Currently attending a 6month apprenticeship program with Open Source Ecology in Maysville, Missouri, June 1st to December 22, 2021. Obtained BSc Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Sunderland University in 1984. Worked in the aviation industry as a licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineer first with Air Botswana from 1987 to 2013 and latterly with ATR, the leading French Turboprop manufacturer as a Field Service Representative, from 2013 to 2020. The year 2020 proved to be a pivotal point in my life. As direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was laid off, however, that freed up my time and I was able to pursue a long-time interest of mine: I built an aquaponics system using an FAO resource: Small Scale Aquaponic Food Production. In November 2020 I bought an open source 3D printer kit - the D3D Pro - developed by Open Source Ecology. After buying and assembling my first OSE D3D Pro with an 8 inch print bed, I went on to build a second 12 inch bed D3D Pro and I was bitten by the Open Source Hardware bug.
Currently at OSE, Missouri, we are working on a 6foot by 6 foot by 6 foot 3D printer to which we will add a heated chamber in order to be able to print from waste plastic filament which we will produce from our filament maker, based on the Lyman filament maker. To be able to make 3D printer filament, we are also working on a waste plastic shredder. To make the plastic shredder we need a CNC torch table, which we are in the process of making, to cut the blades for the shredder. In summary a complete circular economy to solve the global plastic waste pollution problem. This is my log on the OSE wiki - Ken Log and my Youtube channel, Ken Makunga, showing OSE Apprenticeship videos. This is my passion, creating open source appropriate technologies that I can then take back to Indonesia, where I live, and to Botswana and implement to change the world for the better. I have also created a website: https://gosh3d.store to showcase and sell open source hardware. Selling open source hardware sounds incongruous with open source philosophy. The designs, plans and build instructions are all freely available online for anyone to access, I'm only selling my time in assembling the kits.
Building with stabilized compressed earth blocks (CEBs) is also one of my interests as well as using solar power to power various technologies, from 3D printers to laptops to lighting and appliances in homes. Solar power is inevitable, it is clean and abundant and will only increase in usage as fossil fuel run out or as the world moves to reduce pollution and reduce global warming.