Mike Log

Notes on My OSE Objectives

Only one week left here at FeF before headed back to Canada
Just finished putting the final touches on the CEB Press model. Will need to finish off the hydraulics and figure out how we're going to be doing BOM attributes and such.
Need to start farming out the drawings of the parts and assemblies as soon as possible too. Any one want to help?
Still looking for information on ARAS as well. If you have that experience please e-mail me

Working away on the models still. Starting to get some remote help from Rob Beddingfield which is great!
Still looking for a lot of other people that can help out with some drawings and likely we'll need to start getting into the exploded view diagrams and such as the models are being finished up.
Progress of the CAD Models so far:
- CEB - 90%
- LifeTrac III - 20% (mainly due to spending more time on the loading arm redesign)
- Soil Pulverizer - 80%
- PowerCube - I believe that we are going with what Tom is doing in Sketch-up so I don't have to worry about this one.
Have done a few other infrastructure changes around FeF in my spare time as well which is good! The workshop that Floyd and John are building is coming along very well and seeing their techniques for building (ensuring everything is perfectly square and the methods of doing that) is very impressive!
In other news I'll be updating the wiki this week to start really reformatting the CAD section. Should become a lot more comprehensive and we can start getting some dialogue and edits on a lot of the major issues.

Past week was a good week of CAD development on the CEB Press. The model is about 95% complete right now with just some fittings and pins to model and finish. Started doing the model for the Life-Trac as well, will come a long quickly I hope.
Did quite a few more infrastructure improvements around the place this past week with Yoonseo. Made a humanure composting bin for all of our waste, should give good fertilizer in 2 years!
Currently in Georgia for a small holiday/break but will be headed back to FeF on Monday

Not as much CAD today but did some infrastructure improvements around the cord-wood hut and cleaning up a bit. Looks a lot better though so definitely worth the time.
Ted left today unfortunately, but from talking with Floyd (new construction manager) looks like we'll be getting a roof up pretty quickly over the workshop and hablab with his new method of doing so. Great having him on board as he's been building with CEBs for a long time. He also suggested a good method to try and fix the door to my room so that it actually closes. I'll be trying to do that tomorrow haha

Good day of CAD yesterday. Looks like I'll be helping on the line today though stacking bricks. Marcin's going to try and have both CEB Presses running.
Looking for input on ARAS (aras.com) as an open source PLM software. If you have any advice or experience with it, please e-mail me! (mike dot apostol at gmail dot com)
After discussions with Marcin this morning, I'm going to create two versions of the CEB press. One as it is now with a list of bugs (but it has at least been fabricated) as a "beta" release and another version with some of the design improvements I have for it that will in all likelihood work but have not been actually tried out so can't really release it as a public release. It can be up to the fabricator which one they would like to use.
I really wish we were modeling in metric...soon...soon....
I have learned that closing the flue on the wood burning stove keeps a lot more heat in!
Spent today working on CAD standards that can function as a baseline for future work to maintain consistency. I'll be posting it to the wiki and then definitely up for debate and modification as required.

Further progress on the Liberator CEB Press today. Got a really nice parametric model of the hopper so that we can dynamically change all the angles and sides so that we can optimize the shape and size.
I'm modeling most of the press as it is now that is prototyped, but am hopefully implementing a change to close off the gaps between the hopper and the soil loading drawer as well as clean up some of the hole locations and fits.
Hopefully recruiting some CAD help for the drawings soon!
[1] This technique works well, just caught my first fly by hand today with it hahah