Owen Cramer

Chris Kott wrote:Wouldn't doing a "lost wax" casting with polystyrene produce dioxins, especially if you do a low-temperature degradation in oxygen?

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-CK

It is now common in the sand casting  and investment casting industry to 3D print patterns in wax, which is burned off in the casting process (we're talking cast iron, bronze, etc.) As long as you provide a path out for the melted liquid, you don't have to burn it, you could just melt it out.


The most common 3d printing material is Poly Lactic Acid (PLA) which has a relatively low melting point (around 185 Celsius)  and is cornstarch-based. The water-soluble stuff is generally Poly Vinyl Alcohol (PVA) which has a similar melting point as PLA, It takes quite a bit of water to actually dissolve it. my understanding is that the refractory mix is fairly dry, so it may or may not dissolve before the refractory mix is self-supporting.

Printers that can print in metal are now starting to drop down into the $5k price range.

I've been exploring mushroom cultivation as a business, and it appears that the current method for oyster mushrooms, and similar is to use disposable plastic bags, so the growing medium can be sterilized before inoculation.  I hate that waste, and I was wondering if anyone here had an alternative that would still allow for sterilization via Steam or pressure cooker.  Would glass jars with a filtered lid work?  I understand that procuring a few thousand glass jars could be cost prohibitive, and getting the spent media out could probably be a pain, but in the end much less would be thrown out.

Thoughts?

I think some relatively hardcore gaming experiences really primed me to be ready for permaculture. Eve Online, World of Warcraft etc. do a very good job of forcing groups to have a diverse set of complimentary traits.

A Minecraft mod could be a decent way to birth a permaculture game. It has an enormous following, and is the single best selling Xbox game for nearly 3 years. My understanding is that Minecraft has sold more copies than every other game on Xbox, combined. It is also the best selling game on apple and android.

There is already a farming/landscaping mechanic that includes things like presence of water and daylight, and there are mods to make it more realistic, with a much more complicated tech tree, and much more difficult resource gathering.

It is also programmed in java, and already has a huge number of people writing mods for it.

I'm a terrible programmer, but if someone wanted to pick up the mantle, I'd be happy to be part of the team to work on things like user stories, and play testing.

INTP most days, INTJ rarely, but im never very far from the centerline on P/J

Poor Geoff - he will be INUNDATED with hyped up permies! He will have to create a swale to slow the onslaught!

we should all include "permies.com" in our profiles,comments,etc :p

I'm in!

One of the items on the list is to build some sort of guest housing to enable wwoofers, but at the moment all I have is the spare bedroom. I'd thought about a trailer, but I'm trying to undo the part of my property that was a nudist trailer park. My understanding is that they pushed entire traliers into holes when they shut the place down. I have about an acre and a half that is has no top soil at all. Its also the only really flat pieces of ground I have. I think I am going to ry the tillage radish thing next year, and see how that goes.

John Saltveit wrote:Find a cute girl and marry her.
john S
PDX OR

Heh, If I knew how to do that, I would have done it 20 years ago!

Housing is very expensive, a cot is worth a lot! And if the food you're providing is healthy A's organize/whole and natural, that is worth quite a lot also.

I guess I'm looking at this is being about a $600/m value: normal rental for a single room in my area would be something like $300/month, and I figure I spend about $250/month feeding myself, and then maybe another $50 for extra utilities. $600 for for 20*4.3= 86 hours of work seems like not a great deal to me. In fact, its quite a bit less than minimum wage. The deal gets even worse whe this person is putting signigant effort into growing food on the property, cutting wood etc, because room and board gets much cheaper for me to provide.

I was thinking that I could offer up that anything that comes off the property we split 80/20. If it was here when they arrived, I get 80% (i.e cutting wood). If it is a direct result of their efforts they get 80% (i.e. they have a meat chicken/egg operation running).

I'm not sure if this is in the correct forum or not.

I've been living on about12.5 acres for a few years, and would like to start getting some production from it. The site is quite sloped, has some major erosion issues. It is largely wooded with early succession trees, but was at one point definitely a pasture, as evidenced by the several giant spreading oaks on the property. I was also logged around 2003-2004, so all of the trees of any size are generally ill suited as lumber for what ever reason.


The problem is that I work 50-60 hours a week, travel often for that job, and live alone. I was thinking about finding a house mate to help/drive the change over to a permaculture project, but I am not sure what would be an equitable way to handle this. While I make enough money to cover room and board for an individual, I can't afford to pay wages, and I feel like the help this person would be providing should be compensated for beyond 3 hots and a cot. In addition, they would still need to have ajobto buy their clothes, save for retirement, etc. We're talking about some fairly backbreaking labor here, that will result in a multi-decade, payout, and spending a couple of years at a place, and potentially walking away with nothing in the bank a few years later sounds like an awful deal.

Any suggestions on how to equitably compensate this person for the hard work they will be doing?