributive, local production via flexible fabrication, fueled by a global repository of open source design. We are including even the production of cutting and welding gas from water and electrical generators for producing electricity from local biomass fuel pellets. With the tools of the Open Source Micro-factory, our goal is to demonstrate that we can build other tools that allow us to enjoy all of modern technology up to 90s level of semiconductor fabrication – in computer controlled clean-rooms made from compressed earth bricks.
The slide shows the circuit maker as the core for making various electrical devices like welders, inverters, induction furnaces - and torching equipment like the oxyhydrogen generator and a critical CNC tool like the stepper motor controller for controlling precise motion. Then with the induction furnace, we can take scrap steel, to make the CNC multimachine, and the Multimachine can produce anything from steam engines, hydraulic motors, and generators. This way, we can make cars, tractors, trucks, and windmills - at the cost of scrap metal.You can convert raw metal to precision metal with the surface grinder, so you can make precision equipment. Add some automation like the industrial robot to take care of your repetitive tasks. Add brute effects such as ironworker for cutting 1" metal and holes in it, and then you can power this entire infrastructure either with biomass pellets from grass burned in a steam engine, or from batteries that you charge with your generator.
We've seen many promises of techno-utopias in years past – but ours is not the same. We are injecting a measure of techno-reality – by opensourcing the wheel rather than reinventing the wheel – to make technology appropriate, not frivolous or destructive. Does it look like we're developing technology? Actually, we are developing a human interface to technology -- so that we can use technology responsibly – machines for the service of humans, not for humans to serve the Machine. Open Source Production can take us half way to a better world. The other half is evolving as humans. If we aradicate artificial scarcity, then we have a hope to grow as human beings instead of continuing to struggle with material security as the ongoing underlying force in human relations. It is our hope that the work of Open Source Ecology helps to get us closer in that direction – and evolving to freedom.
