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video Solar design t-square for designing solar cooker reflectors
I tried this on a small scale model and then scaled up.
It can better be used on a larger scale. You could also design flat parabolic "plates" with mirrors on a sheet of plywood to make powerful mock parabolic dishes. (In that case only one laser shining straight down is needed)
This shows how I used it to design the shapes of reflectors for unattended solar cooking.
(I did not know what the shape would be before I began.)
The design process is done by "Claymation". Little adjustments of one area at a time until the design is complete.
The clam shape has never been repeated even though it has great potential to help people in Dafur or Haiti.
The license is attribution sharealike so you can produce commercial versions too.
It can better be used on a larger scale. You could also design flat parabolic "plates" with mirrors on a sheet of plywood to make powerful mock parabolic dishes. (In that case only one laser shining straight down is needed)
This shows how I used it to design the shapes of reflectors for unattended solar cooking.
(I did not know what the shape would be before I began.)
The design process is done by "Claymation". Little adjustments of one area at a time until the design is complete.
The clam shape has never been repeated even though it has great potential to help people in Dafur or Haiti.
The license is attribution sharealike so you can produce commercial versions too.
I think it may help people make their own.
The good news is that the primary reflector is pretty close to parabolic dish in shape. So it might just be that you can use a half or 1/3 section of a parabolic dish and use the secondary reflector to get the one hour or 2 hour cook time that you need for unattended solar cooking. Perhaps if someone has a small parabolic dish of some kind at home, they would like to try make a model.
A critical thing with the cheap laser pointers is getting them pointing straight down.
They are generally not accurately pointing in the same direction as the barrel of the pointer so you have to twist them in the hole until they do!
I only noticed that recently. It is easy to correct IF you know it is happening.
Brian
I might need to find a mathematician to do calculus to solve the curves of the surfaces. My models were made with little mirrors and some are not in the same plane as the surface they are on. That means that if you made the shape from ordinary reflective material, it would not work exactly the same.
So, not at the stage of making a panel cooker or dish just yet!
Brian
I am not doing anything with the tsquare right now.
All the new info is at http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Solar_design_T-Square
The first and 3rd diagram there are useful.
I did a model with glass mirrors and mud and that worked superbly.
The shape I came up with was clam shaped. (see the link)
People would have patted me on the back if it came out like a satalite dish.
They will have big trouble accepting "clam shaped"!
It is what it is.
I looked up clam shaped on google and they did use clam shaped sound stages to project the sound long distances forward in the past. (reverse of what I want).
Sidney opera house is clam shaped, come to think of it!
Anyway, thank you for your comments.
Brian
It did not happen.
In fact that is most of the reason i went to the t-square thingy.
You might be able to get help at the "friendly skys" art of illusion forum. They were pretty good to me for a while. And you might even be able to upload your work in sketchup and let them convert it. The guy who made art of illusion has a relative who wrote a book about solar cooking so there is some goodwill there.
thank you for your interest
Brian
L
You kept me going.
(I thought at this stage someone else would have ran with this thing).
Anyway, I have not yet made a decent model but the good news is that the shapes of reflectors for unattended cooking may be quite easy to make.
I have a horrible new video up of my first rough model. (Just for the moment).
I have plans to replace it with a much better video.
You need 3 cameras to do it right so I have to go borrowing cameras.
And I also have to wait until I get a new roll of mylar.
I will also start a model using little mirrors stuck in clay. Not as easy to adjust but the mirrors should stay put where I put them.
It is rewarding to do but very sad to see such a level of disinterest.
I think when the bugs are ironed out, it will be an awesome tool for research and education. (It is just holding the model in place that gives trouble)
Really only you and a higher up guy at solarcooking.org have shown any interest.
Thanks for that..
Brian
L
I could see the basic shape forming but I could not keep everything steady enough to complete it accurately.
Someone else can figure it out!
There are just so many ways of holding it together and so many different possibilities for designing the reflectors. I am sure people will come up with several ways to complete the project.
I might just dump the instructable and leave people with the video.
I failed to make the instructable clear enough.
It is hard to watch because of jerky camera work. BE WARNED!
I have crappy reused mylar at the moment so reflections are not great.
Even so, this seems to show that a 2 hour reflector may not be that difficult to make. All you may need is one large sheet of material (for a parabolic (ish) trough and 5 or 6 strips to redirect the parabolic trough line focus to the cooking pot.
I still have not figured out how to effectively keep the relfector pieces in place but it is getting better.
So far, the jig (the t square with the laser pointers on it) are proving to be very useful indeed!
Brian
An interested party asked if I had made any progress so thats why the quick and dirty video is up. The corkboard under is an improvement and I have a crude way of holding the model in place too. And I think this type of model is a lot easier to replicate than the "scallop shaped" reflector that I tried to model earlier.
Brian