New consulting relationship with GreenTecAuto begins
What actually goes wrong with the batteries????
A look at todays Hybrid and EV battery packs
Battery packs exposed
Keeping Warm In New England
Plugging into the SUN
Making a small solar concentrator
Cutting the mirrors
cleaning up the dish
Single dish construction
multiple dish considerations
Making the tracker PC board
Making the furnace self powered
Building MIMA and the plug in adapters
Converting a telephone truck to electric
DIY dual pulse Capacitor Discharge Spotwelder
Chevy Bolt EV joins the family
Getting in shape while making electricity
Retirement
Replacing gasoline with solar electric lawn equipment
What is Genesis One?
How to stop the aging process DIY
MIMA Install Day 2005 a Big Success!
Building a hybrid car grid charger
Tapping into the Wind
Expanding MIMA with the Distribution board ( users projects )

Single dish construction

Single dish construction
Single dish setup

I started with a single dish to get an idea of the energy it would produce. As you can see, it can ignite a piece of wood, and should cook a hotdog if you can hold it in the focal point. I started with a square piece of an old cabinet top for the dish base, but any piece of wood will work.I mounted two non swiveling wheels on the wooden base, and cut a notch for a gearmotor with drive gear, to act as the horizontal tracker drive.
A piece of 2X4 was trimmed to fit loosely in the dish mount after the steel tube clamp was removed, and added a 1/4" through bolt to serve as the vertical axis pivot.
A second gearmotor was mounted on a sheet metal bracket, on the side of the 2X4 upright. A steel rod was drilled with a 1/4" hole on one end, and the motor shaft diameter hole from the other, with two set screw holes to keep it all together. A brass block was drilled with a 1/4" hole to act as a pivot and a second threaded 1/4-20 hole at right angles to act as a lead screw nut. While this all worked pretty well, I was not satisfied with the power output so I moved on to the quad dish.