December 2019 OSEmail

1. We are pleased to announce expansion of our STEAM Camps to our first ever trilateral event, with 3 event locations in Europe and America. If you want a real crash course in collaborative design towards building real products - this is for you. https://www.opensourceecology.org/steam-camp-january-2020/

1. And we just did a product release of our 3D printers - our first ever product that we will be producing on a regular schedule as opposed to on a per-event basis. Our specfic goal is not to produce a hobby printer, which you can get from China for $200. Our machines are designed for those interested in beginning a production business, for parts manufacturing, and for learning about CNC machine design. And we have just developed the world's first extruder that does not require a gear-down to use 3 mm filament - a robust and flexible design that works well printing rubber, and can use 1.75 or 3 mm filament interchangeably. See more at https://www.opensourceecology.org/d3d-universal-2/ and https://www.opensourceecology.org/d3d-pro/.

1. As our next major milestone in our internet infrastructure, Michael Altfield, our sys admin, succeeds in installing Discourse forum software on our staging server. Technically speaking - this was a challenge to install its Docker container on a non-supported non-cloud infrastructure while waging documentation requests with a semi-supportive Discourse developer community, while addressing security and caching. But it's now documented as we blazed the trail so others can follow if they have a similar fat client architecture to our own.

1. Build prep is happening for the CEB Microhouse build in Belize, with foundation laid, soil delivered to the site, and our new Soil Mixer ready to be added to our pool of open source machines. We are beginning the mixer build - at a cost of about $2k in materials for a one-step soil mixer which accepts raw soil, pulverizes it to a fine powder via hammer-mill action, adds a controlled amount of cement, and sprinkles in appropriate water content. The price of the next comparable machine that does this is $48k for a soil crusher (7 people to load, 1 person to run tractor for initial soil - [1]) and mixer, which requires a team of 7 people (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=40&v=zpD42kWbDVA&feature=emb_logo) - compared to 3 people for the OSE version (1 to run tractor to load soil mixer and to load cement and 2 people to stack block on pallets). OSE's lean appropriate technology approach thus produces $3k and 3 people, compared to $48k and 15 people. Our goal is to normalize CEB construction as a practical and accessible way to do housing.

With this, we intend to produce stabilized CEBs for sale in America. We plan on doing a 3000 square foot CEB outdoor patio, retaining walls, and more modular houses at the Summer of Extreme Design-Build 2020 - https://www.opensourceecology.org/summer-x-2020/

So it's going to be an exciting year.

1. Summer X is coming! That is our most grand Summer of Extreme Design and Build and Startup Camp - 3 months where we build a bevy of CNC machines, more heavy machines, buildings, microhouses, and our next generation aquaponic greenhouse. We will build larger 3D Printers, and use 3D printing exensively to make rubber tracks and tires, plumbing pipes, wall panels, foundation forms, and other applications. But we focus on open source livelihood creation as we teach people to be producers: of 3D printing filament, of stabilized construction block, plastic lumber, plumbing pipes, solar concrete, lumber, and more. Wow.