Gmail came prematurely. To continue:

Now seems like a good time to consider what we are doing and why we do it.
I talked with Tom, Mark and Jehan briefly about our state of affairs and current direction. It made me realize that:
* Most of us are excited about metalwork and building a big machine. Most of us are not specifically excited about the CEB press.
* I hate giving up on things, and this gives me energy for continuing and finishing the CEB press regardless of findings about the state of OSE.
* I am also open for defining another thing to build (ie. small-scale windmills), that might be more immidiately useful for ourselves and our communities in an urban environment.
* Maybe those two work-foci are not mutually exclusive.

What are your thoughts?

ALSO: OMI is of course on this Saturday from noon.
I won't be making it as I will be hacking Marin.

On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 1:28 PM, Morten H. D. Fuglsang <vallebo@gmail.com> wrote:
Hol, awesome! We definitely need more expertise in the area of hydraulics. And good links too, thanks to both of ye.

I was lurking the OSE forums a bit the other day. I found something that scared me a bit: http://forum.opensourceecology.org/discussion/1004/why-is-ose-so-quiet-lately
Some quotes:

Yoonseo, OSE team
Just want to clear things up with the facts about what's happening with OSE. First and foremost, everyone on-site left OSE after the huge conflict year-end 2012 between the team and Marcin.

Brianna, OSE team
Lies about the quality of the products. The brick press produced shit for bricks. They didn't have one flat surface on them. I personally built 4 of these, which were all shipped out without proper testing. One was shipped out a year after it was supposed to be. The power cube worked for a week AT THE LONGEST

Ryan, random dude.
I have a collective of makers that just received a space grant in upstate NY that are making a list of first projects to focus on, and the OSE Liberator and CEB press are near the top of the list. Hearing that the Powercube design doesn't hold up to use and the CEB press being almost useless scare the heck out of us though. Does anyone on here know who purchased these preorders, or anyone that is using actively any iterations of these pieces? I'd love to hear about their experiences.

Yoonseo, OSE team:
Hey Ryan, it's actually not so bad. OSE has been doing subpar builds primarily due to haste and lack of care from Marcin, but the general mechanisms (at least for the ceb press and powercube) are sound- we couldn't have done the hablab/workshop without it. To be clear- the CEB Press and Powercube work. Now the only issue is that you have to use good materials and produce them properly (instead of the bad stuff that broke on us over and over).

The inexpensive surplus engines for the Powercube have frequently caused problems due to breaking magnetos; a bunch of the solenoids broke too. Shoddy commercial parts! So on the powercube side, as long as you get engines with reliable accessories, and long-life solenoids, everything should be fine. Remember to seal the threaded hydraulic connections and tighten sufficiently- hydraulic leaks are bad! Also, I think the most difficult part of the powercube production for you will be sealing and installing the ports on the gasoline and hydraulic fluid reservoirs. Make sure you get this done right else you'll get gas/hyd fluid leaks all over the place. When I was at FeF there's mostly been problems with hydraulic fluid leaking due to improperly sealed connections. No explosions though, heh.

Now the CEB Press can easily have issues surrounding its compression chamber. If you do not use thick enough steel and insufficiently reinforce the compression walls, you will get bending and that will get you curved bricks. No good. Also the second thing was that the ejection surface must be parallel or subsequent surfaces must be scaled in the proper direction. Otherwise you will get the bottom of your bricks sliced by about 1/4" as it gets ejected. Also make sure that the primary cylinder is high enough so that the pressing surface can actually get to the ejection surface (otherwise you gonna get some more bottom-slicing action). I think those were the major issues. Make sure you put a pressure relief valve on there eh.

Hope that helps! -Yoonseo


My conclusions:
* I predict OSE wont last much longer, and will ta some point stop being the center of a lot of this open hardware infrastructure stuff. Groups will fork it and improve upon the designs.
* hence thre is no need for us to associate ourselves closely with and limit ourselves by, OSE. In terms of how we build and what we build. Instead, it makes more sense for me to think of us as forking OSE.
* The CEB press can work if we use common sense and confirm the design and do it very properly. If not, it wont work as well. We should not trust the OSE plans and recommendations too much.




Make a great day,
Morten H. D. Fuglsang
US: +1 415 799 6931 // skype: FlyvendeHest


On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Anthony Di Franco <di.franco@gmail.com> wrote:
See also https://www.surpluscenter.com/hydraulic.asp?catname=hydraulic for all your cheapness in hydraulics needs.


On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Hol Gaskill <hol@gaskill.com> wrote:
Hi Folks,

I haven't been around much for fabrication of the frame and probably won't be there on saturday build days at least until mid june, but I would like to help with the implementation of the hydraulics system.  All the designs I've seen are centered around the powercube which is powered by a briggs and stratton engine.  For simplicity and flexibility, I propose using an electric pump either 12VDC or 120VAC, or a standard mount and coupler so we could swap them out.  It could still be powered by a generator for remote applications, or ideally from solar/batteries.  I just see the OSE powercube as being a little more complex than we might prefer moving forward, and we can still get the same force even if we go to a lower power pump, the machine would just operate more slowly.


power unit:
http://www.zorotools.com/g/00034368/k-G0711252?utm_source=google_shopping&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Google_Shopping_Feed&kw={keyword}&gclid=CNP1g9Ls1LYCFaR_QgodFgYA9A

valve example (just a cheap one...not researched)
http://www.coastpneumatics.com/valve-3quarter.html

does anyone know the force/pressure we need for the rams?

Cheers,
hol
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