We have our first sale of The Liberator CEB press. Maureen, one of our True Fans, will get her hands on an automated version of The Liberator – The Liberator Beta v2.0. We are expecting 8-12 bricks per minute for this machine. We’ve also discussed collaborating on hands-on CEB construction workshops – which is especially attractive for a machine of this caliber. Thus, Maureen is both a supporter and co-developer of the CEB enterprise.

This marks a historic moment for free enterprise development (see last post for what we mean by free enterprise). To my knowledge, we are demonstrating the first case of free enterprise in the world for high-performance, economically-significant, modern technology. If you know of others, please let us know – and we’ll be quick to collaborate and push forward the frontiers of post-scarcity economics.

Our goal is to develop the CEB free enterprise to the point of $6-8k of earnings per week per person from an optimized production process. At best, that would mean that one could generate this much value from 40 hours of absolutely streamlined enterprise. Such earnings are well-proven in engineering and other production or design work. We aim to demonstrate the power of flexible fabrication for achieving the same – and creating a foundation for Industry 2.0. For us, that means that we would have the option to bootstrap-fund our post-scarcity, resilient community development toolkit.

We’ve got the open source collaboration working for us, as well as ethical support engendered by ‘giving it all away.’ Combined with simple design, optimized tooling, evolved fabrication ergonomics, and fabricator skill – we’re on a good footing for economic significance. This is not to mention that the potential market for housing is large. Also, this is not free lunch. It’s extreme performance, and it requires skill on many levels.

At about 72 million new people per year – the global market for new homes is conservatively $100 billion. This assumes $5k per house built.

How much of this market will CEB construction capture? Note that worldwide, earth construction is the building choice of about half the world’s population. If the market penetration of a low-cost ($5000 range) high-performance (10 bricks/min range) is 1 percent for all new construction, that’s still a $1 billion global market. These are just guesses. We can’t really assess the market share when disruptive economics are in play.

Now, who is interested in fabricating CEB presses? Contact us, and we’ll teach you, and you will teach us about how to teach. Or, you can get a CEB press right now for the next building season. The price structure for the automated version of the CEB press will be comparable to but higher than the manual Beta v1.0 release. See price structure in specifications.

Right now, we’re building a lathe and an ironworker machine to help with fabrication. On the ironworker – we’re looking for dies for the hole punching function and the thick metal shearing function. We’re looking for components for a 100 ton machine – sufficient for shearing 12 inch wide, 1/2″ steel, and punching holes about 1″ in diameter in 1″ metal. Machines like this cost over $10k. If we have the shearing element assembly and hole punching assembly, we can put together a machine like this for a few hundred dollars in parts. We have hydraulic power available, so it makes sense to build our own ironworker.

Categories: Compressed Earth Block Press, Free Business Models, Open Collaboration, Open Source Ecology, Product Release

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