[HN Gopher] Open Source Tractor
___________________________________________________________________
Open Source Tractor
Author : vincent_s
Score : 614 points
Date : 2021-10-11 12:55 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (opensourceecology.dozuki.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (opensourceecology.dozuki.com)
| nimbius wrote:
| i work on heavy equipment such as tractors, diesel trucks and
| excavators in the USA. this is an excellent start, but its a long
| way from a tractor.
|
| some of the pitfalls that need to be addressed:
|
| "Modular Power Unit" is undefined. can i run it on white gas?
| diesel? kerosene? what is the engine displacement? air cooled or
| liquid? If we mean to say this tractor is all-electric, keep in
| mind most small farms arent equipped to charge anything more
| advanced than a cordless drill or flashlight.
|
| Cab frame has no safety glass or panels, so the operator enjoys
| every rock and every tree branch :(. a shade canopy is a nice add
| as well.
|
| no lights. this is a nonstarter for every farmer that wakes up at
| 4 am.
|
| quick hoses are nice, but I cant find a PTO knuckle so its
| restricted to things like lifting and towing (and maybe ripping).
| this is okay, but for an un-weatherized vehicle ill need to use
| barn real-estate to store, its certainly lacking.
| srmatto wrote:
| The modular power unit is able to be swapped in and out of the
| various projects that require it that this team creates. Beyond
| that I don't know anything about it. There's also a compressed
| earth block machine and other things that use it. This team has
| been working on this since approximately 2011? It was started
| by a former nuclear engineer named Marcin Jakubowski. They're
| based out of Missouri and they dog-food their tools to build
| and maintain a small "village" there.
|
| He had a ted talk sometime ago as well:
| https://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski_open_sourced_blu...
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| I just wanted to comment today that beside OSS, SciHub and
| Library Genesis we need Blueprint Hub to move Civilizarion
| forward. Happy that some people work on it.
| nannal wrote:
| What are modern blueprints, PDF?
|
| Sounds like a fairly simple project.
| puzzledobserver wrote:
| Maybe CAD models for 3D printers? Something like
| Thingiverse, at the very least.
|
| I'd imagine you also need repositories of processes and
| assembly instructions.
| timschmidt wrote:
| All the designs we're drawing for
| https://wiki.replimat.org/wiki/Main_Page are done using
| our branch of https://github.com/nophead/NopSCADlib which
| contains some work yet to be upstreamed here:
| https://github.com/timschmidt/replimat
| nannal wrote:
| That seems like the kind of things we ought to know
| inside and out before starting.
| d00wgnir wrote:
| If you're capable of building one of these, I imagine rigging
| up a windshield and some lighting shouldn't be too hard.
| datameta wrote:
| > Cab frame has no safety glass or panels, so the operator
| enjoys every rock and every tree branch :(. a shade canopy is a
| nice add as well.
|
| > no lights. this is a nonstarter for every farmer that wakes
| up at 4 am.
|
| Not to dismiss those concerns but I would say they could be
| addressed in later versions of this machine. For lighting,
| after-market solutions or even duct taping a powerful
| flashlight or two would do the trick.
|
| The market is that of farmers with little to no mechanization.
| The aim is to be made out of readily available materials and to
| be as simple to repair as possible.
| abetusk wrote:
| As others have said, the "modular power unit" is most likely a
| "power cube" (in OSE terminology) [0]. From the "Product
| Ecology" section, it looks like it does enable the tractor,
| either through hydraulic or electric power. It looks like it's
| able to use gasoline and steam though not battery technology
| (LiPo, etc)?
|
| If you were able to cheaply apply the upgrades you're talking
| about (safety glass, lights) for some nominal fee (maybe sub
| $500?) would this a viable alternative to other options? How
| many "quirks" are you willing to put up with before you throw
| up your hands and go with a more commercial option?
|
| [0] https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Power_Cube
| dbrgn wrote:
| > If we mean to say this tractor is all-electric, keep in mind
| most small farms arent equipped to charge anything more
| advanced than a cordless drill or flashlight.
|
| Are you sure? In Switzerland, most farms I know have at least
| one dusty three-phase power outlet somewhere in a shed.
| Sometimes just 16A, but that should be sufficient for many use
| cases.
| voakbasda wrote:
| In the US, three phase power seems to be completely
| unavailable in rural areas, except in small pockets of
| industry.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Doesn't a farm count as a small pocket of industry?
|
| (Writing from Denmark, where my small apartment has three
| phase power. It's standard, I don't know why.)
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Living on a rural US farm... In our area, 3 phase was not
| ran to our farm until we paid a large lump sum for the
| utility to run it from the nearest substation to us.
| Before that we only had single phase.
| einpoklum wrote:
| So how do the power companies run electricity to those
| areas? They don't use DC, do they? Or do you mean
| individual houses are typically wired with just one of the
| phases?
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Correct. It can be prohibitively expensive to have
| 3-phase power run to your house. Most consumers who need
| it, e.g., hobbyists, will use a phase converter.
|
| The only person I know who actually had 3-phase power run
| to his house was using it for a ceramic kiln.
| [deleted]
| bri3d wrote:
| "Modular Power Unit" is a 28hp Briggs and Stratton Professional
| gas unit, per
| https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Structural_Power_Cub...
| .
|
| Overall, this site
| https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Main_Page is much
| better than the linked one for overall information about this
| initiative, for example
| https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Power_Cube_Design_Ra...
| .
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Lack of 3 point hitch and PTO would rule it out completely for
| me.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Those are nice-to-haves, but realistically most farming tasks
| can be performed without them.
|
| Source: ran a 15-acre veggie farm for 2 years with nothing
| but a BCS walking tractor.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I priced out BCS and Grillo units when I first moved here
| and in the end ended up getting a subcompact hydrostatic
| tractor and it frankly has probably worked out better for
| me (6.5 acre property ... 1/2 acre vineyard/orchard, 1/2
| acre garlic + market garden veggies).
|
| It's likely because the importation of the BCS units into
| Canada just ends up making them and the attachments quite
| expensive. If I was in Europe, or even the US, I think
| they'd be more cost effective.
|
| The tractor + loader ended up being a more useful overall
| implement because the loader is just invaluable on a rural
| property generally. So many things made easier by being
| able to move around heavy loads. And snow clearance with a
| 70" snowblower is an entirely different story than walking
| behind a 30" one. I used to have Gravely walk behind with a
| snowblower on it and my back suffered for it.
|
| I have 3ph rototiller, snowblower, rotary mower, posthole
| auger, toolbar with discs, s-tines, wood chipper, and
| single bottom plow. And access to a bunch of other stuff
| from the neighbours. All of those things would be
| potentially cheaper for a BCS unit, but much harder to get,
| and less powerful. The used market for standard 3ph
| attachments is much easier to deal with rather than the
| niche walk-behind stuff.
|
| On the lower end I use a wheel hoe. And I'm currently
| working on restoring and electrifying an old planet jr
| unit.
|
| The BCS and Grillo units are really neat. But the small
| farm market isn't big enough for them here to get proper
| dealer support, used equipment supply, and deal with the
| importation issues. All of the neat attachments weren't
| available to me without dealing with Earth Tools in the US,
| with all the brokerage and customs and shippings issues
| that would come with that.
| timschmidt wrote:
| We've some work on a three point hitch here:
| https://wiki.replimat.org/wiki/Three_point_hitches
|
| Hydraulic motors with PTO splined shafts are widely available
| like this:
| https://www.surpluscenter.com/Hydraulics/Hydraulic-
| Motors/Ag...
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| They are terribly inefficient and who is going to be
| servicing all these hydraulics in the 3rd world? Every
| farming town in the USA has someone who can make custom
| hydro lines quickly. How many of those shops in Africa?
| timschmidt wrote:
| Petrol engines are inefficient. Solar panels are
| inefficient. Your and my metabolisms are inefficient.
| Suitability to purpose matters more in my humble opinion.
| Alongside modularity and reusability.
|
| Please contribute anything you know about custom
| hydraulic lines to
| https://wiki.replimat.org/wiki/Main_Page - I will approve
| accounts for any hackernews folk who request one.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| Go look at an old farmall or ford tractor and understand
| how they solved these problems 70+ years ago. Be careful
| thinking you are smarter than those engineers.
| _jal wrote:
| > its certainly lacking.
|
| I'm so old I remember Microsoft's white papers on how shitty
| Linux was, how it couldn't do this and that, etc.
|
| But the cool thing was, like this tractor, you could fix it
| yourself.
| fineIllregister wrote:
| It's been a while since I have read up on Open Source Ecology,
| but my memory is that modular power unit is a stand in for
| several options. One option is the power cube, which is a gas
| engine:
|
| https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/PowerCube
|
| I believe that the creator of the project uses these, and has
| said that there are alternatives in case gas is not available.
| stooliepidgin wrote:
| Marcin Jakubowski realized earlier than most that open source
| hardware is a deeper solution that even generous right-to-
| repair (R2R) protections cannot necessarily deliver.
| sixothree wrote:
| Is there an issue tracker for this project? Sounds like it
| might need one along with your advice.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| The cab frame it's self has me a little worried as well. It
| looks like it is all bolted steel tubes and I am not sure how
| well those would handle a roll over event.
| tomcam wrote:
| Not trying to be funny here, because I am not mechanically
| inclined, but isn't that what a roll cage is?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Cab frame has no safety glass or panels, so the operator
| enjoys every rock and every tree branch :(. a shade canopy is a
| nice add as well.
|
| These were luxuries only our nicest tractors had growing up ~20
| years ago. I imagine the market for an Open Source Tractor can
| similarly make do without.
| rcgorton wrote:
| No. Professional farmers had enclosed cabs even around 1975.
| hinkley wrote:
| Rocks and branches are a once-in-a-while problem. Dust is an
| everyday use problem, and in an era where everything is
| doused in pesticides and herbicides I don't think it's
| optional.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Not sure, but we definitely made extensive use of
| pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers when I was growing
| up. Of course, to your point, that doesn't mean that kind
| of exposure is _safe_.
| hinkley wrote:
| Did your parents teach you to only spray on the upwind
| passes, or were you huffing *cides half the time?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I wasn't doing much spraying to be honest, but we usually
| waited for relatively windless days to spray (not for
| health reasons, but usually because we didn't want to
| roundup the neighbors' crops/lawns/etc).
| hinkley wrote:
| Oh that's true, I know that and I'm not sure why I didn't
| think of it. Herbicide drift is a nightmare scenario of
| horticulturalists. In certain circles people plan out
| earth berms and wind breaks of sacrificial plants so
| their flowers and vegetables don't get hit. Most of us
| aren't brave enough to build something on the edge of
| farmland, let alone in the middle of it. But there's
| always some masochist who will try. 'We' don't have a
| very high opinion of farmers spraying on a windy day.
|
| Similarly flatlander recreational/club bicyclists don't
| have anything nice to say about farmers spraying
| anhydrous ammonia on a windy day. Luckily didn't happen
| very often, and never up close (>400 yards), but that's
| still enough to really get your attention.
| blowski wrote:
| Are the people likely to use this already working
| unprotected around pesticides? If so, what difference would
| it make that they're now sitting in a tractor? If not, why
| would having a tractor cause then to start? Or is your
| guess that they're swapping from a tractor with protection?
| MayeulC wrote:
| I don't know; my neighbors are farmers and their tractors
| don't have cabins. I'm not saying it's healthy, just that
| different people place different emphasis on different
| features.
|
| Having occasionally used a (cabin-less) tractor without
| power steering for years, I'd pick that over a cabin for
| instance.
|
| Dust and pesticides can be worked around with masks,
| goggles or scarves when occasionally found around. A straw
| hat for sunlight. In any case, this is a base building
| block, people are free to design add-ons for it depending
| on their needs :)
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't think I'm claiming that the open tractor HAS to
| have a cabin. It should be an option, though. Possibly
| one with some positive peer pressure around it.
|
| A box doesn't fix everything. You still have to get air
| into it from somewhere and it's all gonna come from
| outside. But sitting in a dust cloud is a little
| different situation than getting some dust through a
| vent. Especially if you're sweating like a pig the whole
| time.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| To the extent that these things are unhealthy, it's
| probably something that only shows up in aggregate.
| Individual health issues probably aren't related back to
| x-icide exposure. At least I've never heard of such a
| thing and I come from a large farming community.
| ris wrote:
| The Open Source Ecology designs have always struck me as a great
| way of losing a limb.
| postfacto wrote:
| Dovetails nicely with the whole Right To Repair shit that farmers
| are currently having to go through with John Deere.
| timschmidt wrote:
| We build similarly at https://wiki.replimat.org/wiki/Main_Page
| where we are working to document each of the building techniques
| involved as well as some of the most useful things which can be
| built this way.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Who will implement self driving features?
| intrepidhero wrote:
| Is there more information on what the "power cube" is? I poked
| around the site and couldn't find details.
| bri3d wrote:
| https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Power_Cube_Design_Ra...
|
| https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Main_Page
|
| Their current design revolves around a Briggs and Stratton
| Professional 28hp gas engine. 49M777 I think is the
| designation.
| afranchuk wrote:
| I'm assuming you found the page on the site but want more
| detailed prose on it? It's the second linked category on the
| homepage.
|
| https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/PowerCube
| intrepidhero wrote:
| Yeah. Every link on that page is a stub. I was wondering if
| they listed the engine they've been using in the prototypes
| anywhere.
| syedkarim wrote:
| Isn't this really a skid steer/wheel loader, rather than a
| tractor?
| jjmellon wrote:
| Yes it is. Even if it had a PTO, this vehicle won't do much
| agricultural field work, it will bog down. Tractors typically
| have much larger back wheels, usually weighted, and a larger
| engine.
| roland35 wrote:
| Is there something equivalent to a small robot? An open source
| platform for an all terrain outdoor robotic platform would be
| pretty useful as well
| User23 wrote:
| This is very cool. I wish I were more mechanically inclined. One
| of my fantasies is buying an end-of-lifed helicopter turbine and
| building a tractor around it, but I wouldn't even know where to
| begin.
| [deleted]
| soheil wrote:
| I genuinely wonder how it can compete against any existing
| tractors. You can order a brand new tractor for 5 grand [1].
|
| Is this going to cost less or come with more capabilities?
|
| [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/4wd-wheel-farm-
| agricu...
| namdnay wrote:
| Not only can you get a very cheap new one, but your village
| mechanic will know how to repair it because they'll already
| have worked on dozens.
|
| I know this project is really cool as an engineer, but engines
| and vehicles in all forms are pretty much a solved problem in
| the third world. Those guys can squeeze 50 extra years out of a
| van that we would take to the scrap, building new open source
| models really isn't a priority
| napier wrote:
| We need more projects like this.
| swader999 wrote:
| What would be the ballpark price of the materials for this?
| dejv wrote:
| This brings back memories. I grew up around smallholding farming
| during comunist regime when time was plentyful, but it was near
| to impossible to buy tractor for personal use. Almost every
| familly owned DIY home-grown tractor built from some old diesel
| motor donated from who knows where and scrap metal.
| honksillet wrote:
| How stagnant is this project? The videos I find on YouTube are 8
| years old.
| SMAAART wrote:
| This is a trend, not a fad.
|
| A megatrend!
| AngryData wrote:
| Awesome! It has always been my firm belief that the biggest and
| best improvement you can provide to poor communities is tractors
| and tools. It frees up tons of labor from excavation, farming,
| transport, and can be used as a power plant for many other uses
| be it through driven shaft or hydraulics or potentially
| pneumatic. You can use it to drill a well, or dig a foundation,
| endless amounts of human labor replaced by one man and relatively
| simple machine for our age.
| antattack wrote:
| Sorry, I don't see it. This tractor is too wide, has low ground
| clearance, too complex, hard to rustproof, seems to be hard to
| maneuver.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > This tractor is... too complex
|
| Quite the opposite: It is incredibly _simple_, in that regular
| tractors need huge complex specialized infrastructure to
| manufacture, and this doesn't.
|
| > too wide, has low ground clearance etc.
|
| The shortcomings are due to this still being a prototype: The
| 6th iteration. And it's this way because it was easier and
| cheap to design and produce it the way that it is.
|
| Now, let's say the current shortcomings are deal-breakers for
| 80% of potential users. Then you already have a tractor usable
| for 10% of people. In iteration 7 they'll address a few other
| issues, and still more in iteration 8 and you'll have something
| worthy of mass-production for a large fraction of users.
|
| *Edit:* Well, apparently LifeTrac 6 is from 11 years ago! And
| there are newer iterations of it.
| hinkley wrote:
| I went looking for specialty equipment for moving logs a few
| years ago while researching a restoration project. That equipment
| is super expensive, so I went looking for a DIY solution,
| expecting to find something along the lines of the construction
| philosophy of the OST project. I know my way around a wrench and
| bolting something together is no problem for me. Especially if I
| can take it apart again to store it, since I'll need this thing
| about .75 times a year.
|
| I didn't find it. What I found was a handful of farmer types who
| had welded up their own solutions, who stopped mid-how-to to
| espouse the liberating power of learning to weld mild steel on
| your own. Paying someone to weld for you is super expensive, and
| alarmingly so if you live far out of town.
|
| We know from CivE disaster/case studies that bolts through square
| tubing - especially through the ends of square tubing - have
| failure modes that are not obvious even to construction workers,
| let alone you or I. Might be that the OST project should be
| considering welding as a base skill for assembling a tractor by
| hand. Especially if anyone is going to make it earn its living by
| dragging around heavy, high-friction things like dirt.
| [deleted]
| AngryData wrote:
| They should definitely look into welding, they will need it at
| some point anyways for repairs. And a stick welder is both
| cheap and perfect use case for welding heavy metal frames. It
| could even be powered off the engine to be used in the tractor.
| hinkley wrote:
| Refresh my memory. A stick welder is an electric arc welder
| that uses a thin rod of metal as the contact point and the
| rod gets consumed to make the bead, right? That sounds pretty
| reasonable.
| AngryData wrote:
| Yes, it is very easy to use and you don't need bottled gas,
| just the welding sticks. The only real downside to it is it
| doesn't work as well with thin metal, but for an equipment
| frame that isn't a problem.
| Animats wrote:
| If you go back in the Internet Archive to this site from 2016,
| it's much the same.[1] This project seems to have stalled before
| they published the design documents.
|
| Here are their videos on Vimeo.[2] Most of the activity was 7-10
| years ago.
|
| If you want a cheap tractor, look on Alibaba. There are decent
| offerings around US$2000.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20161207230929/http://opensource...
|
| [2] https://vimeo.com/search?q=open%20source%20ecology
| engineer_22 wrote:
| I wonder why it's articulated.
|
| Edit: drive shaft wear.
|
| It just seems to be an extra complication and harder to steer if
| not hydraulic assisted.
| jcims wrote:
| Given they are using hydraulic motors on the wheels it could be
| easily converted to skid steer. The current configuration has
| very high ground pressure but low wear characteristics. Skid
| steer has high ground wear but supports the use of tracks which
| could reduce ground pressure and increase traction.
| pwr-electronics wrote:
| > the articulated joint that was present in LifeTrac I - to
| allow long-life on the shafts - which experience much less wear
| compared to skid steering
| efitz wrote:
| Patents expire after 20 years or so. Why not just take a 25 year
| old tractor, 3d model it, make your small improvements and
| updates, and then start working on value adds like parts
| pipelines, data & gps driven agriculture, etc
| scrooched_moose wrote:
| Modeling a tractor in CAD isn't the issue. Manufacturing it is.
|
| A 25 year old tractor design (probably out to 75+ year old
| tractors even) still has hundreds of millions of dollars in
| infrastructure and tooling behind it. Molds or dies for a
| single part can easily reach into 6 figures, without taking
| into account the $10 million injection molding machine.
|
| The simplifications you could do would be limited, as every
| design decision affects the placement and access to a dozen
| other parts.
|
| Take a part like this, which is for a Deere 750 (small tractor)
| released in 1989: https://www.compactractorparts.com/tractor-
| parts/john-deere/...
|
| I could model that in CAD in under an hour. Lining up
| manufacturing is a minimum 12 month process with preexisting
| relationships, and would take upwards of $250k to get in the
| door. This also doesn't take into account the "societal
| collapse" angle - post-apocalypse there's no way to make that
| yourself, and manufacturers in China would presumably no longer
| be an option.
| jcims wrote:
| An open source foundry might be an interesting project.
| efitz wrote:
| Then I'm unsure what problem the project is trying to solve.
|
| We have a real problem today with affordability and right to
| repair. My wife's family are rice farmers from rural
| Thailand. My father in law had tears in his eyes when I
| bought him a $25k basic Kubota tractor; his individual
| productivity went through the roof while the amount of
| backbreaking work he had to do fell. Small time agriculture
| does not pay enough for such folks to make such a purchase on
| their own, and a major repair could still be out of reach. I
| thought this project was trying to address these problems. I
| don't see such people as having to tooling or time to build
| their own tractor.
|
| As for "post apocalyptic"- I will band with others with guns
| and tractors and use our guns to protect our tractors; I'm
| not interested in building a road warrior tractor; I'm
| interested in easy to repair.
| voiper1 wrote:
| It's not just about patents - it's about easy, cheap building
| with limited access to tools and materials.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I wonder why the frame is made out of bolted beams with holes in
| them, are bolts and holed beams easy to find or something?
|
| I mean I can imagine that if you have the tools to build those,
| you'd have a welder as well. Granted, welding might be a bit more
| challenging than cutting beams and drilling holes.
| stagger87 wrote:
| Punched metal tubing is very common and cheap.
| timschmidt wrote:
| https://wiki.replimat.org/wiki/Frames
| intrepidhero wrote:
| Perforated steel tube is a readily available material and a
| ratchet is a cheaper and much lower skill tool than a welder.
| Also seems like customization is one of the project goals.
|
| I would imagine that if wanted to weld it instead the design
| would also work for you.
| progre wrote:
| For steel as thick as this, stick welding is very forgiving
| though. Big heatsinks, hard to melt through. Most people can
| probably learn to make (ugly but) strong enough welds in an
| afternoon.
| Gracana wrote:
| Where do you get 1/4 wall perforated tube? It sounds
| expensive compared to regular box tube straight from the
| mill. And each bolted connection made with graded fasteners
| is going to cost several dollars, which adds up very quickly.
|
| A circular saw, a mag drill, and a stick welder could take
| you a long way on a project like this, and you could use
| regular steel plate, tube, angle bars, etc. I think a lot of
| cost and weight is being sacrificed in the name of
| "modularity", for questionable benefit.
| indrax wrote:
| It's conceptually gridbeam. https://gridbeam.xyz/
|
| General construction kit for real world applications. In theory
| you could take a machine apart and use the beams for some other
| machine. A smaller kit could build any of the machine designs
| as needed.
| moron4hire wrote:
| It's surprisingly hard to find information about grid-beam
| online. I got this book years ago. Never really did anything
| with it, but it has a lot more examples:
| https://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Grid-Beam-
| Constructing/dp/0...
|
| The problem with grid-beam is that it really only seems to
| make sense if you A) have lots of grid-beams in various sizes
| already, and B) are making, taking apart, and repurposing
| things frequently. Without A, making grid beams is a lot more
| work than just purpose-cutting your pieces, and without B,
| you don't really have a reason to drill all those extra
| holes.
| timschmidt wrote:
| Hi hugs!
|
| I've been working to document everything I've done with
| Gridbeam, and related tech here:
| https://wiki.replimat.org/wiki/Main_Page
|
| I lived with Phil and RJ Jergenson for a couple years
| around 2012, tried to learn from their experience and
| mistakes. They weren't happy with 1ft lengths in every
| project, even though they were an improvement in
| reusability over all lengths free-for-all. I've since moved
| all the replimat designs to use lengths 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15,
| 20, 25, and 30 only. Which allows for center pivots and
| divisible-by-two lengths whereas the Jergensons could only
| divide by two. We also hit countertop height a little
| better. Little tweaks.
|
| I try to communicate with everyone listed in the "Friends"
| section on the right hand side of https://www.replimat.org/
| regularly. I'm excited that things seem to be gathering
| steam for all of us.
| hugs wrote:
| I've built a ton of stuff with grid beam. I never drilled
| my own holes. For big stuff, like making office furniture
| [1], I buy "pre-drilled" aluminum beams from McMaster-Carr
| [2]. I would buy lots of long lengths, then cut down to the
| required size as needed. And years ago, I also
| "miniaturized" grid beam down to Lego-compatible, 3D
| printable components that I use for prototyping [3].
|
| The grid beam book talks a lot about what you need to make
| beams from scratch. You don't have to do that. You can buy
| (or print!) beams and get to work right away.
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/hugs/status/707381021646323712
|
| [2]: https://www.mcmaster.com/8809T7-8809T21/
|
| [3]: https://bitbeam.org/
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| This is very cool. Shame to see the original website is down
| though.
| Wesxdz wrote:
| https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Modular_Construction
| Ardon wrote:
| From what I remember from back when I first read up on this
| project: The goal is for as much of the construction to be done
| with simple tools and materials that can be stored long-term.
|
| If you need to, hypothetically, bury your society-bootstrapping
| supplies, your wrenches and hole bar will probably survive. But
| a welder may not.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Fair enough, without electricity you might still be able to
| drill holes in things, it just takes a good while.
|
| Mind you, I've seen some... interesting welders cobbled
| together, I saw one that was a load of wire wrapped around a
| rubber inner tyre. Here [1] is one made from a microwave
| transformer.
|
| [1] https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-Microwave-
| Transformer-...
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| It's really, really, really difficult for me to imagine a
| "society-bootstrapping" event where conveniently dimensioned
| steel, diesel/gasoline engines and fasteners are readily
| available but thousands of old, easily repairable tractors
| are not.
| airoftime wrote:
| This is truly mind blowing.
|
| For some odd reason my mind kept the "Open Source" limited to
| digital tech spaces, but it's not!
| chayleaf wrote:
| another related term is Free Culture, in analogy to Free
| Software
| marcodiego wrote:
| Looks like it is made out of life-size meccano parts.
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| Huh. In the US, we had a copy of Meccano called Erector (which
| is what this project reminded me of). In 2000, Mecanno bought
| the Erector brand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano
| aasasd wrote:
| Yep: Meccano clones of my childhood weren't brightly colored,
| unlike what I see in search now--so I almost nostalgia'd all
| over myself from seeing that thing.
|
| E.g.: https://rc-
| today.ru/UserFiles/Image/89/87/konstruktor_metall...
| mastax wrote:
| Man I remember reading about this in 2011 or so. I'm glad they're
| still doing well. It's an interesting project at the intersection
| of philanthropic eco-hippies and mechanical engineers which
| doesn't seem very common to me.
|
| Of course, being older and wiser now I'm less excited about the
| fantasy of using my brains and grit to rebuild society after the
| coming apocalypse. And if you are a villager of some description
| trying to use machinery to improve your prospects you're probably
| better off buying something old and used, or cheap and Chinese.
| Over the last 10 years the number of (mostly Chinese) companies
| making okay-quality cheap industrial equipment of all types has
| grown massively, and I've seen this equipment being used more and
| more in the developing world. Cheap is relative, of course, and
| many places do not make it easy to buy anything due to payment
| infrastructure, shipping, and customs costs.
|
| So on the one hand it's a bit silly for some guy in Missouri to
| even consider designing his own bakery oven when you can get them
| on Alibaba for $500. On the other, it's very cool and
| interesting, there's a lot to learn from the attempt, and there's
| a lot of actually useful designs already for certain situations.
| I wonder how much success they've had getting this information
| out to people who it could actually help?
| berkes wrote:
| > some guy in Missouri to even consider designing his own
| bakery oven when you can get them on Alibaba for $500
|
| As someone who has worked in some parts of southern Africa
| decades ago, and who recently stopped buying off ali (for
| everything, but mostly beekeeping equipment) there is a Big
| Thing you are forgetting to tell: Right And Ability To Repair.
|
| Secondhand nearly always means you can assure quality, because
| it has survived at least one owner. Probably decades of abuse
| and repairs. You can see where it was welded. You know it has
| survived years in heat, rain, mud and under stress.
|
| You don't want that immersion pump of your irrigation, to break
| the moment you drove 150km home. Even if you can afford to buy
| 10 pumps and have 9 spares, you still need the time, travel and
| effort of replacing. Sometimes the Ali stuff is really good
| quality. Sometimes it isn't and there is no-way to tell.
|
| As a beekeeper: having a hivetool break that moment the bees
| are becoming angry and you need to finish fast, is worth ten
| times that EUR18.00 I saved by ordering Chinese tools. Having a
| hive tip over because some chinese screws turned over and
| didn't hold a foot in place is worth a hundred times that EUR80
| I saved by ordering a cheap Chinese knock-off.
|
| I'm not saying Chinese fabrication equals bad quality. But I am
| saying that a lack of QA leads to varying quality. Which means
| it can be really good. But also that it can be poor. This
| downside risk is more than enough reason to often skip cheap
| Ali orders.
| poorjohnmacafee wrote:
| Not an important factor for many, but buying from a nearby
| supplier instead of shipping from other side of the globe is
| a lot better for the environment too, what our politicians
| should be incentivizing along with renewables.
| honksillet wrote:
| And what if all this Ali ovens are stuck offshore the port of
| Long Beach?
| PBnFlash wrote:
| I was following this project for a few years after 2011 and it
| seemed to pivot to like a weird homesteading thing. I'm glad
| it's doing the tractor again.
| turminal wrote:
| I don't think the makers of this machine believe this is a
| viable solution for farmers right now, but they realize that
| "buy it cheap from China" is becoming more and more of a
| problem in the long run and something that needs to be fixed.
| We'll have to give up on the "if it dies, just buy a new one,
| it's cheap anyway" philosophy sooner or later.
|
| I see this project more as an experiment on how to make a
| functional and durable machine that is fixable when it breaks.
| bshipp wrote:
| As someone who has worked in agriculture their entire life,
| there is nothing cheap about farming equipment. Every year it
| gets more and more prohibitively expensive and experiences
| more and more vendor lock-in.
|
| While this solution appears fairly rudimentary, I think
| there's a real demand for more simplistic, compatible, and
| capable farm machinery when combines are a million a piece
| and tractors are a quarter that.
| freeopinion wrote:
| A 28hp tractor tamed the world once upon a time. Back when
| a family could work their hearts out on a 100 acre farm.
|
| A single family with a 28hp tractor cannot farm 1000 acres
| effectively. It's hard to find 10 families each with a 28hp
| tractor willing to go all-in to farm 1000 acres. And if you
| could, they'd get wiped out by the conglomerate that uses a
| stable of million dollar combines to farm 20,000 acres.
|
| A California farmer doesn't feed a Central Valley
| community. An Iowa farmer doesn't feed all their townfolks.
| Their target market is the entire globe. Pigs to China, soy
| to Japan, barley to Germany, corn to Tunisia.
|
| That said, I think you are right that there is a market for
| capable, compatible tractors. And also a market for 28hp
| tractors. In the auto world, Volkswagen and Toyota each
| make 11 million cars a year and even Suzuki makes 3
| million. But there is still a place for Tata to make 1
| million cars per year to meet a specific demand. If you are
| content to meet a specific need, and not driven to be top 5
| or bust... If you don't even need to be top 20... There is
| a place where you could stay in business.
| bshipp wrote:
| I agree wholeheartedly. Without the support of a dozen
| offspring helping out with 'chores' around the farm the
| lack of labour is a real constraint in rural areas. I
| absolutely agree that a 28hp motor is simply too small to
| be helpful on a commercial scale, but I was thinking more
| about the 3-4 pod versions that offered a bit more grunt.
|
| Regardless, most of the engines on a farm are sitting
| idle for vast portions of the year (i.e. combines, forage
| harvesters, swathers, sprayers, etc.) so a modular unit
| that maximized year-round utility could reduce
| maintenance and downtime caused by corrosion and other
| problems inherent in idle machinery.
|
| Diesel engines hate sitting for long periods without
| running, as well as dislike running under excessively
| light loads for their horsepower. Being able to spin up
| multiple pods to match a load is an interesting solution.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| The problem is that this solution isn't even close to
| being realistic. 28HP engines are not created equal and
| this engine isn't anything like the old 28HP engines from
| tractors of yesteryear. The tires are wrong, hydraulic
| drive is wrong, no PTO yet, etc. Bolting tube together on
| a moving machine like this, WTF. The tube work free over
| time as it collapses which will cause play and egging of
| the holes. This is completely wrong. They need to go back
| and study the tractors built in the late 30s and early
| 40s and copy those. This is nothing but a mess. Are any
| of these people mechanical engineers who have built Ag
| equipment?
| wongarsu wrote:
| Right now, a cheap tractor from China is probably a lot more
| reparable (by you) than the more expensive alternatives.
| Sure, it will break sooner, but it will be built simple and
| without DRM'd electronics, making it relatively easy to
| repair.
| namdnay wrote:
| Buy it cheap from China doesn't mean it can't be repaired.
| Chinese clone AK47s or outboard motors or trucks or tractors
| can go for decades with a skilled and pragmatic mechanic, one
| thing that third world countries excel at
| raintrees wrote:
| cool - looks like legos...
| userbinator wrote:
| IMHO "open source" is not the right term for this because,
| besides sounding like it was created by people with a software-
| centric view, it legitimises the application of Imaginary
| Property laws to physical objects --- something that is a
| relatively recent phenomenon and one that I think should not
| continue. Perhaps "open design" or similar would be more
| representative of the intent.
|
| For example, the automotive aftermarket is so prolific and
| complete that you can build an entire stereotypical mid-century
| car with entirely aftermarket parts, but I wouldn't call that
| "open source". People have also been making tractors out of car
| parts for a long time (there are some old magazines with plans
| for such), as well as fixing heavy equipment by making their own
| parts --- look at various YouTube channels for examples; and I
| don't think any of this is comparable, nor should it be, to the
| quagmire of IP laws that the software world is subjected to.
|
| tl;dr: Good intent, bad naming and perhaps some ignorance of how
| the physical hardware world operates.
| rmason wrote:
| This project is terrific. People are critical of what it doesn't
| do, I'm in awe of what it does do.
|
| You're going to have little two man shops in Africa and Asia
| cranking these out and changing agriculture in their part of the
| world.
|
| This demonstrates the power of open source. These engineers are
| to be commended.
| namdnay wrote:
| I doubt that IP of tractor designs is a major factor in third
| world poverty. I'm sure there are factories in Asia pumping out
| cheap tractors already
| beckman466 wrote:
| > I doubt that IP of tractor designs is a major factor in
| third world poverty.
|
| what's your logic here? the intellectual property system is
| the way the global north propertied class dominates the
| global south; i.e. renting out the commoditized
| blueprints/designs and charging insane royalties [1]
|
| [1] Vijay Prashad, https://mronline.org/2019/09/29/iphone-
| workers-today-are-25-...
| namdnay wrote:
| Do you think cheap tractor makers in china or India give a
| fig about IP?
| ajuc wrote:
| They do. Or, to be precise - they are daughter companies
| of global corporations that keep their marketshare thanks
| to IP.
| namdnay wrote:
| And that's why there are no cheap Chinese cars or trucks
| or tractors or guns or engines or any of that stuff ..
| jaggederest wrote:
| Many times you'll see a "knockoff" or semi-clone _before
| the original product comes out_ , even. Which is amazing
| and awesome.
|
| If our systems weren't built around intellectual property
| it would enable some pretty remarkable things.
| beckman466 wrote:
| the west is literally trying to provoke a huge war with
| china because china is no longer dependent on the west's
| intellectual property. your framing seems ignorant to me.
|
| _Vijay Prashad: What 's the Left to Do in a World on
| Fire? | China and the Left_,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd8w3ONjv6Y
|
| _Vijay Prashad: No Cold War with China_ ,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj1ggllXmws
| jcims wrote:
| You're making oblique references and (I guess?) assuming
| that some conclusion is obvious. A more direct statement
| of your point might help here.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > A more direct statement of your point might help here.
|
| abolish Silicon Valley. [1]
|
| [1] Wendy Liu, https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-
| silicon-valley
| jcims wrote:
| shoot your shot buddy!
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| There is a school of economics that claims to oppose the
| upwardly mobile rich but in fact mostly harms the
| upwardly mobile poor. Linguistic patterns are no proof of
| motive but they certainly indicate who an author is
| writing for.
| WhisperingShiba wrote:
| This is a controversial opinion, but I agree.
|
| The global west is realizing it done goofed up; because
| China does not give a shit about IP and now has the
| intellectual capability to successfully produce new
| products which compete with US product. The good news is
| that China's economy is actually a bigger mess than ours
| somehow, despite our limited means of production.
| Everyone is too scared of nuclear war, but the actual war
| is a strange economic war of 'Who is going to collapse
| first'.
| thechao wrote:
| Isn't this the same situation that the USA eventually
| found itself in with respect to the USSR? I think the
| whole cold war can be re-envisioned as a socioeconomic
| conflict.
| WhisperingShiba wrote:
| I believe it so as well. I was just reinforcing that I
| don't believe conventional war can occur without a major
| technological innovation in missile defense. It all comes
| down to sociology-economics, which is in turn downstream
| of culture. Neither the USA or China have close to
| optimal culture, but even accounting for western
| propaganda, the United States is a much happier place _.
|
| _ Source: I met many Chinese people in college. Many of
| them were striving for success with such fervor because
| they wanted to stay in America.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Re-envisioned?! The Cold War was explicitly a
| socioeconomic conflict.
|
| What do you think the communist nations' ideological goal
| was?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I feel like tractors are like AK-47s, kinda de facto
| grandfathered in before Neo-liberalism and Globalization
| made exporting IP law a big part part of of geopolitics.
| lazide wrote:
| Basic tractors, like the AK-47, are also designable by
| most decent mechanical engineering students without a lot
| of work if they spent an afternoon googling first for
| prior art (and that prior art has long had any patents
| expire).
|
| Which if there is an ecosystem related to this, that's
| great as the manufacturing is where you need economies of
| scale pretty badly and everyone benefits from it.
|
| There is no also no need for a basic excavator to cost
| $30k or more. Let's do something about that too!
| coding123 wrote:
| https://www.harborfreight.com/9-hp-towable-
| backhoe-62365.htm...
|
| You said basic. :shrug:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fK6EtRXqS4
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Look, I really want open source to meet the "real world",
| and not be stuck as another "socialism for the rich"
| where companies can do things on the cheap but the
| software is useless to the average person as an
| alternative to anything. (Great example: Google using
| Linux in Android does not mean the user is any more free
| of advertizing and spying!)
|
| But unless I misunderstand what this is for, I think the
| economies of scale needed are in way fancier things like
| combine harvesters. When farmers decry the rent-seeking
| of John Deere, I don't think they are talking about basic
| tractor-bulldozers? Conversely, as the other replies say,
| there is little issue with decades-old-style tractors,
| right?
|
| What I really want to see is an open source
| Khrushchyovka. The worlds needs more cities, not
| villages.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| Can you be specific?
|
| E.g. precisely what patent, design patent, trademark, or
| copyright is stopping the entire of Africa from designing
| and building an indigenous diesel tractor?
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Not just Asia. Mahindra, an Indian concern (with PRC
| operating units), builds some tractors and trucks in Africa
| (I know of plants in at least Mali and South Africa) for
| various African markets.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's not. Third world countries have much bigger concerns
| than policing the first world's imaginary property. Mostly
| they'll just ignore any violations for as long as
| economically viable. If it's important enough, HIV
| medications for example, they'll even make the fact they
| don't care about patents official.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/01260212521/paten.
| ..
|
| https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/brazil-ignores-us-
| giant...
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| There certainly seem to be.
|
| https://www.alibaba.com/products/tractor.html?IndexArea=prod.
| ..
|
| Now if only shipping were reasonable!
| [deleted]
| beckman466 wrote:
| > This demonstrates the power of open source. These engineers
| are to be commended.
|
| if you haven't seen the famous Open Source Ecology pitch by
| Marcin Jakubowski, you're in for a treat!
|
| _Open-sourced blueprints for civilization | Marcin Jakubowski_
| , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GEMkvT0DEk
| gnramires wrote:
| I need to watch that! I'm developing an algorithmically-
| driven civilization architecture concept.
|
| (in the sense of, how to organize society from a blank slate
| point of view, while maximizing the wealth of experience for
| all individuals? I think we've gotten a little caught up in
| ideology and culture wars and stopped looking for ideas to
| move society forward with more efficient, humane, robust,
| collaborative (or adversarially cooperative) societal
| organization systems)
|
| If you thought society as consisting of a large number of
| agents (with varying degrees of self-interest and diverse
| motivations), how would you design a system that enables
| maximum productivity, and maximum well-being? (in the sense
| of conscious experience: a rich and wealthy life; not
| necessarily tied to having particular stuff)
|
| Seriously, in all our 100,000 years more or less of modern
| human existence we've seriously toyed with about 2 large
| scale architectures of society. Why can't we try better in a
| non-destructive way?
| vasco wrote:
| What if we could throw what generations of people
| collectively built for a concoction some random dude came
| up with on their own? What about using the same time
| investment to contribute to improving our current systems?
|
| Whatever you come up by yourself has zero chances of coming
| to fruition outside your apartment. Working on your local
| community to improve lives of real people or joining a
| political party and influencing the direction of debate is
| way more actionable.
| nemexis wrote:
| https://www.thevenusproject.com/
| kongin wrote:
| Way back when I reached out to them for getting the actual
| blueprints for a light industry coop - modular open source
| welders? Sign me up!
|
| Got a reply along the lines of "we are working with our
| sponsors and will not be releasing any blueprints".
|
| 10 years later you still can't get blueprints from their
| site: https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/gvcs-machine-
| index/
|
| They seem like the solar roadways of open source hardware.
| 5faulker wrote:
| At the holistic level, their impact on the ecology is still to
| be known though.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| Living in South America all my life, and I know this is
| anecdotal, ecology is always second to economic progress.
|
| You can't go to a [settlement] (https://sfo2.digitaloceanspac
| es.com/elpaiscr/2019/09/Asentam...) and tell them not to use
| certain tools because they might not be ecological.
|
| I'm not discarding your concern though, I understand its
| impact is not known, I just wanted to say it likely won't be
| a factor in the decision-making of those that use this tech.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| There's a well known correlation between economic progress
| and ecological protection. The wealthier a community, the
| better it can make good long term decisions about
| maintaining the ecosystems around it.
|
| When people are struggling, they use whatever they can to
| survive. They'll burn wood indoors, and strip the wooded
| areas of all trees, use up as much groundwater through
| wells as possible, and so on...
|
| Get rid of the do-or-die hard scrabble for survival and
| people can start being better stewards. It's the largely
| invisible, widespread, and long term effects, like leaded
| gas and co2 impacts on climate that require nation state
| intervention through science based policy.
|
| For highly empowering things like this, the upshot is
| likely that even though the tech is not likely to be as
| clean and efficient as we'd want, it will enable
| individuals and communities to thrive and better their
| lives to the point that they can start affording long term
| ecological preservation.
| silexia wrote:
| I agree! I would love to see this extended to excavators and
| bulldozers, these are way overpriced.
| mod wrote:
| I'm sorry, maybe it's just me--but none or almost none of these
| projects have actual plans to build them!
|
| Everything is a wiki stub. Almost all the topics have unanswered
| questions going back to 2013. Some have a nice top-level
| "blueprint" looking infographic, and then absolutely zero details
| about building them.
|
| I'm not sure how to use this project, although given my 40 acres
| and great desire to DIY, I should be a prime candidate.
|
| Most of the stubs don't even have a summary yet! Let alone
| details.
|
| If that stuff is there and I missed it, then the website UI is
| desperately broken.
|
| As a for-instance, can someone find plans to build the LifeTrac6
| Cab Frame? That's the very tractor linked here, and I can't see
| any real details. The linked page and its descendants seem to be
| a list of ideas that have absolutely no detail expressed.
| bri3d wrote:
| This is pretty much the wrong website. You want this:
| https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Civilization_Starter...
| qq4 wrote:
| Hell yeah! I have often thought about open source in the
| agriculture world. I would love to contribute to this space.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| This is probably the coolest project I've seen in the two and a
| half years I've been compulsively reading every thread on this
| site
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is great that they can make this thing work.
|
| It is, at the same time, a serious indictment of modern
| industrial society that they want to. Industrial manufacturing
| economics ought to be supplying tractors cheaply enough that
| there is no temptation to this.
| atoav wrote:
| Ahh I was thinking about traktor the DJ software. The open source
| alternative for this would be mixxx: https://mixxx.org/
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