Pat Delany (L) makes a point at MFA09

Should be home by now but plane had engine trouble on takeoff.Better here than over the ocean in a 2 engine plane! Really big things have happened.A trade school will probably expand to other parts of the country and take the MM with it.An MIT lab is going to make and test the drill.People are going to make a “jungle” drill to make bolt holes to plank a bridge with wood that is so tough that nails just bounce off.Maker Faire Africa is sponsoring a country wide MultiMachine building contest.
A Nigerian venture capital guy is going to make my penetrating oil.I have been invited to join an American Association of Mechanical Engineers developing country group and maybe make a couple of speeches.And really big deal..I have started a program to provide African welders with better eye protection than the sun glasses they normally use. They often lose much of their sight after just a few years. The goal is to get the rod makers to provide filtering glass with boxes of rods. As it is now they are blinding their customers

Way to go Pat! Sourced from the MultiMachine user group

• Maker Faire 2010 Nairobi, Kenya
• A build-a-MultiMachine prize
• An inaugural Maker prize to be launched at MFA 2010
• A Maker Directory for participants in MFA 2009

Please stay tuned to the MFA blog for further details on these and other exciting developments.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Maker Faire Africa update (makezine.com)
• A Taste of Maker Faire (timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com)

Reports from the first Maker Faire Africa are starting to come in. Afrigadget has been active amidst the standing room only crowds. Here’s what’s up:

This morning at Maker Faire Africa, after a short introduction by Nii Simmonds and Emeka Okafor, the team (MFA sponsors) from AndSpace Labs have been moderating a “show and tell” by some of the Makers (which is what we’re calling those who are demo’ing at the event).

William Kamkwamba: Windmills

First up was William Kamkwamba, who is really seen as a success story of this type of microentrepreneur or innovator in Africa. His windmills and the story behind it are an inspiration for many here, especially the aspiring makers with good ideas and their first prototypes. There is now a book, a documentary and a foundation all set up around the inspired story of windmills from Malawi.

IDDS: Ghana

The International Develpment Design Summit has been going on for the last 4 weeks in Kumasi, Ghana. Two members of the team came up to talk about one of the devices that they created from local materials, that will be here at the show as well. It’s a device that allows you to store your food so that it doesn’t spoil as quickly. To see more of the IDDS work, here are the final presentations from earlier this week.

Pat Delaney: Multimachine

“You can have no industrial progress without machine tools.” He’s here to show how you can start from nothing except a pipe with three holes in it and an old/broken engine block, and create a universal machine tool. His is called the Multimachine. Due to weight constraints he couldn’t bring a complete machine, so he brought the rudimentary drills and 200 DVDs full of instructions to the event.

Read the full post at Afrigadget.com. Receive real-time updates by following the #MFA09 hash on Twitter. ]]> http://makerfaireafrica.com/2009/08/14/maker-faire-africa-is-rollin/feed/ 1 http://makerfaireafrica.com/2009/06/09/the-multimachine-as-a-roadmap/ http://makerfaireafrica.com/2009/06/09/the-multimachine-as-a-roadmap/#comments Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:20:28 +0000 emeka http://makerfaireafrica.com/?p=213 Fundamentally speaking one of the most essential components of any industrial ecosystem is the machine tool a device which is used to “fabricate metal components of machines“. Consequently the absence of a machining capacity precludes the ability of an entity (regional,national and or continent-wide) to industrialize.The question then becomes how do we effectively seed and propagate the skill of machining cheaply and pervasively? How do we Bootstrap the Industrial Age? The open source MultiMachine presents us with what could turn out to be one of the more attractive options. Wikipedia describes it as an:

…all-purpose open source machine tool that can be built inexpensively by a semi-skilled mechanic with common hand tools, from discarded car and truck parts, using only commonly available hand tools and no electricity. Its size can range from being small enough to fit in a closet to one a hundred times that size. The MultiMachine can accurately perform all the functions of an entire machine shop by itself.

Lets think about this for a minute “an all purpose machine tool that…can accurately perform all the functions of an entire machine shop” built from discarded parts by semi-skilled mechanics (replace with,jua kali workers,suame magazine fabbers etc.) What may be missing? A power source of sorts with the necessary torque and availability even in the most rural of areas.Perhaps coupling it with a system like the multifunctional platform would solve that problem.

Can we now make the assumption that all the necessary pieces are available, albeit with the expected and necessary geographic/environmental adaption needed for individual installations? Admittedly it does seem somewhat more feasible, the task at hand is too envision methods of making such systems available to those in-need fabricators.Those who may argue against the bottom-up rudimentary approach should consider this.Contrary to the perceived wisdom a considerable number of machine parts are still made in small engineering workshops, where they ultimately provide the input for larger better known industrial behemoths even in uber-industrialized Japan. Maker Faire Africa with its commitment to embedding metal hacking far and wide will do its very best place to support this approach and others like it and have fun while doing so…