This week’s episode of Factor e Live features the CEB press in action (in addition to the documentation of our first complete solar panels). It is a perfect union – the LifeTrac open source tractor powers the Factor e Liberator CEB Press. Play on words included.
The good news is – it appears that we will obtain not only the 3-5 bricks per minute with The Liberator, but more like 6-8 bricks per minute with an automated version of the machine.
If you experience what this means in practice, it means that a single person cannot possibly keep up with shoveling the soil into the machine fast enough to keep up with production ability.
With optimization, I think we will get that figure up to 10 bricks per minute. This breaks further ground in cost reduction at least another factor of 2.
It is clear that keeping up with loading soil in the machine is the bottleneck. To address this, the next step is building a rototiller for LifeTrac. As such, LifeTrac can dig soil, till it, and load it into the machine. For anything more than 3 brick/minute production, we are considering building a secondary stationary hopper on top of the existing moving hopper – to facilitate soil loading. with the front-end loader.
As far as LifeTrac, we are still operating in idle – and the CEB was tested with low hydraulic flow on top of that. As we get used to LifeTrac and its limits, we will be more brave in tapping its full power. Remember that this is still an experimental machine.
These are exciting times. Episode 8 also shows how we completed building the first of our photovoltaic panels. We are well on our way to demonstratng 100% self-reliance in energy and housing, some of the more important aspects of Global Village construction.
All in all, Linux abolished the Windows tax. Similarly, The Liberator will annihilate any housing crisis known to man. As in – mortgage? What is a mortgage?
Really amazing stuff guys! You’re *really* starting to make real progress… the CEB in particular, although it looks like the tractor needs some ballast at the back. 🙂
Looking forward to the next ep!
Great job.
Seeing that tractor in action gave me goosebumps of joy.
This should provide a robust system for the Build A Village ’08 project. OSE MidMo team members here in columbia are very excited to be using this system. As soon as we get our funding approved we will come out in droves all october and into november.
[…] out next year” since then. This has not yet materialized. My recent personal experience in self-made solar panels is that it cost us $2/watt in materials just to turn donated solar cells into panels. Moreover, my […]
[…] the CEB press. We ran the CEB press successfully with our open source tractor, which we showed in Episode 8 of Factor e Live. Now it’s production time – pressing about eight thousand bricks – as the […]
I would like more info on where to get those solar panels that were showed in you utube video…and more instructions on how to assemble and use on my house!!!
Daniel Gravel
323-557-0808