@Christian Bundy

I’d be especially interested in manufacturing Grid Beam with hand tools rather than power tools, if this is something you know how to do.

yay more Grid Beam'ers!

however you make Grid Beam, what matters is that the beams are cut straight to size with minimal warps (i.e. a table saw), and the holes are drilled straight (i.e. a drill press) with correct spacing (i.e. a tool to measure the distance between any two holes, not just the next and previous, otherwise you will have compounding errors). if you're able to have a setup where you can hand-cut like a table saw and hand-drill like a drill press, then you should be able to make it work.

however, i must admit that i'm personally not interested in manually creating beams, even with power tools!

when i started this journey some odd 8 years ago or so, i used a table saw to cut some beams (which turned to be warped), then proceeded to drill with a drill press, then a CNC machine, then back to a drill press, probably spending at least a hundred hours just to make enough beam for a desk, and even then it was warped, so became a struggle to use. only last year, when i bought some Grid Beam from the OG creators (gridbeam.com), did i see what a delight properly manufactured beams could be.

for my next adventure, i'm interested in simple automation tools to facilitate Grid Beam production. by simple i mean "can be made with the smallest set of easy-to-find parts" not "can be made with the most primitive parts". (see transitional solarpunk)

for example, to automate the drilling process, we need a few (abstract) components:

1. something that holds a beam and only lets the beam travel along the length-wise axis
2. something to push the beam along to the next intended position
3. something to measure how far the beam has traveled (in order to calculate the next hole position)
4. something to drill holes
5. something to move the drill down into the beam and back up out of the beam
6. something to hold the beam in a fixed position while drilling
7. something to control the other components

as a first pass, i could imagine the abstract components being implemented with:

1. an aluminum angle
2. wheels with a low-RPM bi-directional motor
3. optical sensor (hat tip @dominic)
4. drill bits, drill chuck arbor, and a high-RPM uni-directional motor
5. linear actuator (to do dynamic moves)
6. linear actuator (to do static holds)
7. a micro-controller!

if anyone is interested in collaborating on such an automation system, i'm keen!

in reply to %3rIPwlZ...

awesome thanks for the expert feedback @bobi!

One option to consider is some sort of pusher operated by a reciprocating metal ‘sawtooth’ of the correct pitch. This would give very precise incremental moves of the beam, with no risk of accumulated error.

i think i understand the concept, but i'm having trouble visualizing how this would operate in practice. is it possible to draw a diagram or is there a photo online of a similar concept? i realize i probably should have done this for my own conceptual model, but sounds like you got the idea.

This is low-tech and robust

this seems to rely on a custom part, the pusher chain. where would you find such a part? also is an air ram easy to find and use? that seems high-tech (at least in comparison to an electro-mechanical linear actuator that basically a motor plus a screw) but i'm new to everything here, i'll admit smart sensors and dumb motors are my default strategy. (%C4NTs6hbODYTK393SQK/EKbKDxdyIrWKen2+JhTgk4Q=.sha256)

How fast do you want this thing to go, and what is your max beam length?

not too worried about speed, as long as it's not terribly slow, as can parallelize if need be. initial max beam length is 2.4m (standard ceiling height), but eventually would want to produce longer beams.

it would be really useful at this stage to get an approximation of your short and medium term requirements re throughput. The reason for this is that it will greatly help define what is a suitable mechanism. And some setups are eminently scaleable, some less so.

@bobi

the short term goal (once i start working on this full-time in ~6 months) is to build an open source system to automate Grid Beam production that anyone can build using off-the-shelf parts. meanwhile i'll want to try my hand at marketing Grid Beam kits as a consumer product.

so let's say to start we aim to sell 1 kit with 16 * 2.4m (~40m) of Grid Beam per day.

the mid term goal is to provide sustainable livelihood through open source manufacturing. to be sustainable the income from producting Grid Beam should pay off the investment of the automation system, provide a living wage for labor, provide income to those who worked on the automation system, provide income for any sales and marketing, pay for regular space and material costs, and pay off any other external costs.

some back of the napkin calculations (with help from @DMT in %pj8206o...)

• the material price of 40mm x 40mm wood is ~$3.4 NZD per meter
  • a 2x6 (sold as 140mm x 45mm) is $10.16 NZD per meter
  • TODO: ask Cut to Size how much for pre-cut 40mm x 40mm wood (%IpgIxLtiPrKzA8t9w1uarXevSEqDjZokA7XGeaZ9758=.sha256)
• the OG gridbeam.com folx sell Grid Beam for $3 USD per foot (~$10 USD per meter, ~$15 NZD per meter)
• if we assume cost of pre-cut 40mm x 40mm wood is $5 NZD per meter, and sell pre-drilled Grid Beam for $10 NZD per meter, then raw income is $5 NZD per meter of Grid Beam
  • $ / hour = ($5 / meter) * (meters / hour)
• so for example, if we want a raw income of $100 per hour, we need to produce 20 meters per hour
  • or if we want a raw income of $100k per year, and we assume 250 work days per year with 8 hours per day, then we need to produce 50 meters per hour
• each meter of 40mm beam has 2 * 25 holes to drill
  • so 50 meters per hour is 2,500 holes per hour or ~0.7 holes per second

so i'm not sure whether this answers your question, but there are some numbers to put the business economics in perspective. that being said, as an engineer i'm not too worried about how to supply beams as a limiting factor, i think the much harder challenge will be how to drive demand for beams.