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First Small Engine Repair Meetup Recap

🇺🇸 · Milwaukee Makerspace · Luglio, Daniel

First Small Engine Repair Meetup Recap Resurrecting a Snow Blower, Just in Time for Easter Just in time for Easter, a group of gearheads—and aspiring gearheads—gathered for our very first Small Engine Repair meetup with one shared mission: see if we could bring Mike T’s snow blower back from the dead. (Spoiler alert: we did! ) Starting Off We kicked off the night with introductions and a discussion of everyone’s previous experience, as well as what they hoped to learn from the meetups. It was a great mix—some folks with deep mechanical know-how, others just starting out and eager to get their hands dirty. We decided that a great starting point for tackling any small engine problem (especially one with a carburetor) would be learning how to clean a carburetor —a key piece of knowledge for anyone working on these kinds of machines. Carb Talk What followed was an open group discussion and knowledge share on carburetors—what they do, how they work, and how they fail. Ryan jumped in with some super helpful explanations, and we all gathered around the screen to watch a YouTube video that walked through the repair of the exact type of carburetor on a similar snow blower. (Link below!) The Resurrection Working in Dan L’s rented space, we got our hands on the real deal. After removing all the guards and parts necessary to access the snow blower’s carburetor, we tore it down, carefully cleaned out all the orifices, and reassembled and reinstalled it. We also replaced the spark plug just to cover all our bases. Throughout the process, we shared tips on tool usage, tricks for getting stubborn parts unstuck, and the finer points of gaskets and seals. We even had some good laughs about tool terminology—and the importance of knowing the difference between an open-end wrench and a #1 Phillips screwdriver when someone’s shouting for help. (Or you are looking for a tool yourself) Community in Action It was awesome to see everyone sharing their knowledge, asking questions, and learning by doing. Whether you were elbow-deep in the carburetor or just soaking in the process, there was something for everyone. Vroom Vrrom After just a simple cleaning and spark plug change, an Easter miracle Mike’s blower roared back to life on the third crank in fulfillment of the service manual. …. Actually, it started on the first crank, but that didn’t make as good an Easter joke….. Resources for Further study. Want to dive deeper? Here are some of the resources we used or mentioned during the meetup: Mike’s Snow Blower Manual: https://www.mtdparts.com/en_US/prior-year-models/mtd-snow-blower-model-31as62ee700/31AS62EE700.html Carburetor Repair Video (the one we watched): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWxzieLHlNc In-depth Carburetor Explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ri2_bKiuMo Transparent Carburetor Demo (super cool): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toVfvRhWbj8&t=845s Carburetor Deep Dive Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnJiSV9ryNd3CGZV7XxQnDTKgc3qvbs1V The Planet, Dude… And Space Rules As part of our discussion, we covered the dos and don’ts of working on engines. It is your responsibility to clean up after yourself. Extra care MUST be taken to ensure that your mess is contained, and that oils, fuels, paints, and other materials cannot possibly be released into the environment, make a mess for others, or get anywhere near a drain. YOUR EQUIPMENT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. Regarding the recycling of oil, any AutoZone or auto parts store is required to accept used oil from individuals. AutoZone Recycling For oil, old gas, or any other hazardous materials (such as old paint, etc.), the City of Milwaukee will accept hazmat materials from Milwaukee residents for free. Again, this is your responsibility; MMS cannot recycle these materials for you. Your machine, your mess, your cleanup. City of Milwaukee Hazardous Waste Disposal Lastly, space rules currently state that no car work involving fluids can be done at the space due to previous issues with people not cleaning up after themselves. Let’s continue to show that small engine owners are responsible and do not make a mess. Remember Smokey the Bear and Woodsy Owl? Treat your projects, no matter what they are, just like hiking in the woods: leave no trace when working at MMS. Dont start wild fires either. Watch and Listen to Woodsy Owl Give a Hoot Don’t Pollute Whats next If you have another idea for a small engine project, please post it on the members-only message board or let Dan L know that we had so much fun with this one, let’s do other group projects in the future.

EventmakershipProjectsUncategorizedworkshopSmall Engine Meetup

News

Relief Carving and Heat-Transfer Vinyl Classes!

🇺🇸 · Makers Local 256 · Adam Smith

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had two successful classes! Brian taught a class on relief carving, and Ryen did a class on making heat-transfer vinyls for shirts and bags! More classes are on the way, so stay tuned! Brian’s Relief Carving Class: Ryen’s Heat-Transfer Vinyl Class:

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The Bigger Picture of OSE

🇺🇸 · Factor e Farm · Marcin

You are invited to all hands on deck as we finish the Global Village Construction Set by 2028. Ladies and gentlemen, the first Seed Eco-Home is now for sale , and we have 8 ways to make it accessible to the global public. This marks a significant step: we believe that sales will bootstrap funding for the full development of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). This achievement paves the way for our broader goal: an open source economy characterized by near-zero marginal cost and efficient productivity. Practically, this means a lower cost of living, increased financial independence, and a shift from economic pressure to pursuing personal passions. We envision a broad transition from scarcity-based business models to abundance mindsets within the next decade or two. This shift should also clarify the productivity paradox – the questionable efficiency gains across the economy despite exponentially more powerful technology – which hinders the creation of a truly efficient and humane world. Our revenue model is a hybrid of education and production, starting with a four-year school : Our first cohort of 24 students will begin this year, aiming to swarm-build a complete Seed Eco-Home, from foundation to rooftop PV, in just five days. Having validated each component, we are now launching this school to achieve scale. We aim to redesign and rebuild civilization’s broken infrastructures, with house builds cross-subsidizing the necessary development. My TED Talk hinted at the GVCS’s potential. We now estimate that completing the GVCS over the next four years requires approximately $50 million, based on our development costs for typical GVCS machines up to full product release. This aligns with the concept of a sustainable village for $15,000 in today’s dollars – the tuition for our transformative OSE Apprenticeship of 2025. This program teaches the integrated skills needed for startup, maintenance, and prosperity in any sustainable village. Without this skillset, progress is blocked. Hence, the school. We further estimate that open-sourcing all of civilization’s hardware technology would cost around $50 billion, equivalent to ten years of all new product R&D across all sectors (roughly the lifespan of a patent). Details on this estimate are available on our wiki. While $50 billion covers hardware, it doesn’t include redesigning organizations and institutions. However, we believe that a shift to an open, collaborative economy will naturally lead to the evolution of these structures, thus externalizing that cost in our $50 billion estimate. While significant, $50 billion is a small fraction of the $100 trillion global economy, suggesting this budget is potentially achievable. Our current work employs a bootstrapping approach towards this goal. Interestingly, reviewing my 2011 Bioneers conference presentation , presented at around the historical high point for the open hardware movement, reveals an explicit discussion of how large budgets could arise from open source economics work. From tanks rolling down my streets in Poland, to the streets paved with gold in America – it is fascinating to observe how scarcity – both real and artificial – controls peoples’ lives: The open hardware movement fell. On our side, despite achieving industrial productivity on a small scale and experiencing 12 replications of our heavy machines in a single year after gaining global recognition, the momentum stalled. Over a decade later, having productized the Seed Eco-Home, we now understand the intensive follow-through required for productization – and the necessary cultivation of integrated skills and mindsets for developers – required to get there in the first place. The largest block to the progress of civilization is the scarcity mindset . Few have attained the cognitive override – over the reptilian brain – that keeps us stuck in fear never to see the light of abundance. Not in a hippie sense – but as a rigorous discipline of productivity and skill that leaves nobody behind. Our optimism remains, in fact gets stronger. Because there is so much good work to be done. Some of it is low hanging fruit: we simply need to create more opportunity for people to do good work. While Jeremy Rifkin – social theorist and speaker – popularized the idea of zero marginal cost in a distributed economy , the Seed Eco-Home is giving us a real taste of this possibility. As we progress, our prices will likely decrease as we transform the scarcity-based economics to abundance. This will likely necessitate creating innovative universal basic asset production infrastructures – a far more complex undertaking than open-sourcing a hardware product. We will address this topic in future posts. Typical companies circumvent the need for integrated skills and high performance through specialization and mass production. This is an unsatisfactory solution for OSE, as many products plain suck. Sturgeon’s Law applies to civilization itself. The OSE Apprenticeship is our response. I believe we can now scale – and transform – through our bootstrapping education-production funding model. However, Sturgeon’s Law undoubtedly applies to us as well. This necessitates rapid, lifelong learning and a growth mindset to overcome this apparent paradox. I’m going back to school, by starting one. The post The Bigger Picture of OSE appeared first on Open Source Ecology .

OSE Apprenticeship