In the Course of a Day

Today, I vacuumed out a coffee roaster, hefted 150 pound coffee bags, called 50 of our wholesale clients, discussed recycling with some regulars of the shop, called back all the folks on the answering machine, installed coffee brewers at City Diner in downtown pueblo, put a brewer in the new library at CSU Pueblo, made new labels and adverts in Illustrator, e-mailed some of our vendors, updated the video slide-show screens at the mall and downtown,  and finally sat down to re-collect thoughts about solar power.  It's amazing how busy Tuesdays can be!  I feel like I saw a thousand or so people coming in and out of the coffee shop.  I'm just sitting down with a catalog of gears to order a set of parts for a heliostat prototype.  That is after all what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing -building a solar heat source for this roaster!

Despite some of these all-involving days at the coffee shop, progress is being made.  There is a decent orderly way in which everything must be accomplished.  The most immediate part of my outline looks something like this:


1.) Quantify all of the needed attributes and variables for these small heliostats.  I need to formally set down how accurate these things need to be, how much force the motors must produce, and how much movement is permissible. 

2.) Once that is done, I need to settle my year-long debate once and for all about my motors:
Linear Motor gearing vs. worm-gear motor gearing.

Linear motors are easy to build from low cost parts, but produce non-uniform movement of the mirror over their range.  Worm gear motors produce true rotary motion with motor steps correlating directly to angular units of rotation over the whole range of movment.  It is more difficult and expensive, however, to purchase/assemble worm gear drive systems.  Especially considering that 220 heliostats means 440 of them!  (vertical and horizontal movement for each mirror.) 

Help me end this internal debate!  (I'm ordering parts tonight and will build heliostats of each kind, keep track of the cost, and then test their functionality.) 

Meanwhile, I think I need to get a cup of coffee!