DIY Solar Energy + Origami == Soligami
To build a ray tracer + solver for smaller scale concentrated solar thermal energy applications.
Unlike large scale projects, this project's main focus is in helping small scale uses of solar thermal energy. Large scale projects aim at higher precision and rigor. This projects aims for rapid prototyping.
This project started after wondering whether we can use the many waste materials such as old CDs, chocolate wrappers, etc., to hand-assemble a solar heating device.
This project aims at helping ordinary lay people in designing and assembling DIY solar thermal energy devices by hand.
- Panel: a surface on which many light reflectors shall be mounted.
- Reflector: A single light reflective object, like a CD, or a mirror.
- Target: The black-body object to be focused and heated.
- Wedges: support structures that hold the reflector at designed angle.
the first three are visible from the demo link above.
wedges look like this:
They have a small groove in the front which will allow the reflective material to be kept.
These wedges are folded into their shape from a 2D paper cutting. The 2D shape looks something like this.
