OHLOOM - an Open Hardware Loom

This project shows how to upcycle a pallet and make a loom of its wooden planks, using some additional parts (the weaving comb and the ratchet gears) from a 3D-printer.

By using two somewhat contradictionary materials like wood, which is often seen as "good" material because its a natural stuff and secondly Plastics (ABS) as a synthetic material which is often seen as "evil", i wanted to show, that good or evil is never an attribute of a material itself, but merely, that it depends on what the humans will do with it.

If you use it in a creative or productive manner (like here with weaving), where it can be used over and over for eternities, then even the plastic is ok. But it is not ok, when we use it as one-way packaging material and it ends up swimming in the pacific ocean and there building an floating island of one third the size of Europe. So its all about our responsibility how we deal with the things.

Furthermore i wanted to demonstrate by this project how we can reuse and upcycle wood materials from old paletts and that "up-cycling" is even better than "re-cycling" (eg. burning the palett wood).

But that are just my personal ambitions which motivated me for doing this project. If you have no pallet available you can also use regular softwoods like spruce, fir or pine (or even hartwoods) with a thickness of 20mm. If only 18mm is available it will also work.

Any pallet with measurements conform to the standardized "euro-pallet"-format should be appropriate. Here i use a pallet which is no standard-format, but fullfills the most importantant points, like having up to 14.5cm wide planks, with a thickness of 22mm, that will give us 20mm when planed.

At first you have to dissassemble the pallet by the help of a crowbar (or two). Remove any nails from the woodplanks by using a hammer and pliers. Then the planks should be planed onto a thickness of 20mm. This can be done by a jointer machine or manually by a carpenter's plane. If neither of this tools is available to you, then you can of course also buy some appropriate planks (2cm thick, 15cm width, 60cm long) from a hardware store. But the upcycling-process is part of the fun ;)

Cut the planks to length and width, according to the plans in step 3. At the picture are also shown two wooden rounded bars from beechwood, which i bought initially. But then later i decided to make each single wooden part from the pallet and i replaced the rounded bars by two more octagonal bars wich i made from two glued-together wood-stripes. The octogonal profile is even more better for the weaving.

Glue together two small planks of 710mm length, 40mm width and 20mm thickness. You get a square profile with 40x40mm. Cut this to 35x35mm on a table-saw.

Then remove the edges with a hand-planer in a manner that you get an octogonal profile.

Afterwards round each last 10cm of each end of the rod with the planner or a sanding machine to a diameter of 35 mm.

Alternatively you can also use a cylindrical wooden shaft with 35mm diameter and 710 mm length.

The frame-side is made from a 20 mm plank with 58x14cm and has some drilling-holes, according to the plan. This part is also available as fcstd-file (FreeCAD).

The comb-holder is a small peace of 118x60mm and can easily be cuttet from the planks. It will be mounted to the frame-side and has coded the up and down moves into its gaps-sizes.

The Weaving Comb and the Ratchet-Gear and the end-rings are made from a 3D-printer. I was too lazy to make these parts from wood ;) The ABS-material is stable and strong enough for this task of weaving. You can find the needed construction filess as .stl-files for printing and as .fcstd FreeCAD-files in the source-package.

Start with mounting the combholder to the frame sides with two 35mm woodscrews. Then place the two crosslink parts between the sides and put the Warpbeam and the clothbeam shafts into the holes. Connect the sideparts to the crosslinks with two 60mm woodscrews on each side.

Then move the ratchetwheels and the clamprings onto the shaftends and fix it with a M6x70 cylinderscrew and two nuts.

Now bind the Stringstick (for connecting the warp strings) on the clothbeam like in the above photo.

For assembling the comb hold the two slotbeams in parallel but facing the slot towards each other. Then put the 4 3D-printed comb-modules into the slot so that they build a homogenious comb of about 400mm length.

Connect the beams with two threaded rods at each end, which you fix with the help of two M8 nuts. The theraded rods act here also as a distance holder for the slotbeams and build a kind of frame with them together.

Next mount the OHLOOM to a table with a clamp and heddle the warp.

Its important to note, that the length of the warp can be far longer like the looms length, like 2 or 3 m. This is because the yarn on one side and the fresh woven cloth on the other side can be wrapped around the warpbeam and the clothbeam by simply turning it after loosening the ratchet pawl. Then you have to bring some tension into the warp before putting it back into place.

Prepare the ends of the shuttle like in the photo above. It is important to smooth the edges by rounding them with a file or sandpaper. Sharp edges could otherwise damage the yarn.

Then wind some yarn onto the shuttle and start weaving.

An OHLOOM project page in german language can be found at:

https://wiki.opensourceecology.de/Open_Hardware-We...