Construction
Drawing Tree
As the drawing tree shown the solar tracker contained 9 parts that manufacture in machine shop:
As the pictures shown in blue mark, the top part of solar tracker was flexible along with bottom part, which allows the top part rotate in vertical direction by itself.
As the pictures shown in purple mark, the bottom part was fixed, which allows the solar tracker changes horizontal direction without moving the solar panel in vertical direction
The solar tracker was made of 9 parts and final construction was almost the same as pictures shown above.
Issues
There were three manufacturing issues.
The first issue was that the 1.25 inches’ shaft could not go through the hole at the center of metal side supports that mill in lathe machine, even though the hole was mill 0.05 inches over size. This issue was caused by the bugs inside the hole and the different sizes in each side of the hole, so the solution was putted the metal side supports in holding device and used one size larger extension drill to turn in. Therefore, the hole was expanded and the shaft could go through the holes.
The second issue was that the holes at the center of plastic supports did not go through perfectly when mill in lathe machine because it was too hot, and it tended to burn the plastic instead of mill it. Therefore, the cold water needed to put on for each 0.05-inch mil*l in to reduce the temperatures.
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The third issue was that the holes used to put in U-bolt to connect tube beam and plastic supports were not match up because the holes were the same size as the U-bolt’s cylinder parts and the holes were not perfectly drill through the plastic supports vertically. When the cylinder parts went through the plastic supports, one support looked vertical and another one looked opened. Therefore, the holes had to expand on tube beam in order to use U-bolt to connect plastics supports and tube beam.
Summary
This project was conceived analyzed and designed at CWU. The parts was supported by resources and documents from library and parts will be made in the lab at Central Washington University,
This project was made of 9 parts and final construction was almost the same as assembly and drawings in SolidWorks. Four of them was obtained from suppliers, and the rest of them was designed and manufactured at Central Washington University. The four parts that were obtained from suppliers were solar panel, sensor, and two motors. The designed and manufactured parts were sides supports, plastics supports, shaft, tube beam, sheet metals, tube support, and base. .
After inputed the program and connect to battery or power, and motors were accepted order from sensor and automatic changed the position of solar panel to face to incoming sunlight.