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Hello Appropedia Foundation,
I'm writing to you because I figure some collaboration might arise
between Appropedia.org, Appropedia Foundation, and what we're up to here
in Argentina.
TRACTORS
I came here to coordinate the fabrication of a LifeTrac, the tractor
from the Global Village Construction Set of Open Source Ecology. A
place/group, Ecovilla Gaia, said they want a LifeTrac, they have the
funds and space to build one, and they want to do build it as part of
a course/training. I found James Slade in the US to come teach, and I
returned to Argentina to organize things here.
So far, the people with the most technical/mechanical experience who
I've talked to say that a LifeTrac is impractical here because
hydraulic motors are uncommon, which means they're expensive and
difficult to replace when they break and there's less knowledge about
how to fix them. I haven't yet seen a price list for the parts for a
LifeTrac here.
The idea arose to build tractors out of old car parts, since those are
relatively common compared to LifeTrac parts. I haven't seen a price
breakdown for such a recycled tractor.
Any hints?
AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY
I've also visited Tekny Campo, where they make agricultural tools for
horse/ox-powered agriculture, and a few electrical/combustion motor
mills. At TeknyCampo, Andres is happy to share the CAD designs of all
the machines, with libre licenses -- his interest is in getting the
tools into the hands of the people who can use them, and to that end
he's given trainings in other countries to help other groups
manufacture the same machines, and to modify the designs for their
local needs. I posted an hour-long video of my visit to the TeknyCampo
workshop here:
http://vimeo.com/43351383
If I get the CAD files from Andres, does it make sense to put them on
Appropedia?
Other videos of various bits of the project are at
http://www.MutualGift.net and
http://vimeo.com/patrickgibbs/videos
GENERALLY
I see two broad aspects in this work: 1) building systems to support
the sharing and development of mechanical/engineering skills across
generations, locations, genders, and other differences; 2) documenting
the machines/tools and the processes using a multi-lingual semantic wiki.
cheers,
Patrick
http://www.MutualGift.net
PS: I'm fluent in Spanish, in case that matters.
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