Ordered worm gears today for testing one kind of stepper motor assembly. (Ordered them from SDP/SI online. There is some stuff on smallparts.com.) I visited a metal yard here in Pueblo (Speken) and found that my preferred stepper motor slides snugly into 2x4" rectangular tube, so I bought a length of that. I then ordered a set of rectangular plastic inserts for the ends of the pipe. My plan is to create rigid steel housings for the motors from short sections of rectangular tubing. By simply using short sections of this tough construction material, I should be able to produce these things en-mass for low material cost and have them be rather strong. I will fit the worm gear, bearings, and potentially some driver circuitry into each rigid weatherproof box. Each mirror will get two of them.
I also ordered a set of four glass mirrors from Binswanger glass in Pueblo. It's costly to have a local place custom cut glass mirror. I'm going to have to price out delivery of 4x8' sheets of this stuff and build a table jig for cutting these things myself when it's time to go into full production. Anybody know where to buy 1/4" thick glass mirror in large sheets?
Got a dozen coffee orders wrapped up labeled & my wife Lindsay is dropping it at Fedex. Tomorrow we have some private label coffees to finish. I'll round out the week with a start of the formal design work for the heliostats. (How accurate do they actually need to be, how strong, how fast?)
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