Open Source Ecology Forums

kaster

This is a shout out to see if any one can help provide feedback or suggestions for applications of GVCS replicated gear in already densley populated urban areas (in my case Atlanta). I am a member of two hackerspaces, one of which is a full-out machine-shop cooperative called My Inventor Club ( technically a for-profit with growth aspirations to be a "inventor/entrepeneur/startup" incubator ) and one called Freeside Atlanta which is a non-profit that focuses more on electronics, arduino, software projects, and other miscellaneous geek-niche cool projects. Conveniently they are right next door to eachother. A great many of us are huge fans, and would like to replicate and or contribute to OSE.

I have proposed making a group project effort towards GVCS replication, and this has sparked a lot of interest (8 members have expressed support, 4 of which have offered to commit 5+ hours a week to the project - I volunteered to lead). So far the group has voted in favor of replicating the CEB Press (at least thats the first one we want to do), and I am looking for "community - oriented" applications of this technology (something more than just alot of us wanting access to it to build our own shops). Success here would be to get the machine working, and then finding ways to make it useful to the general local community. I was wondering if anyone has gone down this road before in more urban environments and could provide feedback about or enumerate further the list of applications for the CEB press:

1.) Engage local chapters of charities and foundations like Habitat for Humanity, maybe some folks at the Carter Center (headquartered here) and see if they would have an interest in access to the machine, the bricks, or even having a machine built and delivered to them - and ideally if they would be willing to sponsor the effort to any degree for sourcing parts in the Bill of Materials.

2.) See if there is any HUD grant potential for CEB based construction of work/live multitenant buildings.

3.) Work with Georgia area small/locally owned "Eco Developer" businesses that specialize in alternate building materials construction like adobe, etc to see if they would have any interest.

4.) Reach out to some of the local area high-schools that have been doing alot with pre-engineering programs to see if they would have interest in contributing or presenting the effort to students a case study in sustainable development - maybe they could would be interested in it as an extra-curricular form of volunteerism the kids could put on their college resumes.

5.) Contact some of the faculty at local colleges that provide sustainable development curriculum or programs to see if there is collaboration and sponsorship potential there.

Any feedback on the above or additional ideas would be greatly appreciated.

- oh and before I forget - are there specific CAD/CAM software development efforts (like feature development or something else) that have some well defined requirements OSE is in want of right now?

Beluga

See the CAD-CAM problem statement: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/CAD-CAM_Problem_Statement
FreeCAD advancement is always welcome.

zdwiel

I am currently in the middle of a CEB Press build in Bloomington, Indiana - Dandelion Village. We consider ourselves urban - we are 1 mile from downtown (city population 80,000), and are in an area zoned for 4.5 units per acre.

Our plan is to use the machine to build some homes on our land, and prove the concept and then see who else in the community might be interested in using the machine while we are not. Your ideas about how to bring more people in all look good to me. I'm interested to hear how it goes.

Howdy, Stranger!

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