/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>122402
I'd probably start with beach sand instead of mining. lol

Cheapest way is to use solar yard lights. They have everything you need to do what you want to do. You can either buy them from a cheap dollar store or get used ones that no longer work or are broken. The plastic housing of cheap ones tends to break easily and people just replace them, but the PV cell still works.

As for the circuitry to make it into a trickle charger array with additional PV cells, I'm not sure about that yet. Since it already is a trickle charger for one AA battery that is a start.

>>122390
It depends on the dimensions of course, but you can take a board of hardwood, mark out the 2D version, and cut it out with a scroll saw. Then you start carving out the beveled edges and details in the areas that need it. Using good quality wood carving tools is best, but who knows what you can achieve with a pocket knife and some sandpaper.

Do you mean making it completely from scrap, make one from scrap parts, or reusing existing PV cells from things like old yard lights?

To make one from scrap you'd need a forge to start with. Getting pure crystalline silicon would be a real chore, but it's doable. To make one from existing parts would be easier, and simply re-purposing an existing PV cell is easiest. Which are you going for?

[spoiler]I also made a windbelt from one of the HDD arms, its N50 magnets, and some VHS tape. It's an extremely poor use of N50s, but it does create power. When the arm moves up and down it's coil (hidden under the magnet mount) will pass the the magnet and make power. Since it vibrates up AND down it will cause your volt meter's needle to move + and - because it is reversing the polarity. I think the max this one with a small coil could make was 0.02v in one direction.

The principle is the movement of the VHS tape in a breeze. Tensioning it correctly and having a moderate breeze causes the long tape to vibrate up and down very quickly. In turn, the tape makes the HDD arm move up and down quickly thereby producing power. It's an interesting proof of concept, but taking those N50s off and making them spin past a coil or few of copper wire will create a whole lot more energy than the windbelt could ever hope to achieve. A larger coil on the HDD arm would give more power. I've seen some power small LEDs before.</spoiler>

[spoiler]>>122385
>That's hella cool though, I would have never thought to use a 2L bottle for the blades on a VAWT.

BTW, some people take large diameter, thin-walled PVC pipe, split it in two down the middle length and use those long pieces to make a VAWT. You can use pretty much anything you want for the blades. Curved is better, but flat will also work when they are angled correctly.</spoiler>

[spoiler]>>122384
Try Freecycle.org

It is a Yahoo Group based service. EVERYTHING is free. It is intended to keep other people's "trash" out of landfills. You simply become a member (free) and put up wanted ads. It is a must that you read all the rules and remember to not use the word "need" in your wanted ads. Other than a few restrictions you can end up with working cars, PCs, CRTs, etc etc. Anything and everything is given away and you can offer to others what you don't want. You must pick up anything you want that is offered to you and you are the first to contact the person and if you offer anything people have to come and pick it up at your location.

I have a massive stack of used glass sliding patio doors to make a greenhouse this spring. I got them all from freecycle people. I've had about 20 CRTs, 30 PCs, and I'm working on finding people with rear-projection TVs now (for those 4 feet wide Fresnel lens they have inside them!)

Also, tell people, friends, and family that you want all their broken electronics. It costs to have stuff hauled away to the dump so most people readily want to get rid of it for free. Put a free ad or two in whatever bulletin board you have in your area that allows free ads.

>>122385
Yes, normally, for optimal energy output you spin the motor at more RPMs than what the motor is rated as.

A HAWT isn't good for pulley/gears normally, but a VAWT is because a VAWT has more torque to push the gearing/pulley. My next design is to use some of those plastic gears in the OP to make a geared Savonius VAWT. Then I'll use the research I gain from all this to design the N50 VAWT with pulleys.</spoiler>

[spoiler]>>122382
Underside.</spoiler>

[spoiler]This is a test Savonius VAWT I made from one of the CD-DVD-ROM motors, a plastic soda pop bottle, a couple of clear CD/DVD dividers you get in packs of discs, and some low-temp hot glue. The bamboo skewer wasn't actually needed, but it helped center things. That 5.9v motor makes the following energy,

Blowing with breath really fast:
1.25v and 100 milliAmps

Outside wind (low wind, unknown speed, unknown mA):
0.325v

>>122381
This is my first year without dial-up. There are still anons with dial-up. Normally, I don't post hi-res because it is not needed and slows 4chan down int he long run, but in this case I did because the parts are tiny and some anons may want to see them well enough to identify them for what ever reason.</spoiler>

[spoiler]This is what my cheap ass tip on my cheap ass soldering iron looks like after the brutality of removing all those PCB components. I sponged and tinned like I should have, but the iron was getting too hot during long sessions. Good thing tips are cheap. I'll grind this one back into shape after I'm done with the rest of the component removal.</spoiler>

[spoiler]Low res version for people with crappy internet.</spoiler>

[spoiler]What's you latest salvage operation? What do you plan on doing with you haul?

Here's mine, from about a dozen or more CD/DVD-ROMs, 8 HDDs, PSUs, and various other old electronics like VCRs and the like.

14 Neodymium (N50) magnets
27 motors
lots of LEDs
lots of plastic gears and pulleys
more screws than I will ever use
tons and tons and tons of PCB components

Well, here's a pic of nearly everything. I still have several old PCs to scrap. I have a stack of aluminum and a stack of steel. The N50 magnets are going to be made into electric generators for modified Savonius VAWTs intended to charge batteries; like in this application of them,

http://www.reuk.co.uk/Hard-Disk-Drive-Magnets-For-Wind-Turbines.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savonius_wind_turbine

Instead of using vice grips to bend the N50's mounting bracket, like in the above link to get the N50 off, use heat. I held mine, with vice grips over a gas burner cap on my cook stove, for about 20-30 seconds or longer then used a pair of needle nose pliers to SLIDE the magnets off the mounting bracket. The glue heats up and its easy to get the N50s off the bracket that way. On only one N50 did the nickel coating bubble up, but it is still fine. Be careful with N50s then slap together HARD and can break.

Here's a fairly good chart of PCB Circuit Symbols,
http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/symbol.htm</spoiler>

>>61991
No, I didn't. I dismantled it so I could use the door for my upcoming greenhouse project. The air coming from it on a sunny day was quite hot. I normally, didn't need that much it because my living area is very weatherized. I'm making my greenhouse attached to my house with venting into the house. It can act like a large solar collector that way. I'm planning on keeping a solar water heating system in it too.

It would be worth it as a supplemental heat source. If you had a massive storage tank and used reflectors you could use it for water and house heat. If you use a pump then you can place them anywhere. If you use thermosiphon to pump then the roof isn't a good place for them. See this thread for the image I made for a thermosiphon system, >>57291 for use in winter areas where water would freeze.

My main forte is solar box ovens. My best one reaches 450F.

I live near your area and even on semi-overcast days like today there's plenty of solar heat if you have a good system built. Insulation and large pipe size is key for heat retention and proper flow. With a pump system, pipe size isn't as important. With a thermosiphon system the larger the pipe size the better.

>>61962
I have!

Don't use popcans. The paint for painting them is actually quite a bit. Use an old piece of roofing metal. The corrugated stuff that is wavy is best. Leave gaps at the top and bottom for air flow. They are simple to make, easier to make than the popcan one. It puts out a LOT of heat too.

Try finding an old, used sliding-glass, patio door as the cover for it. I got most of mine from freecycle.org (mostly for a greenhouse) and seconds/throw-always near the dumpster for a local window/door manufacturing company. For this purpose its okay if the sell is broken between the panes of glass. Having 2 panes of glass is far better than one in this case.

Solar thread.

Post all things DIY solar. Bonus points for being passive solar.

Here's a passive solar thermosiphon water heater I designed, some years ago, for areas where water freezes in the winter.

>>48047
More about heat storage and "latent" solar cooking,

Wilson solar grill (pictured and lol shopped it seems),
http://inhabitat.com/wilson-solar-grill-stores-the-suns-energy-for-nighttime-fuel-free-grilling/

Novel concept for the Wilson solar grill, but I see several glaring errors in the design itself, just for light collection alone.

http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Heat_storage

>>48287
Looks good to me. you might want to insulate the cooking vessel from the plastic where it rests on the plastic. In fact, you can cut the bottom of the bottle off and use the rest to simply set over the top of the jar. Then the cooking vessel won't be touching the plastic at all and there should be enough of a seal at the bottom to prevent wind from causing too much trouble with heat lose.

Speaking of wind, always remember to tie down your cooker and panels so the wind doesn't knock it over. Also, have it guarded against pets. Dogs love to tear them up to get the food from inside.

>recipe any different for a solar cooker?

No. The only differences you'll have are cooking times and that varies widely from cooker to cooker and day to day. I recommend investing in an oven thermometer or an electric food thermometer and googling food temps if you really want to be specific.

Also, you can always make larger panels by gluing more cardboard pieces together using 1/2 and 1/2 wood/elmers glue and water mix. I did that for my large, indoor, window reflector for my spring vegetable seedlings. It lasted a few years, I need to make a new one.

>>48145
Refer to this post >>47942 about the use of mirrors. One-way mirrors would be even less efficient than a normal mirror since some light passes through the mirror and would be lost.

Painting the outside of your solar cooker may or may not help. Black is the color that transfers heat better than any other color. This is why the heat sink on the back of a refrigerator is painted black instead of white like the rest of the fridge. So there is a chance that a the outside of black painted solar box cooker may transfer heat away more than claim heat from ambient light. This is especially true of a cooker with panel large enough to shade the box.

Cookers with little insulation that have their box exposed to the sun, like my bread riser here, >>47114 will benefit from having the sides painted black.

I wouldn't paint a shaded box cooker with black paint for the purpose of having it perform better.

Solar cooking wiki link,

http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Solar_Cookers_World_Network_%28Home%29

>>48086
>>48104
http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Solar_Cookers_World_Network_%28Home%29

Praise the sun.

More tips,

If you are making a durable panel cooker, look for 2 pots. One that is large and clear and one that is small and black. The thicker the black pot the longer it will take to heat up. So, a very thin-walled pot will have far less thermal mass and heat up very quickly. Having the 2-pot method, where one fits completely inside the other, seems to be the most durable way to make the cooking vessel for a panel cooker.

While plastic bags are very cheap and easy to use, they can stick and melt to the hot surface of the cooking vessel. Making a foldable, wire, coat hanger grid to keep the bag from touching the cooking vessel is best.

>>48051
Yes, design them in the same way you would any solar cooker. There are ones like this adobe solar cooker that are simply positioned towards the main arch of the sun and used throughout the day.

I personally prefer ones with as many reflectors as I can fit on it. So to decrease the cooking times.

If I were you and serious about making a permanent solar cooker, I would first make several portable solar box cookers. This will allow you to tinker around and find the best design for your needs.

>>48050
I love Fresnel lenses. I haven't played around with them in years.

More tips,

At times the sun will not be out, the sky too cloudy for your cooker, there's bad weather in general, and of course there's nighttime. There are ways to "charge up" a solar cooker. However, this can take a while to do depending on your designs. The simpliest way to do this is to add thermal mass to the inside of the cooker. Bricks and stones are good for this. You can heat them up when you are not cooking until they are excessively hot. You'll need to insulate them very well when the sun is not shining of course. A cooker can be charging all day when you are at work then when you get home you can pop food into it jsut as the sun is going down and you should still be able to cook the food because of how hot the bricks/stones are. The more brick/stone you use the longer the charge is needed, but the longer the heat will last when there's no sun.

There are oil versions of this where a thermosiphon system is used to heat up cold oil and exchange that heat to a cooking surface inside your home (solar water heaters are like this). With a large enough tank you can heat quite a bit of oil to cooking temps.

Other tips,

The more food you pack into a solar cooker the longer it takes to cook the food. The denser the food the longer it will take to cook. To help cook faster you can chop foods up into much smaller pieces. For other foods you simply need to rethink what you are doing. If you want boiled eggs, you need to realize that you don't need water to cook the egg in the shell when using a solar box cooker. If you added water and tried to boil it for the egg it would take much longer.

Canning jars such as glass mason jars act as pressure cookers when they are properly sealed. The black painted jar heats up and the air and water pressure cooks the contents. Be careful when using a mason jar with pasta. It can obliterate the pasta in a very short amount of time, reducing it to mere mush. Mush pasta is god awful. A mason jar can cook rice and beans faster.

You can also can vegetables with a solar cooker using mason jars. However, I would consider this a Water-Bath method of canning and not pressure canning, so only can foods that are safe for water bath canning. If you do use a painted jar, put a piece of tape up one side prior to painting it. Then remove the tape so that there is one stripe of paint missing. You will be able to see the contents of the jar and determine when it's boiling or whatever.

In regards to paints, for jars you can use anything, but for anything that will be exposed to vapors while cooking, like loose food inside a solar box cooker, I recommend using oven/grill safe paints that don't give off toxic fumes when hot.

>>47601
>what outside temperature becomes too cold for a cheap solar cooker?

If the cooker is well insulated and the day is sunny then there is no cold on Earth that can stop a solar cooker. Your biggest troubles are wind and clouds.

>approx how much cloud cover is too much?

This depends exclusively on the amount of reflector space you have. Some cookers drop temps quickly due to poor insulation and small reflectors, when a cloud passes over them. Other, well-made cookers won't drop temps very much. If you have a massive amount of reflector space and a very well insulated box cooker, you can cook on an over-cast cast where you cannot see the sun. It will take a lot longer obviously. You'd most likely need 2 times the reflector space as my largest solar box cooker here >>47120

>>47680
Actually, it is the low temperatures that are affecting the flavor of your food. Conventional cooking devices use much higher heat to cook in a much shorter amount of time. Normal range solar cookers slow cook the food at low temperatures. This keeps from destroying heat-sensitive vitamins in your foods among other things. To do this indoors, you'd only need to gently heat the food in the same range and times as you do when cooking outside with the solar cooker.