Global Village Construction Set from Open Source Ecology

Open Source Ecology has created the Global Village Construction Set.  In technical terms, it's an "open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, do-it-yourself assembling of 50 different industrial machines."  The organization suggests you think of it as a life size set of legos that can create economies anywhere in the world.

Farmers, engineers and supporters are the brain power behind Open Source Ecology:

So far, they've prototyped 8 of the 50 Machines -- the tractor, drill press, soil pulverizer, torch table, hydraulic power unit, compressed earth brick press, walk-behind tractor, and 150-ton hole puncher. Along the way, they've been publishing the designs and instructions on their wiki. They've been financially supported by the crowd. A growing base of more than 400 "true fans" pays a small amount every month, and their recently successful Kickstarter campaign will help to build a 5k sq. ft. fabrication training facility at OSE's rural Missouri headquarters.

The main goal is to make farming, building, and manufacturing less of an obstacle financially.  The Global Village Construction Set costs 8 times less the equipment from big industrial producers.  3-D designs, schematics, and instructional video are all available on Wiki.

Open Source Ecology's goal for 2012 is to build the next 8 prototypes of the Global Village Construction Set.