Wait just a minute!
Spaceman has decided to become "legit"???
Wow! Now I've heard everything. Next thing you know he will be posting pictures of himself in a suit and tie while he discusses international currency exchange rates for his international business enterprise. (hehehehe)
Okay... back to solar collectors. Here is a little tool for those that hated High School geometry.
http://mscir.tripod.com/parabola/
That software tool would make it easy for anyone to make a full size cardboard template of a flat parabola for whatever size they wanted to make a solar collector.
Let's say you wanted to build a trough collector, something like this one:
http://tinyurl.com/SolarTrough
You could use that cardboard template to build a form to make parabolic slices of papercrete that could get stuck together to make the shape of the back of the reflector. Then simply glue your mirror surface to the papercrete.
Let's say you wanted to build a dish collector, something like this one:
http://tinyurl.com/SolarDish
If you build a very simple circular form whose diamater was the same as your cardboard parabola template, you could pour a very thick batch of papercrete into that form. Then you could use the cardboard template to cut out a screed board using plywood, or maybe simple lumber if the parabola is shallow enough. The screed board would be used in an unusual way. Put some kind of center pin in the middle of the papercrete form (drive a stake into the ground), and a hole in the middle of your screed board. Now you can rotate your parabolic screed board around the circular form shaping the papercrete into a parabolic dish. Remove the skimmed off papercrete with a trowel, and fill in any gaps. Let dry, attach your mirror surface.
WARNING! Solar collectors of this type can be extremely hazardous. Never let your eyes or other body parts that you don't want cooked or burned to get near the focus of these reflectors when they are in sunlight.
"Mr. Legit" Spaceman wrote:
While we do try to stay mostly on papercrete, the membership and moderators here usually don't object when the subject wanders a little, especially if it is something green or somehow remotely related to pc. Starting this thread with an experimental papercrete solar concentrator made it legit : )
Spaceman
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