Anthony douglas log

March 18

Starting in the design stuff. First, the review of the 3d model, then we can export to dxf for and, check the scaling, combine the dxfs into a single file in librecad so they can be cut from a 4 by 8 sheet. Andrew is presently increasing the polygon count, too, so those circles and stuff are a little more circular, as I noticed some of the holes on the CEB press are clearly polygons after cutting, although I suppose this is small fries, it is something that it would be nice to address for the future, to improve the cost to performance ratio in some cases. Actual round holes are a useful thing.

Export from sketchup to to-scale DXF file is now complete!

File:Soil mixer-pulverizer march 18 sketchup to dxf CAM files.zip

The orthographic views of the weldments are exported too, the next thing for them is to dimension them. That shouldn't take too long in Inventor. LibreCAD doesn't snap to the lines in the drawing, so the dimensions come out with long strings after the decimal point based on how closely you could get your mouse cursor, and you can't edit the text after, it just becomes lines.

But now we move to infrastructure stuff, mainly whitewashing that hotel room.

March 17

Design stuff in the morning was mostly spent getting Inventor working, looking into importing Sketchup files, reading about Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, and investigating libreCAD for use in dimensioning the outputs of the sketchup to DXF converter tool. The afternoon infrastructure stuff entailed removing the rest of the adhesive from the front windows, cleaning up around the microhouse, painting much of the interior of the MH, then we did some consultation with Marcin on the design, and turned to domestic labor, getting food, firewood, etc. Later in the evening Andrew and I had a closer look at the 3d sketchup model and found a number of errors that we were glad to catch at this stage, but it means we should go over the model to double check things. I suspected this would happen, but it's not really regression, just part of the development process, I think, here. Not like loosing a file or something. We should be checking each other's work anyway, and expecting errors, especially when trying to shimmy a program like sketchup into the role we want it to fill here, and with all of us relatively inexperienced users of the software. Certainly not in all cases, but I think much more so than is usually assumed, teamwork of this sort can overcome the need - and mean real need, of course they would be able to do things faster, but as long as we get there in a reasonable time frame - for more experienced people.

march 16

My log entries keep disappearing, for reasons that are unclear. Some kind of conflict with the multiple tabs open. Anyway, today we cleaned the hab lab and got personal stuff done. One issue that has come up is the presence of CCA wood in the wood fuel pile, and therefore probably arsenic in the ash of the furnace and campfire. According some research just now, http://www.noccawood.ca/docs/ccawood.pdf indicates that a 12 foot long 2 by six contains enough arsenic to kill 250 adults. So I had to think for a second when I saw Andrew vacuuming up ash around the fireplace, releasing a cloud of it into the hab lab. It has probably happened before, though.

Otherwise, I have gotten Inventor mostly working, about 6 days after I first started trying, we cleaned up the hab lab, set some mouse traps, collected non cca wood etc. I have been trying to encourage recovery from my cold as much as I can, too. The time consumed by the tiredness is infuriating, indeed. I have been reading on dimensioning and tolerancing, and hope to learn and do some of that for the soil pulverizer this evening.

march 15

Turns out I actually have a cold, I realized last night, probably accounting for the voice and unusual level of tiredness recently. Great timing. From prior reading on the subject, apparently one of the only known orally consumed things that helps is 500 to 1000 mg vitamin C, if taken within 3 days of the onset of the cold, which going by the onset of the voice symptoms, is already passed. Normally I take 500 mg per day of Vitamin C for that very reason; so that the times that I do get a cold, I have been taking it, before it is too late, not having known whatever was wrong with me was a cold. The other thing is zinc nasal spray, but it has the side effect of a relatively high risk of destroying your sense of smell, permanently. Echinacea, the other preparations in the pharmacy, don't actually help address the tiredness, actual viral infection etc. I went into the pharmacy once and looked up the ingredients on the labels of all the nostrums. I suppose a cough suppressant might reduce transmissibility. I am coughing very little anyway, though. They usually resolve in seven to ten days but some can last for up to three weeks.[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold#Management

Done the final review modifications to the sketchup file, and exporting all parts to .dxf files. They are uploading now, the file named "Pulverizer anthonyd mar15 8 40 pm 2013.zip "File:Pulverizer anthonyd mar15 8 40 pm 2013.zip(the wiki can only upload a single file at once, apparently, and indeed give errors if you try more at a time by opening multiple upload windows) Next we need to dimension it. We take the weekend off, but I wanted to do this as an exercise, partly; the thing is this is the sort of thing I normally do on my weekend, learning things and trying to check things off my todo list. It only took about 40 minutes so not too bad; otherwise I focused on advancing things that I can't do during the weekday 9 to 6 hours. I went to the shop to see if I could repair one of the bicycles for quick trips into maysville, and found that there is a bike in nearly working condition, just the front tire needs to be pumped up. Couldn't find a bike pump, though. Will have another look tomorrow. I discovered exercise equipment in one of the side rooms of the hab lab, and moved some of the equipment from the grain silo in there, so we have a compete kit. It brings to mind something someone printed out and left on the table here, the integrated human page from the wiki, advocating for, among other things, a balanced life style. I have not been exercising explicitly since I got here, really. Our bodies are a reflection, in part, of the lives we live, our history, so this heralds regression in my fitness levels, unless I can get a good exercise routine worked into my days here. The weights will really help, certainly, but in practice there is nothing like an actual gym, I know from experience. The intensity of the exercise can't practically be matched, it is mainly a matter of the geometry involved with applying an optimal level of resistance to the various muscle fibers over their range of motion.

Inventor is downloading yet again. Error after error, data corruption, incompatibility, their silly download manager complicating things by breaking down, amazing. They should just use bittorrent.

March 14

Something has malfunctioned with this wiki page, as my definitely saved entries for today have gone missing. I will have a look at the history later to figure it out. Anyway, in summary, we spent till about 2 on domestic labor, including cleaning and buying food, and taking a break to say goodbye. The afternoon was spent on whitewashing, painting, removing tape adhesive and other infrastructure stuff. Then we did a final design review of the latest soil mixer/pulverizer prototype. The slated changes are still slated, but I have gone ahead and extracted dxf files from the sketchup file for the parts that will not change. I will then go and export the changed parts, it shouldn't take long to change things and export them. Then we proceed with the dimensioning, to produce a set of drawings for fabrication here on the farm. The drawings will not be super fly, as it is for use here in the prototyping process, mostly. For example, even the plate parts should have edge views, but that would take twice as long to export the files, and it took me about 2 hours just now, and there is very, very little use for drawings of the side of a part made from a plate of uniform thickness when you have the face drawing and thickness.

Announcement to all others at OSE: Just know that my voice seems to be giving out. I'm pretty sure it is from all the talking, and near shouting. I noticed we tend to have to speak loudly due to background noise. I have probably put out more sound energy in the last week than any week of my life, I think! I seem to remember that it is very important to rest your voice when this happens, or you risk permanent damage. So I absolutely must talk less. When I do speak I will have to speak more quietly, too. Also I will try to use signals and gestures instead. I noticed I make the gesture for "I can't hear" a lot, the hand by the ear...:)

March 13

Last day for most of us present here. Yesterday Andrew, Marcin, Catarina, Chris and I talked about continuing to volunteer here longer, because Andrew and I do not need to return to school as the others do. The plan is for the two of us to continue to accomplish things here on the same schedule, of CEB press in the morning, and infrastructure expansion in the afternoon, until the end of April, which is absolutely great. I was uncertain and didn't want to seem clingy, probably I went too far with that, but it is a fascinating, incredibly worthwhile and rich project here, and I was very much hoping I would find there were opportunities to continue helping to advance it, and all the learning by doing that goes along with that.

todo: Finish the pulverizer/mixer fabrication instructions for the overall and rotor, this includes adding some pics and the note regarding the relative position on the tines on the tine modules and a few other things (if the tine modules are identical, then the tines will all line up, which is not really what we want.) Doing this gives me a head start on doing the other parts, so I have that on my personal todo list and hope I won't have to jettison it, due to things on the list that I have committed explicitly to doing. Also included herein, is to get the drawings done thus far up on Dozuki. Inventor is done downloading, so I may be able to do something useful with that, too.

The afternoon will probably be lime washing and painting, and progress on the microhouse.

links or list for documents I have added to thus far, to be linked to for easy locating later, for now these are place holdersj: The dozuki fab instructions guides and the wiki pages that are linked to from the master development board/spreadsheets for the soil pulverizer/mixer tool. http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Soil_Mixer_Design_Rationale

I've got most of the parts exported to dxf, and will do the modified ones tomorrow. I am taking a moment to note here, though:

March 12

Got an error message when trying to install the 32 bit version of Inventor, which took since yesterday to download. The 32 bit version won't run on windows 8, so I need to download the 64 bit, back to square one. The importance of having your means of production with you or handy. Andrew had a similar problem, not having his SolidWorks with him. Probably because he never used his laptop to with it.

The morning was spent progressing on the fabrication plan for the soil mixer/pulverizer. This is particularly helpful as it helps iron out some off the design details, such as the manner in which the tine modules interface to the rotor shaft etc. They can be found linked to on the wiki through Dozuki under "build instructions" for the overall and also for the rotor module. I would greatly prefer to add some images, but the feature to add images to the wiki of the existing pulverizer to make things more clear to the reader, and also for Dozuki was not functional at the time, though it seems to be working now for the wiki, so I may revisit this later.

The afternoon was spent moving the swimming pool (parts), limewashing, cleaning at the microhouse, moving lumber and other small tasks that add up.

Very interesting discussion around the fire last night, as you might hope when people who are interested in a project like this come together.

Tuesday, March 11

Morning design. Eric and I measure the tines modules and the more critical rotor dimensions, so he can model it in scad. I document the process itself, in Process used march11 2013 to model an object for concept sketch in scad [1]. My abilities in Inventor are too limited for now to do this in a reasonable time frame, I think, but I will download a copy now so I can try to draw things tonight. I decided to focus on other things until now, since there are others in the group who can draw well, to be the most effective team player I can. I still need to get the pictures I have taken up non trovebox, I was hoping to do so this morning, but the internet connection was down.

This afternoon I spent mostly on preparing the exterior wall of the hab lab, then limewashing it, and painting the interior with the yellow.

Monday, March 10

We made good progress in the design of the pulverizer/mixer, essentially settling on the high level design and finishing the 3d sketchup model. Going out to see the stuff was a great aid, and seemed to inspire and catalyze thinking in the group. In the afternoon I and some others focused on finishing the microhouse interior walls, with the chicken wire and plaster/pearlite mix. I returned in the evening and did another batch, timing myself it took 28 minutes to mix and apply a batch of the plaster mixture, we will certainly be done the lower layer tomorrow, then there is a final finish layer. I am going to bed now immediately after this, entering the log entry and eating, I think, as I have been getting increasingly sleep deprived over the past week. Yesterday and today I tried to remove the ton of malware on this computer with avg free, malwarebytes and the online trendmicro software, which have helped, but there is still something interfering with the browser severely.

Sun Mar 9, 2014

• Pulverizer and mixer design session in the morning.
• Afternoon work included cutting plywood sheets w/ table saw with Coltan, painting the boards, then helped mud up the cracks in the micro house, moving some scrap metal and helping with the dishes. One interesting thing was the difficulty of stuffing the mud into cracks and against the wall due to it's failure to stick well, then the discovery later in the day that mud near the fire was far stickier and would have been a great labor saver. It shows the importance of a brief practical exploration period. Another thing that made a huge difference, which I expected probably existed, was the technique Marcin showed us to get the mud in the walls; take a trowel with mud piled on it and force it against the wall with another, with the first trowel held underneath.