The OS Work/Shop is a first attempt to install, next to the online OS database, a kind of physical space that has all the OS parts and objects in storage and offers the infrastructure and assistance to design and develop new parts within the OS system.

Contraptor is a DIY open source construction set for experimental personal fabrication, desktop manufacturing, prototyping and bootstrapping. Various сartesian robots can be assembled from Contraptor and used as a prototyping platform for projects such as XY plotter, mini CNC machine, 3D printer etc.
Contraptor uses several developments of the Reprap project - specifically, Stepper Motor Driver
boards v1.x and Arduino GCode Interpreter.

The Contraptor site gives detailed instructions on how to make each Contraptor part using widely available raw materials and simple hand tools to drill the standardized holes.

The main project site is here: http://www.contraptor.org
See also: http://reprap.org/wiki/Contraptor

Artist Gert Aertsen applied the OS grid in a number of his recent installations.

Open Source Ecology is accelerating the growth of the next economy - the Open Source Economy
- an economy that optimizes both production and distribution - while promoting environmental regeneration and social justice. They are building the Global Village Construction Set. This is a high-performance, modular, do-it-yourself, low-cost platform - that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different industrial
machines that it takes - to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.

Needless to say we are big fans ...

Team WIKISPEED is a green automotive-development company that builds cars utilizing agile methodology and has prototyped a mass-manufacturable, ultra-low-cost, 100-mpg commuter car. WIKISPEED is an all-volunteer distributed agile/scrum team: members contribute their work from various locations globally and iteratively enhance the vehicle every two weeks. This model allows extremely high-speed development, especially when paired with rapid-prototyping manufacturing tools.

The open-hardware movement got a tremendous boost today when WIKISPEED and Open Source Ecology (OSE), a group committed to providing free plans and processes necessary for building the global economy, announced that they are teaming up to revolutionize transportation in the developing world.

Taking on traditional, proprietary manufacturing R & D, the two companies aim to create an open-source product-development methodology that would allow communities around the world to quickly develop their own machinery and processes to support themselves, removing a dependency on industrialized nations for costly solutions.

LittleBits is an opensource library of electronic modules that snap together with magnets forprototyping, learning and fun.

View here.

We mounted an aluminium frame on the rear end of a vintage Piaggio Ape.
The cube as well as the ground plate of this rear end were designed and built according to the OS grid 
(the cube measures 120x120x120cm, consists out of aluminium tubes of 4x4cm and has 5mm perforations every 4cm).

The vehicle is now travelling through 5 Belgian cities, where 5 groups of students will build further on the vehicle / cube (each time giving it a different function) under the supervision of a different artist. At the end of this road trip the different installations will be brought together, disassembled and reconfigurated with one another.

To be continued ...


Concept & reconversion 
by Thomas Lommée and Jo Van Bostraeten