Multimachine – an open-source machine tool.

I found the following Multimachine over at Boing Boing:

Multimachine

“The multimachine is a milling machine, drill press, and lathe all in one machine that is made from old truck engines and other scrap parts. The very making of it imparts the skills needed to use it. It’s of the ‘teach a man to fish’ school rather than the ‘here, have a fish’ school. Some hand tools are required to build it. I’d love to see a group handing out the tools needed to build one and the manual all over Africa.

“Right now if a NGO gives a well pump to a village in Africa, what does the village do when it breaks? With a multimachine, or tools like it, they can fix it themselves.”

Now you can join this particular yahoo group here to download the pdf to show you how to make one and join in with the discussion. But, you can also take a look at the pdf here.

I’m sure there’s some scope to do something remotely useful surrounding this.

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alibaba

can this machine make a complete well digging equipment ?

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Paul Woodhouse

Blimey, Starfleet - you're on fire.

I'll even forgive you your blog promotion and check it out in more detail at some point.

Have you joined the Yahoo Group and offered them your observations?

Thank you for popping by.

Starfleet High Command

The ultimate test that I can suggest for this multimachine tool technology is to be able to take metal ingots, billets, slabs and machine tool them into it's components. Because according to one website there is something that the multimachine tool cannot machine tool-replicate is the block cylinders. The question now facing is to find a substitute design that can be machined and can replace the block cylinders themselves. And may I add that the multimachine can produce copper wires for the electric motors by making the components of a tool and die machine that is used to make copper wires by using the drawing process. The die can be used for drawing copper wires only after it has been hardened and casehardened by carburization or nitriding. The rubber belts can be replaced by a machine tooled chain and sprocket drive system or by a bevel gear-shaft drive system. But still the most important is to replace the engine blocks with a new component design that the multimachine can machine tool by itself to replace the block cylinders and be used as a new kind of supporting platform for the multimachine tool itself and designed and machined in such a way that the multimachine tool won't topple in an earthquake, for I have read an article that an owner of a multimachine tool had an accident once when it toppled over him, causing him to have a new titanium knee. So safety should and must be factored into the new design that will replace the block cylinders.

According to the article the only machining required that can't be done by the multimachine is to bore the block cylinders to the proper diameters for the overarm and bearings holding the spindle. This is a very common operation for overhauling automobile engines so wherever there are cars there will probably be someone around with a boring tool. Once you get the bearings, a chuck and a power source, with a little ingenuity pretty much everything else can be fabricated using the machine you just built.

Follow up update which is far more thorough and specific:

The vertical mill is one of the very few machines that is actually capable of making all of the parts to make a copy of itself.
http://technocrat.net/d/2007/5/13/19740
So the question is. Is it capable of independent self-replication? And is it capable of independent self-scaling, wherein the machine tool is used not only to make a replica of itself but also capable of making larger size replica of itself on a stage by stage systematic basis until the desired and final large size replica is attained successfully. Machine tools can only be certified as machine tools if they can replicate themselves and make larger size replica of themselves. Machine tools are the only machines capable of reproducing themselves directly and indirectly(in multi-stages). One of the most important machine tool function is the planner machine tool which is an strategic necessity to create the precision machine tool planner beds upon which all machine tools are structurally based on. The planner is the only machine tool that can handle work pieces that are larger than itself. The self-propagating aspect of the planning machine was particularly important because every type of machine tool depends for it's precision upon true plane surfaces. The first planners immediately made possible the construction of improved machines of like kind, while the ease with which the planner could machine lathe guideways greatly facilitated the production of large lathes of improve design and greater precision. Since the lathe is the parent of all machine tools it is also one of the few machine tools capable of self-replicating itself just like the vertical mill. In short a machine tool can only be called a machine tool if it is capable of two basic things. It must be capable of self-replicating itself and it must be able to replicate larger sizes and versions of itself, while at the same time improving it's precision of it's own construction thereby creating an even more precise machine tool capable of higher precision machine tooling of all kinds of functions for all purposes.

Can it be re-engineered so that it can also be used as a vertical mill? The reason is that the vertical mill is one of the very few machines that is actually capable of making all of the parts to make a copy of itself.

And most important of all. Is this
Multimachine - an open-source machine tool capable of independent self-replication?

http://technocrat.net/d/2007/5/13/19740