Christmas 2021 // Book update
Dear supporters,
2021 was a special kind of year. Looking back now, it felt like a mix of great times and positive achievement but also struggle and confusion for me. Recently in autumn Austria went into covid lockdown again. That actually helped me to focus on the book and get some good work done.
These days I am focused on 3D CAD drawings, which are an essential part of the book. For a proper construction manual I need complete, detailed CAD models of all the wind turbine designs that will be featured in the book.
From these drawings, I can export close-up views and step-by-step descriptions of all components.
Complete 3D model of the 2.2F wind turbine which is used in most of the PureSelfMade courses. All made in FreeCAD .
I had some experience in 3D CAD modeling before I started the book, mostly using free student versions of expensive proprietary CAD software. However, these student licenses do not allow for „commercial“ use like for a professional book.
With the ideology of freedom in my mind, I started looking for a free, open source cad software that fits my needs earlier this year and discovered FreeCad. A program which can do a huge variety of things related to design and CAD but is a bit „nerdy“ in it’s workflow and not quite as intuitive at first if you are used to the big commercial CAD platforms.
But apparently the software became much better with recent updates and there is a large community behind FreeCAD developing to further.
So that was my choice. I had to learn how to properly work with the platform and remake some drawings that I already had from past approaches with different software. Now I am quite busy making lots of drawings for the book in FreeCAD with dimensioning and annotations on them and so on. They look cool and I enjoy it, it’s a bit like building stuff in real life.
I did negotiate with some printing companies in Austria for the first print run. That is something pretty new to me but I feel confident that the result will be fine. The plan is to create a magazine-like format, probably A4, which does allow for large drawings and good overview on each page.
My question at this point:
Does anybody here have recommendations for a good printing company in Europe, especially Austria or Germany?
We are looking for cost effective, environmentally friendly printing options. Help is very welcome!
The focus is to provide a book that is suitable in a practical workshop environment where necessary information needs to be found quickly.
I am really looking forward to the moment when I hold the finished book in my hands and send copies out to all of you who helped me on this journey.
Until then, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a great new year 2022!
Jonathan
Originally published on the Piggott wind turbine DIY book crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.
