Wiki Kumi

After two lovely weeks of exploring other parts of Africa, we are back with our weekly stories!  The first exciting part that we have to share:  the motor and the long-expected gearbox finally arrived! This was wonderful news because we were not sure if the package would even arrive so we were super enthusiastic the entire day. We immediately called fundi Edy to arrange a meeting the next day so that we could try the motor as soon as possible. Fundi Edy, known to be late, arrived absurd late this time but eventually when he entered Chako's workplace we got a major setback. Apparently the motor that the Russian guy send us was a 3-phase motor instead of a single phase. A three-phase motor is very powerful but it works on a special 330V electric circuit which we don't have at Chako. Our good fortune quickly reversed into bad luck

We did manage to complete the entire frame and attach the motor, gearbox and shredder to the frame. Once again we were suprised  how inventive the Chako employees are. 'For example when we were  struggling with the frame, some of them just showed up with tools that we never saw before in the workplace. We were trying to make a hole into a wooden plank with a knife and a woodsaw because of the lack of better tools. Very soon someone looked at us and started to grab some things out of the storage room and came to rescue us from our impossible mission. Now the only thing that is missing is a working motor.

On the other hand, we have made a lot of progress with the injection moulding machine! All the electronics are connected and attached carefully into the electronic box. It was now time to do some experiments on how to use the electronics and how to set certain parameters. At the end of the week we ended with bandheaters that became very very hot within a minute which obligated us to turn the power off again. Unfortunately we don't have a hundred percent control yet of the usage of the injection moulding but "pole pole" (meaning slowly slowly) we are getting there!

The frame of the injection moulding machine has been perfected and now it finally works the way we want the handle to work. So we hope that next week, all the little problems are solved and that it ends with two working machines!