Portable Sun Tracking Solar Panel With A Windup Clock Drive

Step 4 Balancing and mounting the solar panel:

A lightweight, 12VDC, 12 Watt solar panel was mounted to a wooden frame (varnished in advance) and carefully balanced, between two push-pins, to find the center of gravity, for the axis. Holes were then drilled and short 1/4" threaded shafts inserted and tightened down with nuts and large washers to provide an absolutely straight axis. The solar panel pivots on roller bearings, with internal greased ball bearings. The mass of the panel, the power-out cord, and the internal resistance of the grease, retards the speed of the geared down clock mechanism only about 1/3rd of one percent. But serendipity played its hand to perfectly match the rotation of the panel to the path of the sun.

A larger solar panel could be mounted on the rig, and solvent could be used to remove the grease from the ball bearings, and light machine oil added instead, to track at the same rate.

Two clock mechanisms, mounted in tandem, should work quite well for even larger solar panels -or a lightweight solar oven, mounted on a horizontal "lazy susan" ball bearing base. But, in the case of a solar oven, it seems that the best way, for a solar tracker, would have the cooking pot resting securely on a firm foundation, with a lightweight clock-driven reflector / glass window housing revolving around the heavy cooking pot. Only upper and lower reflectors would then be needed, to compensate for latitude and solar angle.

Let me know if you try this, as I have to move on to other projects and simply don't have time to develop and refine it. But I love to see how these things progress.