An organic farmer I was working for as a farmhand offered me the task of making a seed oil press he had pedal powered. In the span of less than two weeks, and with the help of a local carpenter and tinkerer, we used a child's mountain bike to make a hand cranked piteba pedal powered.

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The first step of the process involved troubleshooting the hand-cranked seed oil press itself to establish the best possible route to success, and then we went through the challenging process of joining the driven sprocket with the oil seed press itself, involving a large wood turned bushing as well as other mismatched parts. At the end of the process, we attached a bike seat and handlebars, in addition to connecting the design to a frame. This involved a good deal of welding with a challenging welding setup: the only welder we had was an old oxy-acetylene welder, with no flux, in the wind, attempting to weld thin steel bike tubing.

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At the end of the two weeks, we had succeeded in making the seed oil press pedal powered, and the organic farmer and others close to him were able to press multiple pints of oil from unhusked sunflower seeds without a hitch. That said, I did write up four or five pages of documentation for easy future repair.

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I really enjoy prototyping work like this, as I feel like it allows me to use my engineering and prototyping skills to impact people directly, as well as doing a fun project with interesting constraints that I wouldn't otherwise encounter.