CEB Compressive Strength Test Results
Our compressive strength tests have revealed that we could, in principle, build a 795 foot high wall with our unstabilized compressed earth blocks. Here’s how we arrived at this. Prototype I of The Liberator lay gathering dust for over a year after...
Getting Ready to Ship
The field testing of The Liberator Beta v2.0 is complete. If you look back at the 8-12 brick per minute goals in the last link, you’ll observe that we surpassed this with 13-16 bricks per minute in practice. I love it when a plan comes together....
Pressing Rate Maxed Out at 16 Bricks Per Minute
Speed trials on our automatic, open source CEB press, The Liberator, are complete. We achieved a maximum brick pressing rate of 16 bricks per minute, or less than 3 seconds per brick. We have run sufficient tests and worked out the bugs in the control...
Initial CEB Field Testing Report – The Liberator Beta v2.0
It was raining for a week straight, and this Thursday, we finally documented initial field operations with our open source CEB press – The Liberator Beta v2.0. We used the soil pulverizer to pulverize the soil, and we used the tooth-bar bucket to...
The Liberator Beta 2.0: Machine Overview
Things are looking up on the fully automatic, open source, CEB press – The Liberator Beta v2.0. We finally have the machine ready to run in field tests. The basic operational description is here, from the front: and from the back: Some noteworthy...
13 Bricks Per Minute… and Counting
Today’s goal was to determine maximum pressing rates attainable with The Liberator, the open source CEB press. We obtained data to verify some of the predicted rates shown in italics in this table. To boost morale, we started by pressing thin, 2...
CEB Automation with Sensors
For the last two months, we’ve been developing and implementing Prototype 2 automatic controls for the open source Compressed Eearth Brick (CEB) press. We had initial results from Prototype 1 controls, without sensors, back in November. This time,...
Fabrication Ergonomics Continued
Here we continue to document the fabrication ergonomics from where we left off on the Compressed Eearth Brick (CEB) press. Transfer punch and drill holes for frame – 3 hours. Mount the arms – 1.5 hours. Build soil-loading drawer – 3...
Fabrication Ergonomics
We’re now in production of the open source, Compressed Earth Block (CEB) press. Here we document the fabrication ergonomics for the first steps in the build. This is for those of you considering replication. It took 11.5 hours to cut the steel for...
Dedicated Project Visits Continued
William Cleaver will be joining us at Factor e Farm on May 1 for a Dedicated Project Visit. He’s coming from across the big pond – from the United Kingdom – and we are planning for a 3 month stay. William is not a novice to creative...
