OpenSourceEcology.org is a network of engineers, farmers and supporters who are developing the global village construction set (GVSC) - a set of 50 machines that are required for humanity to exist.
All of these items are low cost, modular and open-source - the idea is to empower people with the ability to create the tools they need to farm on an industrial scale.
The items on the list are all pretty ‘industrial’ - generally the kind of things you need to produce other things or to produce energy.
Some of the more obvious items include a tractor, a truck, a wind turbine, a power cube and an oven.
But there are items which go even ‘deeper’ into the backbone of production - such as a metal press, a welder and a furnace.
The items are at different stages of prototyping/ development, but you can click through the web site and explore the progress on each one.
The general idea seems to take a product that exists in the real world as a model and then adapt it, figuring out a way to build it cheaper.
The project founder is Polish born Marcin Jakubowski
After completing a PhD in fusion physics he went into farming, bought a tractor, the tractor broke, it cost him a fortune to fix it and he ended up broke - and he realised he lacked the skills to do anything useful.
So he built his own tractor, and with it the idea of Open Source Blueprints for civilisation was born.
You can find his original TED talk from 2009 easily enough, but here's a more recent video with Jacob talking about the project in 2018...
Open Source Ecology is a collaboration it’s very decentralised in nature and it seems that anyone with the skills can opt-in and start developing on any of the projects above. They have also partnered with a number of other similar projects.
The different items are all at different stages of development - some only in the prototype phase others having been built in workshops already. You can check the progress of all of the items here.
They had, by 2018, built a total of 8 out of the 50 items.
For some of the more developed items they also offer intensive workshops in which you can learn to design and build one of the items yourself. Below is a video where some workshoppers build a micro tractor...
NB I'm not sure how much these workshops would cost, I can't imagine they'd be free!
A more recent workshop involves building a 3D printer - to my mind this is pretty mind blowing, I mean building stuff made with a 3D printer, that's still pretty radical, but learning how to build your own actual 3D printer - amazing!
If you scroll down the the GVCS site you'll notice a spreadsheet where they list the savings of their builds compared to the retail models they've adapted - savings of 60-90% are typical!
I'm a big fan of this project - encourage people to skill up and redesign and build some of the fundamental tools for civilisation to exist, and making it all open-source, now that's taking DIY to the next level!
Having said that I don't think they go 'really deep' into production - I don't believe they make their own steel, gas pressure regulators, or oil for example, those might be a step too far even for these guys!
Still, it's about as DIY as I've seen, and I guess the next phase is for me to pick one of the items on the list and start getting to grips with it.
