The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Tabby and Wikispeed: open-source cars
Small businesses are counting on Open Source in order to speed up change in the slow and massive automotive industrial sector. Sharing…for greater innovation!
EXTRACT
So for €2,050 (£1,600), you can buy an operational car chassis on which you can build your own car. OSVehicle sees itself as a springboard for innovation, “a starting point for the creation of a new range of vehicles.”
……is a physical device that can give “people everywhere the ability to be more self-sustaining and self-reliant in four key areas: food, water, nutrition and medicine.”
EXTRACT
What's so extraordinary about this invention is that it requires no electricity and no complex moving parts (no pumps, no circuit boards, no gears, etc.). That means it's 100% EMP-proof, power grid failure proof and even radiation proof.
Build Your Own Micro-Factory (It’s Cheaper Than You Think)
EXTRACT
At the root of Gershenfeld’s course is a list of machines. These are not exotic, multi-million dollar machines, although you can certainly spend a pretty penny on the top end models in each category. Rather, these devices, with the possible exception of the 3d printer are all fairly well known quantities. Gershenfeld’s Fabrication Laboratory (Fab-Lab, for short), networks these various machines and makes them work together. He does that in a space about the size of a two-car garage.
Can local manufacturing compete with automobile mass production? It seems that yes, it can. The technology will improve as time goes on and you can't beat the price…
3-D Printed Car: NY Daily News Autos gets a ride in the Local Motors “Strati” 3-D printed roadster
The world’s first 3-D printed car is now a reality, and the Daily News Autos got to ride in the car of the future on the streets of Brooklyn, New York. Engineered and built by Phoenix-based Local Motors, the 2-passenger roadster, called the “Strati,” can be printed in 44 hours and has a top speed of approximately 50 mph.
EXTRACT
“This is about simplification and streamlining,” explains Jay Rogers, co-founder and CEO of Local Motors. Rogers was present to give us a tour of the Strati and explain, exactly, 3-D printing tech brings to the automotive world. “All this material you’re looking at,” he says, pointing to the car, “is about $3,500 dollars.”
. . . . . . .
Granted, it’s not pretty, but the prototypes ridged edges can be smoothed over with human-powered grinding and sanding. Paint can also be applied to the body-work, though this negates the Strati’s near 100-percent recyclability.
4/4 Fabbing & cities: Barcelona Fab City
This post is the fourth of 4 posts about Digital manufacturing (fabbing) environments that we have been publishing weekly on Fridays. In these posts I have shared my research on fab labs, open innovation and smart cities, mainly in Europe and in Spain.
The fourth post is the result of a research on fab labs and their relationship with smartcities. In the last two articles I have written about two recent nodes of the global fab lab network. Although there are other fablabs in Spain, I decided to give visibility to these two initiatives in León and in Sevilla. Among all fab labs in Spain those two are giving a real opportunity to make personal production and digital manufacturing accessible and comprehensible for a wide range of people. However, the most popular manufacturing laboratory in Spain is Fab Lab Barcelona (2008). It is settled in the IAAC – Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and it is part of the Fab Lab Network. I would like to share my interest in their research on how the digital production ecosystem could make our cities smarter.
3D printing is growing up!
How a Dutch team of architects is 3D-printing a full-sized house in Amsterdam (video 4 min)
Architects in Amsterdam have started building what they say is one of the world's first full-sized 3D-printed houses. The structure is being built using a plastic heavily based on plant oil. The team behind the house claim it is a waste-free, eco-friendly way to design and construct the cities of the future.
