August 2019 OSEmail

Dear Friends of OSE and Supporters,

We are pump priming ourselves for a big year in 2020.

We are doing the first ever  CEB Microhouse build outside the US as we work on making the CEB Microhouse build highly efficient and replicable easily anywhere in the world. We are going to Belize for a 5 day build - on February 22-26, 2020. Read more about this voluntourism, edutourism opportunity..

We've done builds with CEB a plenty - and this time - outside of going to a new country - we are planning to build a  soil mixer that allows you to go from raw dirt to smashing clods and mixing cement in one step - prior to ejection into the brick press. If this works, we're starting production of Stabilized CEB (SCEB) for sale at our US headquarters. The Belize collaborators aim to do the same in Belize. You can sign up for the workshop here - with 6 weeks left for early bird registration.

These are old builds of 2014:

What will we build in Belize? A seismically stabilized CEB microhouse in 5 days. Stay tuned.

Next is a humble proposal to transform the human economic system from proprietary to collaborative. Next year we are planning to run an incentive challenge (using the HeroX platform) for the world's first, open source, professional grade, cordless drill. Like this 3D printed cordless drill but bigger:

Our goal is to hire 50-100 of the challenge participants to produce the drills so you can find one at a hardware store near you. Our main value proposition boils down to lifetime design - you can keep the drill for ever and it will actually improve with time as you can upgrade the modular, open source design. So why is this important? We would like to demonstrate that open source is capable of developing real products on rapid timescales at 1/10  the cost, thereby showing a viable economic model compared to proprietary development. This experiment has the capacity to provide a definitive data point if executed properly. We aim to launch the Challenge September 2020.

We are running the Open Source Microfactory STEAM Camps these days. The picture above is parts for the 2" Universal Axis for building a heavy CNC mill which we designed and biult in the last event. Our goal is to spin off an open source franchise for the STEAM Camps. To get there, we want to DIT, not DIY -  and that's where we invite everybody. The invitation is to develop the most killer curriculum in the world using 100% open source tools, toolchains, and making the business model open source. We're paying $5-8k for a 9 day event if you are interested  in running them with us. Interested or know someone who has technological literacy and can teach? See the Invitation Letter. The curriculum is tight, and to get there we need to collaborate.

Finally, we have the Summer of Extreme Design Build coming up in 2020 - a 3 month immersion where we build 3D printers, tractors, bulldozer, CNC torch table, brick press, soil mixer, sawmill, houses, an aquaponic greenhouse, and more. First month is the Desktop Microfactory topics. The second month focuses on heavy machines, and the third month is construction. Wow! 24 spots will be open each month, and those who take the full 3 months effectively join an apprenticeship for building open source infrastructures. The curriculum here will build on all that we know, and we'll gather an eclectic team of instructors to provide the best learning experience. This will be the most ambitious schedule to date - as we practice building an entire village - In One Day. 

Please pass this on to your friends - and invite them to subscribe to this newsletter, or support us as a True Fan.

Humbly yours,
Marcin