Solar Cooking Archive Discussion Forums

gaiatechnician · Joined: 06 Jan 2008 Posts: 32 Location: Victoria BC

Box cookers are slow but reliable and can be unattended.
Parabolic cookers are fast, dangerous and must be attended.
The idea is to design reflectors so that you can have a cooker with
intermediate characteristics.
Safer than a parabolic, faster than a box and capable of unattended cooking.
I put 2 videos on youtube to further explain what I am trying to do
here.
They are
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFjuoDVU4c8
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbiVo12kuKA
It helps to watch the first one before seeing the second one. but if you
are short on time, just watch the first 5 minutes of the second video.
Brian

I am almost at the point of making my first design with it.
Easy cheap apparatus so far. Couple of laser pointers, some wood, some strips of mylar, some screws.
Anyone want to try?
Brian

gaiatechnician · Joined: 06 Jan 2008 Posts: 32 Location: Victoria BC

http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Solar_design_T-Square I tried to get a better idea of the shapes involved by using little mirrors stuck in mud to represent the reflector.
This worked and it shows that a clam shell shape should work for unattended solar cooking.
It is hard to show in pictures or video because the mirrors throw off the perspective.
I find the solar design T-Square to be an effective tool and it is still early stages.
I would love some feedback
Brian

gaiatechnician · Joined: 06 Jan 2008 Posts: 32 Location: Victoria BC

http://solardesign.ning.com/photo/albums/solar-design-tsquare has more recent pictures and the project is also at http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Solar_design_T-Square
I made a couple of models recently. 2 two hour models and one 1 hour model.
Next stage is to make a big one and mount it on equatorial mount.
Brian