Some Meat and Potatoes gets inside.

Solar One Gets Some Inside Parts

By Corporal Willy, January 19, 2010

Well not only has there been problems with scavenging up the funds to buy things to build with but there has been some of the worst weather I have seen here to date. Those storms hitting the west coast of California are passing over the mountains now and keeping us with more than light coats on here in the Las Vegas, valley. Really miserable weather and with wind behind it, it is downright terrible. Still it is nothing like some areas are getting with the snow and ice.

I wanted to show everyone the progress that has been made even though it has been slower due to the reason mentioned up above here. How about some pictures? I know everyone likes them. They also say more than my words can describe.

Here I am laying out the Gripper Arms Mounting Base. I’m using Red Wood pieces of wood here because a neighbor of mine donated them for my project. I’ve already designed and built the Gripper hand that is shown mounted to the inside telescoping pipe on the right hand side of the Arm. Everything gets a few coats of wood preservative before I accept it for final painting and assembly.

These parts were already designed in SolidWorks but a virtual digitized world must still have the parts and assemblies physically made. Someday we might not have to do that.

It was no easy chore to make one ¾ inch PVC pipe fit inside of the other one of 1 inch sized PVC pipe. There was a lot of belt sanding to accomplish this because I do not have a lathe.

Here is the support base for the CAM Follower Arm. This will be mounted as you will see in later screen shots down below.

Although this is not truly the correct mounting or mating to the CAM RAIL Guide I needed to see quickly if this had any kind of remote possibility of working. It seems to work fine here.

I’ve included a few more pictures here in order for you to get a much better understanding as to what I am trying to accomplish because these are key parts to this puzzle.

Now we are going to finalize these parts and assemblies into the Upper Mechanical Stage of the project Solar One of Engineering.com. I think the pictures will say it better than I can.

I think the idea is getting pretty clear by now as to what I am doing here.

I had to make everything work properly but still be able to follow the metal pipe path which was measured from our desert winter sun angle. The telescoping pipe can be adjusted for a much higher summer sun angle. At least that is the plan of attack here.

Notice that when the red gripper hand that is in contact with the pipe rail is at the lowest part of the rail the top 3 foot circular platform is flush with the top of the mechanical assembly. That was the plan. The 76 mirror array assembly will be mounted on the top of that.

Surprisingly, I think it might work or at least it does when I push it around on the Y Axis. I will include stops on the rail to prevent it from falling off of it. In fact I will use limit switches that when the Hand Gripper reaches a certain point on the rail it will reverse the motor positioning it for the next day’s morning sun.

I do hope you enjoyed the screen shot progress report. Bye for now.