glasford.io is currently under construction. But please allow for a quick introduction.
Glasford.io is a General Benefit Corporation based in Minneapolis, MN. We started making 3d printed fully recyclable plant based furniture in February, 2023. We eventually moved on, and while we can still make the furniture, our products have morphed and our company created ULTRA. Ultra was a created from a fever dream our founder Steven Glasford had while he was biking from Minneapolis to Red Lake Nation to buy some cannabis. Ultra is very ultra and extreme. Steven realized that, while the ultra long distance routes on a bike are indeed difficult, they are, indeed extremely efficient. The company at glasford.io has and will always be obsessed with creating a better world for the future. After much thought on the 34 hours before Steven had to be rescued from Bemidji enroute to red lake nation. He decided to try and remove all of the carbon from his life. This is incredibly difficult as everything in his life, as well as most of the American supply chain is completely dependent on oil to function. From the fruits from california that power Steven's hunger, to the toilet paper that wipes his ass is completely dependent on oil in the form of transportation.
This is where Ultra was born. It is a radical project, but ultra has been extreme from the start.
How does it work?
Were we are building a massive bike structure we can only really describe as the "mothership" which is a slow and free floating bike and trailer system designed for continuous and extremely long distances. We have different classifications for motherships as well, from orbiting stations to regular routes. Orbiting stations constantly rotate around the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro where they stay on remote and typically dirt roads. The motherships do not interact with the public and great care is done to ensure that the public stays as far away from the stations as possible to prevent theft and damage to both the mothership itself and its contents.
How does it work during the day? The mothership is constantly moving and makes a full rotation every about 4 days. Since the mothership has a 4 day cycle it partitions the metro into 4 quadrants. On day 1 of the orbit, there is a fleet of bikes that are dispatched and they go out of either Minneapolis directly or they take an electric train to the city of St Paul. The bikes then are issued a day route Where they pick up and deliver items that were brought into the Head Quarters in Minneapolis. The bikes then go to standard contract assignments where they pick up larger loads with items such as food and grains and other bulk items. The bikes all intercept the mothership. The mothership then sits and allows the satelite bikes to tranfer their cargo to the mothership, as well as allowing the satelite bikes to charge their batteries. The mothership also has living quarters and a kitchen ans showers for the riders. After recharging is done the bikes take their home cargo back and the mothership continues on its orbit.
The mothership is very large with a maximum length of 97 feet long and a standard length of 43 feet long. It is piloted by 3 people headed by a central captian who is in charge of the mothership. The mothership is also equipped with a large solar array that is used to power the mothership and the satelite bikes. The mothership has a large number of batteries. There is 3 bikes that lead the ship and they are able to be detached from each other. The mothership is also equipped with special made trailers that both assist in the braking and powering of the ship. The ship has the handling of a mountain bike.
There are many many more details that are left out. But this project is extremely reflective of the namesake Ultra.
Using this unique system we are able to deliver cargo completely removed of the oil industry and its carbon emissions. In comparison to a tesla model 3, which is able to get about 125 mpge, our system system is on average able to get between 1400-5000 mpge. This incredible amount of efficiency is due to the slow speed of the mothership and the motherships lack of oil as it is powered by the sun.
Furthermore, a new type of schedule managment system is implemented that allows a customer to add a delivery. How does it work?:
Step one: customer interacts with portal system. Portal system works using email. Customer sends email to portal system with object, weight and size, and destination.
Step two: System sends a confirmation email to the customer it was recieved, but sends a different email after it is scheduled.
step three: System closes day at 10 pm and doesn't touch the new emails until 10 pm the next day.
Step four: the system creates and solves a modified traveling salesman problem. The system then send the dispatch email to the mothership and the satellite bikes as well as updates the customer with a time frame that the customer should expect both the delivery pick up and drop off. If the customer is not available they have until 6 am to reject the delivery. If the customer rejects the delivery it gets moved to the next day. If the customer accepts the delivery the system sends a confirmation email to the customer, the system will automatically accept any delivery that is not rejected by 6 am. A customer not available for the pick up will have their delivery fees taken without a refund.
Step 5: If needed the system will make transfers to other motherships.
Update: 12-12-2023 Sorry if I am not going back over the previous information to fix the errors, but there are 2 types of motherships. The first is the orbiting station, this one is more like a hotel rather than bike. There are about 14 trailers pulled behind that are able to be converted into 2 seats (for a max of 28 riders), then when it is time to stop there is a kitchen unit, the sitting area turns into a comfortable living space for the riders. The machine will make a single stop in the middle of the day as it gets intercepted by satelite bikes needing a charge. The satelit bikes then charge from the mothership solar array. Then once all of the bikes are ready they make their return routes.
knife There is also the agregate mothership. This is a special mother ship that forms when many satelite bikes come together. They transfer their loads to the mothership and then the mothership continues with three people like normal. The agregate mothership is mostly used for ultra hauls northbound.
It was decided to make glasford.io fully open source. This was largely due to a few reasons, but the largest reason was due to a realization by Steven that the best method to decrease the amount of carbon in the atmoshpere is to allow for all people to use the models and the ideas proposed by glasford.io. The biggest and most hopeful outlook is for others to try 3d printing furniture as well, and to reduce the shipping time and distance for furniture manufacturing. As of May 22, 2023. The project with the most support is the "Little Table" also known as "glaslt". The next steps for glasford.io is to create a shopping website that is able to dynamically schedule prints across multiple printers. glasford.io largely prints using conveyer belt printing, but the hope is to allow for the shopping website to be used with any 3d printer running octoprint. Please stay tuned for the actual launch of the shopping webite soon, many other things must be worked out first. In particular, recently one of my printers destroyed its control board, and alternatives must be programmed. You can visit the glasford.io main repository at glas