Open Source Construction Systems
Examples
"MakerBeam is a project to build a toy and tool for the open source imagination. Based on Mini-T, a new open source standard, MakerBeam will develop a construction toy for our times: open source precision hardware equally at home doing desktop fabrication or serving as a drawbridged castle for action figures. The fully developed MakerBeam line of connectors will make for an unsurpassed builder's toy and maker kit. Connectors, pivots, hinges, pulleys, cables, wheels, slot-in PCBs, and ALL of it open source, with the models published under Creative Commons licenses."
URL = http://www.contraptor.org/
Contraptor is a DIY open source construction set for experimental personal fabrication, desktop manufacturing, prototyping and bootstrapping.
Suggested by Eric Hunting:
- OpenFarmTech's Liberator Compressed Earth Block machine;
URL = http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=CEB_Press#Step_3._Product_Definition
- The Auram CEB Block System developed at Auroville India.
URL = http://www.earth-auroville.com/?nav=menu&pg=auram&id1=7&lang_code=en
This is the most advanced CEB block system in existence. Sort-of open in that they claim the technology is offered free to the world to use, but don't publish exact plans for anything -especially the Auram block press which they export for sale. I was going to import one of these machines and the whole block form set a while ago -at a cost of about $15k-, but couldn't find any locals interested enough in working with me to actually build anything. The project long pre-dates the concept of Open Source and they aren't too up on these concepts in southern India, so that may be part of the issue. I don't think anyone has actually gone to them and said; "if this is intended to be free for the world, let's setup a world project to disseminate it";
- The MIT House-n 'chassis' system. (which is akin to my Utilihab as a basic structural concept, but more focused on electronics integration)
URL = http://architecture.mit.edu/house_n/
- Grid Beam -which is the latest incarnation of Ken Isaacs' Matrix and Sun Tools' Box Beam. (sort-of a de-facto Open Source project because it started as a public domain technology)