Better check out that press to see if the Peace Corps has a patent on it - looks like the CinvaRam from the '68 Whole Earth Catalogue to me. Same concept anyway, it's called 'rammed earth'. It's simple - you take dry indigenous earth, mix a very little Portland cement into it, add a little water, tamp it into a press, apply very high pressure with a long lever and a clever gearing mechanism, and then stack it to dry. With four or five people and three sacks of cement you can turn out 300 bricks or more in a day. It's excellent appropriate technology - all you pack to the site are the ram, hand tools, and the cement. Ken Kern goes on about it in one of his books, Stewart Brand and crew had several, the UN and the Peace Corps both had programs going in multiple countries in the sixties and early seventies. It's not a new concept, I know of a block press in La Paz BCS that looks very well made with heavy-duty cast parts, probably over sixty years old at least, it could be made to serve with a little oiling and a new pole for a lever.
Barriers to entry? - well, you need steel and a welder and a design. You can find the first two in any Mexican town with over ten thousand people, and you could likely find a design concept on the net in twenty minutes, maybe even a specced-out design. So, what exactly do they expect to sell? ..... let me guess - share paper? -g- |
