Martens Solar

Right, so my suspicions about the bond between the drive arm and drive arm were correct. When I tried to extend the panels using a pair of pliers the epoxy joints cracked and the axle broke loose. The panels did not extend at all. I've drilled a hole through the drive arm and axle, I epoxied a nail into the hole and it seems to be holding. I can now extend the panel with pliers. It takes quite a bit of force to do it. I kinda doubt a servo will be able to handle it.

To attach the bracket assemblies together I used a scrap piece of wood. Unfortunately, the piece was not as wide as I wanted so I had to add a piece of plywood to each side. Then I painted the piece and glued the brackets together. While the epoxy was curing I slide the drive rods through the bearings to make sure everything lined up. I test fit the panels onto the panel mounts. This is the position I put the panels in when I epoxied them into place. Attaching the panels to the arms is proving to be much more difficult than I expected. I tried to attach the panels once, and they cracked off almost immediately after. The epoxy didn't adhere properly to the paint and as so as there was a bit of force applied the epoxy cracked right off. In addition to the weak bond to the paint surface, one of the panel mounts was attached crooked. The bearing on the left is attached at an angle to the rod. Since the bearings have a 8 mm inside diameter and the steel rod

With the model in Fusion I printed out 4 patterns. I laminated 3 pieces of plywood together for each of the 4 brackets. Since the brackets are longer than a single sheet of paper I had to print out 8 templates and glue them together. 4 of each end, both including the middle. Each template with the plywood it'll be attached to. This was a really messy process, the glue comes out everywhere when it gets clamped. I had to put in nails at each end to make sure everything stayed lined up. I used a gluestick to attach the templates. Everything drilled out. Since the brackets are over 9 mm thick and the bearings are 7 mm thick I drilled 3 different sizes of holes. The third hole is much smaller and it only allows the drive axle through with a little bit of room to spare. Since the templates were glued together, not everything was completely straight. I put some extra steel rod through each hole, putting the bearings in place so everything would stay line

With the arms build and glued together I could finalize the design for the brackets. In all the models I made the arms were held together by some sort of brackets attached to a spine. The brackets would have to be fairly strong as they would bear the entire weight of the panels, as well as contain the forces needed to extend the panels. I figured that the best way to make the brackets strong was to minimize the amount of glued joints. I thought about steaming strips of plywood and then laminating them into U shapes, however, I had previously tried laminating strips together and while it did work, the results weren't very accurate or consistent. Since I wanted 4 U shapes of pretty much the exact same dimensions that option was out. This is the design I was considering for most of the design phase. The problem with the above design is that the brackets attach to the spine with very little surface area and the majority of the weight from the panels will be applied at the e

With all the bearings epoxied into the arms, I could start with assembling them into the 4 individual groups. I started by measuring the width of the arms put together, after having been glued together, sanded, and painted I couldn't be sure of exactly how thick the arms actually were. Once I knew the thickness of each joint I could cut the rod to the approximate length. For all the joining rods and drive axles, I used 5/16" steel welding rods. 5/16" is 7.9375 mm, the inner diameter of the bearing is 8mm so it works out pretty perfectly. The blue residue is from the hacksaw blade. Then I ground the cut end with a bench grinder. Measure and grind until it's the right length. Having the caliper was super useful during this whole process but especially when trying to get these joining rods all the same length. Once all the joining rods were ground to the correct length I sanded them lightly to try and smooth out the slightly rounded end. T

Building the arms was by far the most time-consuming task. If only I had a cnc.... The rim of wood around the bearing was needed but I didn't like the really thick arm, I drew this up in Fusion, printed out the drawing, and stuck it down with a glue stick. The slot in the middle was an idea to make the arms lighter and look cooler. I tried it with one arm and then ditched the idea, it really didn't work and was a lot of work. All cut-out, at this point I didn't have access to a scroll saw so this was all done with a regular handsaw and files. It's pretty rough but I cleaned it up as best I could. Already looking much better. The next step was mass production, I needed 20 arms total. For this, I bought a used Craftsman Scroll saw. It was very, very useful. All cut and drilled out. Removing the paper was annoying, I used the top edge of a file to scrape it off. Since I put it on with a glue stick it wasn't very difficult to scrap