WEEK 09

MECHANICAL DESIGN

Solar Tracker · Doominic · Isaac · Jc · Trinidad

Learning outcome W09

Work and communicate effectively in a team and independently

Design, plan and build a system

Analyse and solve technical problems

Recognise opportunities for improvements in the design

Sun behavior in Barcelona

Before to do a solar tracker, we have to understand the sun behavior. So I found a diagram that I made in my Master Degree that explains how the sun moves in the blocks of Barcelona. I posted here for make clear this point, so all the team can understand it.

References

First we decided to make some research in order to have a better idea about how a solar tracker works, like the mechanism and overall design features of such a system; including motors, gears, coding, materials, environmental factors, etc.

Linear axis actuation types: This is one way to do it, make one joint that allow to move the panel in both ways and then connect the extremities with the motors, and depending on the movement you program the motors to push to that direction.

Geared systems: In this example you have to fabricate two kinds of joints, one for the movement in X and other for the movement in Y. Each of them has to be connected to the gears system, every axis to one gear that will be push by a motor. Here can be seen the different ways to applied the gear system in a solar tracker.

Both systems: And here you can combine the both systems. One axis that works with a gear and the other one works pushing only one extremity.

Conclution: After the research, we concluded to try to implement both system. Last year, one team from the Green FabLab did the same project, but they told us that the gear system was not the best option for one of the movements, so we decided to improve such design, following the research and the advices to make our own proposal of the solar tracker.

Design Process

First, we tried to understand how a solar panel works in a small model. Here we start to experiment, we were trying to understand how the gears works, we made differents types of models in the laser cut and drew a lot of designs, we even took a chair to understand the system and the movement that we wanted.

Behavio of the gear and linear axis.

After we had a clear idea of how we wanted the system, we tested its behavior in the computer to see exactly how it was going to work with the two movements, one in the X axis and the other in the Y axis.

un eje from trinidad on Vimeo.

axis2 from trinidad on Vimeo.

Motors

For the gear system we use a rotating ring, that way we start planning how to create the gear that was going to be attached to the motor in order this two will be able of interact.

Model

For the gear system we use a rotating ring so here we start planning how to create the gear that was going to be attached to the motor and then this two can interact.