Greetings from Factor e Farm.
Life has been busy around here.
We’re in the middle of a production run, so we’re working pretty much round the clock. What’s cool is that as we’re building things, we’re finding all these things to improve about the process. There’s a lot of room to grow, and we’re pumping out a lot.
Here’s a few photos of the past week.
Morning Meeting - Marcin, Josh, Mike, Van
- We’ve started doing morning meetings to keep everyone on the same page.
- Lots of action going down in the workshop, we’ve been building out work tables and the refined metal is piling up. Those bags are full of hydraulic fitting pieces, nuts and bolts.
- Van has been going nuts assembling LifeTrac frames. During downtime, he’s been awesome coding up some project management related stuff. We’re experimenting with different systems for this, getting ready for scaling with the huge influx of new people coming!
- Speaking of new people. This past week Josh and David came by for an awesome visit. David helped us get these lifetrac frames drilled, and Josh has been doing a lot of CEB plate cutting.
- Josh and Van have been working on a jig for welding LifeTrack tread chains together, which should massively increase our production speed.
- Mike is back with us, welding up a storm on the power cube.
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- We’re scaling up our electrical infrastructure to support our upcoming Welding Frenzy (2-3 welders going full-time), so Marcin has been busy getting everything set up for that.
- Kat came by and was very kind in planting a new tomato planter for us. Two months from now, we’ll have fresh yummyness to enjoy!
- We’re also getting ready for the Kickstarter Microfactory project launch.
Life is good!
So!
So for me personally, my week so far.
- Lots of SketchUp
- Designed a very basic muffler, (drilling holes today)
- Power cube IV proposal (in progress).
- Sketched Up a generator, generator Lifetrac mount, hydraulic motor=>generator assembly, muffler assembly, engine, workshop pieces, etc…
- First Time Cooking! Pasta w/sauce (tomatoes, onions, mustard seeds, and BACON!).
Design files for PowerCube III, IV and CEB buildings (along with everything else, will go up on OpenPario soon.) Looking forward to everyone’s feedback. Feel free to contact me at Factor (dot) Chris (at) gmail.com.
There’s talks of organizing going on with a CAD squad so we can properly get everything up to speed.
We’ve hit a few issues on the power cube design. While fully functional, it is apparently a bit more difficult to fabricate than anticipated. We hope to address this with prototype IV currently under design. (Note: the Factor e Industry Standard is 3 prototypes per product release, so going to the fourth prototype is a new procedure)
Next up, we’ve got designs for the new CEB building (which will likely be quite different from the last blog post). We’re aiming for a flexibly modular design with uber-fast construction times. I have list of those who have filled out the team culturing and listed anything architecture related, we’d like to contact you soon and get you involved in helping us design the new building. I’ve also contacted some architecture mentors.
We’ll hopefully be able to assemble a design team that can really do some cool stuff here. If any of you would interested in that discussion, please email me. Hopefully we’ll be having an online meeting here within the next week or two. Life is currently bit crazy with the production run, but we’ll see what happens!
So that was Week Two for me here. I’m exhausted, but having a blast. Stay tuned for more fun from Factor E Farm!
Goodnight!
-Chris
Thanks for another great update Chris. Guess you guys avoided some tornado action. How much did you know before heading to the farm and how much are you picking up as you go? Any advice on what to master before thinking about heading there for a work visit?
Awesome stuff!
Have you guys looked into accepting Bitcoin (open source decentralized currency) donations so far?
There are quite a few services that can get you set up using it rather quickly, like YouTipIt and MyBitcoin.
It’s appreciating quite a bit at the moment, so the sooner one gets in, the larger returns one can expect.
(I would post links, but I’m not sure if that would trigger a spam filter)
Wow! Just became aware of your work. Great stuff!!!
Are you aware of a number of farming methods being developed that could change the way food is produced.
i.e. Biochar, pyrolytic stoves for production of biochar, fungi additives to biochar, soil amendment with biochar, Yeoman’s Keline Plow for low tillage of soils. John and Nancy Todd’s “New Alchemy Movement of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s? All of these will likely become part of a sustainable farming concept.
Have a look at our web site: http://www.airterra.com
Cheers,
Rob
Brilliant, love that your keeping us updated Chris, thanks!
Looks great!!!
All my support for what you are doing. I will take a look at your design files.
How many people are you in the farm to construct and assembly things ? For how long are you staying there ?
Thanks for what you are doing, don’t stop posting some news about the work that you are doing there.
Hi Chris,
great to see people other than Marcin blogging!
I like how those sketchup designs look like. Simple, clean and nice.
That last picture with a laptop hanging in the air is hilarious btw. 😉