i work on heavy equipment such as tractors, diesel trucks and excavators in the USA. this is an excellent start, but its a long way from a tractor.
some of the pitfalls that need to be addressed:
"Modular Power Unit" is undefined. can i run it on white gas? diesel? kerosene? what is the engine displacement? air cooled or liquid? If we mean to say this tractor is all-electric, keep in mind most small farms arent equipped to charge anything more advanced than a cordless drill or flashlight.
Cab frame has no safety glass or panels, so the operator enjoys every rock and every tree branch :(. a shade canopy is a nice add as well.
no lights. this is a nonstarter for every farmer that wakes up at 4 am.
quick hoses are nice, but I cant find a PTO knuckle so its restricted to things like lifting and towing (and maybe ripping). this is okay, but for an un-weatherized vehicle ill need to use barn real-estate to store, its certainly lacking.
Oh god that's so rough, it looks like they're (very poorly) using an angle grinder free-hand and an oxy torch to cut out their plates.
They'd probably find the tooling and jigs they need to do the job properly would be much cheaper and easier if they didn't go way overkill. This little engine does not require a huge 1/2" thick steel plate to mount it on.
> Cab frame has no safety glass or panels, so the operator enjoys every rock and every tree branch :(. a shade canopy is a nice add as well.
> no lights. this is a nonstarter for every farmer that wakes up at 4 am.
Not to dismiss those concerns but I would say they could be addressed in later versions of this machine. For lighting, after-market solutions or even duct taping a powerful flashlight or two would do the trick.
The market is that of farmers with little to no mechanization. The aim is to be made out of readily available materials and to be as simple to repair as possible.
> Cab frame has no safety glass or panels, so the operator enjoys every rock and every tree branch :(. a shade canopy is a nice add as well.
These were luxuries only our nicest tractors had growing up ~20 years ago. I imagine the market for an Open Source Tractor can similarly make do without.
Rocks and branches are a once-in-a-while problem. Dust is an everyday use problem, and in an era where everything is doused in pesticides and herbicides I don't think it's optional.
Are the people likely to use this already working unprotected around pesticides? If so, what difference would it make that they’re now sitting in a tractor? If not, why would having a tractor cause then to start? Or is your guess that they’re swapping from a tractor with protection?
I don't know; my neighbors are farmers and their tractors don't have cabins. I'm not saying it's healthy, just that different people place different emphasis on different features.
Having occasionally used a (cabin-less) tractor without power steering for years, I'd pick that over a cabin for instance.
Dust and pesticides can be worked around with masks, goggles or scarves when occasionally found around. A straw hat for sunlight. In any case, this is a base building block, people are free to design add-ons for it depending on their needs :)
To the extent that these things are unhealthy, it’s probably something that only shows up in aggregate. Individual health issues probably aren’t related back to x-icide exposure. At least I’ve never heard of such a thing and I come from a large farming community.
I don't think I'm claiming that the open tractor HAS to have a cabin. It should be an option, though. Possibly one with some positive peer pressure around it.
A box doesn't fix everything. You still have to get air into it from somewhere and it's all gonna come from outside. But sitting in a dust cloud is a little different situation than getting some dust through a vent. Especially if you're sweating like a pig the whole time.
Not sure, but we definitely made extensive use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers when I was growing up. Of course, to your point, that doesn’t mean that kind of exposure is safe.
I wasn't doing much spraying to be honest, but we usually waited for relatively windless days to spray (not for health reasons, but usually because we didn't want to roundup the neighbors' crops/lawns/etc).
Oh that's true, I know that and I'm not sure why I didn't think of it. Herbicide drift is a nightmare scenario of horticulturalists. In certain circles people plan out earth berms and wind breaks of sacrificial plants so their flowers and vegetables don't get hit. Most of us aren't brave enough to build something on the edge of farmland, let alone in the middle of it. But there's always some masochist who will try.
'We' don't have a very high opinion of farmers spraying on a windy day.
Similarly flatlander recreational/club bicyclists don't have anything nice to say about farmers spraying anhydrous ammonia on a windy day. Luckily didn't happen very often, and never up close (>400 yards), but that's still enough to really get your attention.
The modular power unit is able to be swapped in and out of the various projects that require it that this team creates. Beyond that I don't know anything about it. There's also a compressed earth block machine and other things that use it. This team has been working on this since approximately 2011? It was started by a former nuclear engineer named Marcin Jakubowski. They're based out of Missouri and they dog-food their tools to build and maintain a small "village" there.
I just wanted to comment today that beside OSS, SciHub and Library Genesis we need Blueprint Hub to move Civilizarion forward. Happy that some people work on it.
It's been a while since I have read up on Open Source Ecology, but my memory is that modular power unit is a stand in for several options. One option is the power cube, which is a gas engine:
As others have said, the "modular power unit" is most likely a "power cube" (in OSE terminology) [0]. From the "Product Ecology" section, it looks like it does enable the tractor, either through hydraulic or electric power. It looks like it's able to use gasoline and steam though not battery technology (LiPo, etc)?
If you were able to cheaply apply the upgrades you're talking about (safety glass, lights) for some nominal fee (maybe sub $500?) would this a viable alternative to other options? How many "quirks" are you willing to put up with before you throw up your hands and go with a more commercial option?
They are terribly inefficient and who is going to be servicing all these hydraulics in the 3rd world? Every farming town in the USA has someone who can make custom hydro lines quickly. How many of those shops in Africa?
Petrol engines are inefficient. Solar panels are inefficient. Your and my metabolisms are inefficient. Suitability to purpose matters more in my humble opinion. Alongside modularity and reusability.
Please contribute anything you know about custom hydraulic lines to https://wiki.replimat.org/wiki/Main_Page - I will approve accounts for any hackernews folk who request one.
Go look at an old farmall or ford tractor and understand how they solved these problems 70+ years ago. Be careful thinking you are smarter than those engineers.
Great example. Compare the traction of your machine to an 8N. That engine will outlast 4-5 briggs engines easy (10K vs 2K hrs). They have an efficient gear drive as opposed to hydrostatic. Lots less maintenance and no need for gallons of hydro fluid. They have a robust 3pt hitch with an excellent PTO drive. They will drag your tractor up and down the field all day long. I really mean to be constructive, sorry if I am not sugar coating it.
I appreciate your enthusiasm. First of all, the design originates with Open Source Ecology, a sister project. I'm involved with Replimat. There's also Gridbeam, XYZ Cargo, Precious Plastic, and about a dozen other groups actively developing around the system(s).
I appreciate all your points about the sort of tractor best suited to your unique circumstances. I don't see anything about our communities designs which prevent you from constructing such a machine using our parts and techniques. I think it'd be a neat design to have among all the others which can be built this way!
I priced out BCS and Grillo units when I first moved here and in the end ended up getting a subcompact hydrostatic tractor and it frankly has probably worked out better for me (6.5 acre property ... 1/2 acre vineyard/orchard, 1/2 acre garlic + market garden veggies).
It's likely because the importation of the BCS units into Canada just ends up making them and the attachments quite expensive. If I was in Europe, or even the US, I think they'd be more cost effective.
The tractor + loader ended up being a more useful overall implement because the loader is just invaluable on a rural property generally. So many things made easier by being able to move around heavy loads. And snow clearance with a 70" snowblower is an entirely different story than walking behind a 30" one. I used to have Gravely walk behind with a snowblower on it and my back suffered for it.
I have 3ph rototiller, snowblower, rotary mower, posthole auger, toolbar with discs, s-tines, wood chipper, and single bottom plow. And access to a bunch of other stuff from the neighbours. All of those things would be potentially cheaper for a BCS unit, but much harder to get, and less powerful. The used market for standard 3ph attachments is much easier to deal with rather than the niche walk-behind stuff.
On the lower end I use a wheel hoe. And I'm currently working on restoring and electrifying an old planet jr unit.
The BCS and Grillo units are really neat. But the small farm market isn't big enough for them here to get proper dealer support, used equipment supply, and deal with the importation issues. All of the neat attachments weren't available to me without dealing with Earth Tools in the US, with all the brokerage and customs and shippings issues that would come with that.
The cab frame it's self has me a little worried as well. It looks like it is all bolted steel tubes and I am not sure how well those would handle a roll over event.
No worries, I will try to give a better explanation.
There are two things I am concerned, the material and the design.
My main concern with the material would be how much shear the 1/4 thick mild steel tubes could handle the machine's weight.
My concern with the design is that it would not be sturdy enough to withstand the weight of the machine even if the steel technically could. The tubes at the top are fastened with one through bolt. Two if you count the bolt holding the lower pipe.
Contrast that with the arms of the machine. Double pipes and a(2, front and back) thick gusset plate at the pivot.
You see the same construction at the front of the arm, 2 gusset plates on either side of the pipes with 6 bolts on the arm side and 4 on the loading side. Also washer to spread the load on the gusset plates.
The arm/bucket is what does the work, so I expect it to be engineered to work.
The machine will not be picking up loads heavier than it, otherwise it would tip forward. So any load put on the roll cage will be greater than the load put on the bucket but I do not see the attention to detail on the roll cage that I see in the bucket/arm connections.
I could be wrong, I am not a design/structural engineer. I work as a production engineer but in a factory that builds highway construction equipment. The designs that I am used to seeing are single steel tube bent in an arch for greater strength. Also you are not allowed to weld or cut holes in the tube as that would compromise the strength.
> If we mean to say this tractor is all-electric, keep in mind most small farms arent equipped to charge anything more advanced than a cordless drill or flashlight.
Are you sure? In Switzerland, most farms I know have at least one dusty three-phase power outlet somewhere in a shed. Sometimes just 16A, but that should be sufficient for many use cases.
So how do the power companies run electricity to those areas? They don't use DC, do they? Or do you mean individual houses are typically wired with just one of the phases?
US residential and rural areas typically have 120/240v split phase (single phase) 3-wire service, (2) 120v hots and a shared neutral. Commercial customers can usually get three-phase power.
Correct. It can be prohibitively expensive to have 3-phase power run to your house. Most consumers who need it, e.g., hobbyists, will use a phase converter.
The only person I know who actually had 3-phase power run to his house was using it for a ceramic kiln.
Living on a rural US farm... In our area, 3 phase was not ran to our farm until we paid a large lump sum for the utility to run it from the nearest substation to us. Before that we only had single phase.
some of the pitfalls that need to be addressed:
"Modular Power Unit" is undefined. can i run it on white gas? diesel? kerosene? what is the engine displacement? air cooled or liquid? If we mean to say this tractor is all-electric, keep in mind most small farms arent equipped to charge anything more advanced than a cordless drill or flashlight.
Cab frame has no safety glass or panels, so the operator enjoys every rock and every tree branch :(. a shade canopy is a nice add as well.
no lights. this is a nonstarter for every farmer that wakes up at 4 am.
quick hoses are nice, but I cant find a PTO knuckle so its restricted to things like lifting and towing (and maybe ripping). this is okay, but for an un-weatherized vehicle ill need to use barn real-estate to store, its certainly lacking.