Build It « Gasifier Experimenters Kit

Build It

Intro | DIY Build Instructions | Manufacturing Method | GEK Licensing

ALL Power Labs offers open source “How to” wood gasifier plans and CAD drawings to help you make and use the GEK wood gas generator. The most recent GEK gasifier plans and instructions are maintained in the GEK wiki sandbox under the “How to build and run the GEK Gasifier” section. We encourage you to go there to get the current best state of the GEK, and related info on how best to operate it.

These materials are offered under the intentions of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. You are welcome to use these materials free of charge for any personal use- whether non-profit or for profit. If you do so, we request you acknowledge the source and similarly post documentation of updates and/or new additions you come up with to the GEK Forum and/or GEK Wiki. The only use limitation concerns commercial manufacturing and resale. If you are going in this direction, see the GEK license for more info.

With that out of the way, now on to the building . . .

Building Options

The GEK building scenario let’s you decide the relative amount of “effort vs cost” you want to invest towards your finished unit. GEK vessel dimensions are based on common scrap tanks found in North America, so you can choose to build it for minimum money and maximum effort with the dimensions, instructions and CAD files provided here. The local junkyard will give you all the greasy obtainium scrap tanks you need.

The more elegant and accurate way to build the GEK is from purposed cut and rolled sheetmetal. Sheet metal is still very inexpensive, and you will have better dimensional control than via the obtainium route. You can cut the sheetmetal to make the vessel tubes, flanges and end plates, using a gas torch or plasma cutter. Potentially even a sawzall, but ugh! ALL Power Labs can provide readymade sheet metal and plumbing kits. which self jig and make the welding easy. Or, you can use our CAD files to get the same parts cut via any “manufacturing on demand” provider with cnc plasma cutting services. Either way, starting with good purpose cut sheet metal will let you spend your enthusiasm welding and running the GEK, not sunk in greasy tank recovery prep work.

Hopefully one of the above scenarios will find a good match with your abilities, time and money available. Whichever route you choose to build the GEK, the final unit is the same, and thus experiments and customizations are easily sharable across the GEK user community.

Here’s example CAD files from v1.0. Remember there are more current ones at the links above.

V1.0 CAD Files