Powercube tanks 4 and engine 1

Yesterday we made some really good progress. Tanks were tested. We cut the shaft on the engine. Bolt holes appeared in a new engine mounting plate. It was a really good time.

underside of the 27HP water cooled motor

We used a rag with ice water to keep the shaft cool while cutting it with a portable bandsaw. 

we cut the shaft down by an inch (or so)

Next we'll be cutting and welding on the mount plates and tanks and looking for a shaft coupler. I believe the measurements were 1-1/8" engine side and 3/4" pump side.

the engine, frame and tanks came together and apart once again

You can find out more about this project on my powercube project page. 

Powercube frame 2

5/14/2014
We welded on the mounting brackets for the engine. After that we really wanted to see what it looked like with the engine in place, so we set it on there, and now we have what looks like a PowerCube.

You can find out more about this project on my powercube project page.

Powercube tanks 3

4/29/2014

Grant and I spent some additional time on the tanks. I have to give him a lot of credit as he has been thinking and working on this a lot behind the scenes.

I'm tacking the end caps on to the tanks here so that we can dry fit everything into the frame.

The tubes are starting to look like storage tanks! The close one is fuel and the far one is hydraulic fluid.

Thanks Grant, I really enjoy our projects together. 

You can find out more about this project on my powercube project page.

Powercube tanks 2

3/31/2014 

Grant and I worked on attaching a few of the fittings on the fuel and hydraulic tanks.

Grant also spent many hours grinding and welding on the frame and tanks and they are looking great!

You can find out more about this project on my powercube project page. 

Building the OSE Power Cube

If you're not already aware of the Global Village Construction Set from Open Source Ecology, please check them out. I have wanted to build parts of the GVCS and contribute to OSE for some time now and finally decided to go for it. It is my hope to build a Power Cube in 2014 and a Liberator brick press in 2015.

I plan to build a GVCS Power Cube v6, with my own improvements, and then try to sell it. If I can't sell the Power Cube then I'll use it for my next adventure, the Liberator CEB (Compressed Earth Block) brick press. Someday I'd like to build a castle with CEBs.

At the moment I have two parts orders out and a quote request from my favorite metals provider. My plan is to build my first PowerCube "by the book" using the exact parts from the OSE BOM. The build will take a long time as I will only order parts and assemble them when I can afford the time and money to do so. The focus on this project will be completeness (as in pretty), not cost or time savings (as in recycled parts).

I've made a dedicated page for this project, check there for updates.
http://www.d33z.com/p/powercube.html

Powercube tanks 1

3/16/2014

Grant and Aaron got the tanks cut from the massive 6"x12" tube. Great work guys and thanks a bunch!

On the parts front, I have 55 of the 70 line items on the BOM. One more order should do the trick. 

You can find out more about this project on my powercube project page.

Powercube frame

3/5/2014

Preliminary welding is complete on the outer frame. I'm working on cutting the 6"x12" tube for the fuel and hydraulic tanks. 

I will try to take more than one picture next time. 

You can find out more about this project on my powercube project page. 

Mowbot 2.0 lives!

It has been about a year since Mowbot 1.0, or RALF, came to life, and I have not done much with it (other than mowing) for the last year. I decided to add some features, which required a new mowing deck, so I am advancing the hardware to 2.0

I started with a new deck and 1 inch square tubing.

 

 After many hours, I have added a control panel (the toolbox), grass catcher, adjustable height, and master power switch. 

It mows quite nicely, but the back wheels do not get very good traction. I will soon be swapping out the battery and control panel positions to try and put some more weight over the rear wheels.

Videos coming soon.