From: J. Michael Rowland (rowley_at_telalink.net)
Date: 03/05/00
Message-Id: <200003051708.LAA32228@mail.telalink.net> Subject: Re: ball connection Date: Sun, 5 Mar 00 11:05:11 -0600 From: "J. Michael Rowland" <rowley_at_telalink.net>
Patrick Salsbury wrote:
> You have to think in statistical numbers to properly
> appreciate the scale and magnitude of these houses
> in proper production. Thus, keeping each component as
> simple and modular as possible allows us to use
> standard components, and perhaps farm out the
> manufacturing to multiple companies, so we have
> redundancy and can scale orders to the capabilities
> of each shop, large and small. So you may have a
> ball-end maker (or 7 of them), a strut-pipe maker
> (or 7 of them), a hub-maker (or 7 of them), an
> aerogel-panel maker (or 7 of them), and octet-truss
> floor makers (or 7 of them).
I like the approach you're taking here -- moving the basic parts for dome
house manufacture into the same pre-fab realm as, say, plywood, or screws
-- things the do-it-yourselfer would not think of trying to manufacture
on her own. One question: who places the orders for these parts? That is,
how do they eventually get into the hands of the homeless end-users we're
trying to benefit? Is it going to be through the benevolence of some
agency like Habitat for Humanity, or federally-subsidized housing, or...?
(Well, I guess that was more than one question....)
jmr