Global Village Construction Set

The GVCS Tractor
Source: OSE, GNU FDL 1.2 / CC BY-SA 3.0

It hasn't been too long since last I blogged about Open Source Ecology (OSE), but I love this idea. It's essentially a matter of making making practical designs for farming and industrial equipment freely available, in an "open source" manner. The idea is that economically-challenged individuals and those in isolated regions where spare parts can be scarce should be able to build their own equipment. The designs could also be adapted based on resources available and the local context. Open Source Ecology is calling this collection of 50 industrial machines they are building the "Global Village Construction Set" (GVCS).

The GVCS has categories for Habitat, Agriculture, Industry, Energy, Materials and Transportation. In a pinch, post-apocalypse humanity could take these designs and begin rebuilding civilization with a decent modicum of comfort. In developing regions, people can work with these designs and build the equipment they need.

OSE aims to have 50 designs out by the end of 2012, working with a budget of only $2.4 million.  They are also apparently selling finished machines, and are currently taking pre-orders for the Soil Pulverizer, Tractor, Power Cube and Compressed Earth Block Press.

The following, taken from the OSE-GVCS page, are the "key features" of this project:

• Open Source - we freely publish our 3d designs, schematics, instructional videos, budgets, and product manuals on our open source wiki and we harness open collaboration with technical contributors.
• Low-Cost - The cost of making or buying our machines are, on average, 8x cheaper than buying from an Industrial Manufacturer, including an average labor cost of hour for a GVCS fabricator.
• Modular - Motors, parts, assemblies, and power units can interchange, where units can be grouped together to diversify the functionality that is achievable from a small set of units.
• User-Serviceable - Design-for-disassembly allows the user to take apart, maintain, and fix tools readily without the need to rely on expensive repairmen.
• DIY - (do-it-yourself) The user gains control of designing, producing, and modifying the GVCS tool set.
• Closed Loop Manufacturing - Metal is an essential component of advanced civilization, and our platform allows for recycling metal into virgin feedstock for producing further GVCS technologies - thereby allowing for cradle-to-cradle manufacturing cycles
• High Performance - Performance standards must match or exceed those of industrial counterparts for the GVCS to be viable.
• Flexible Fabrication - It has been demonstrated that the flexible use of generalized machinery in appropriate-scale production is a viable alternative to centralized production.
• Distributive Economics - We encourage the replication of enterprises that derive from the GVCS platform as a route to truly free enterprise - along the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy.
• Industrial Efficiency - In order to provide a viable choice for a resilient lifestyle, the GVCS platform matches or exceeds productivity standards of industrial counterparts.

To see some of the equipment in action, check out the video below.

---

See also:

Open Source Hardware for the Developing World