After Marcin Jakubowski earned his PhD he made a bold move to start a self-sustaining community in Missouri. In the process, he discovered how expensive purchasing and maintaining heavy duty equipment can be. Marcin took matters into his own hands by starting an ambitious project to recreate equipment, machinery, and tools and named it Open Source Ecology (OSE).Founded in 2003, OSE has developed the Global Village Construction Set -- an open source platform for 50 different industrial machines.
OSE uses LulzBot 3D printers in two specific ways to improve their design and manufacturing processes. First, like many heavy equipment manufacturers, their LulzBots are used for rapid prototyping during the early stages of product development. Next they use 3D printable subassemblies and assemblies to simulate the manufacturing process of the product. After doing test run simulations of the manufacturing process, they go back and streamline product design.
LulzBot 3D printers helped OSE reduce assembly by nearly two-thirds of the previous build time. Using Libre / Open innovations, all of their documentation and blueprints are available to anyone, to be used as “a kernel for building infrastructures of modern civilization.” OSE helps to accomplish these goals by holding workshops at their headquarters (also referred to as the “Factor e Farm”) and different sites around North America. One of their most recent workshops featured building a LulzBot KITTAZ 3D printer. At this workshop attendees were taught how to build an Open Source 3D printer and discover the capabilities of 3D printing.
Previous OSE workshops include building a high-performance electronic trike, a modular power cube, a 512 square foot microhouse, and other tools in the Global Village Construction Set. When it comes to Open Source Hardware, OSE is breaking new ground and creating an Open Source economy. Here at Aleph Objects, Inc., we're proud to help create the necessary tools for OSE's construction systems. To learn more about Open Source Ecology and their use of LulzBot 3D printers, read the Open Source Ecology case study at http://www.lulzbot.com/case-studies or visit their website at http://opensourceecology.org/.
You can also watch Marcin Jakubowski speak on Open-Sourced blueprints for civilization in the TED video below: