about five years ago grant showed you a cool design how to build a frame for a
MEGA Solar Scorcher now this frame worked really well
especially on a budget. I'm pretty sure the whole thing cost about $10 to
assemble so that was pretty good. But over the years this thing has taken a
lot of wear and tear to the point where now it can't even hold itself up anymore.
That's why it's leaning up against the workbench right now. Combining that with
the fact that our lens is covered with marks and scratches and debris and a
bunch of smoke from so many things that it's burned; it's time to build a new one
and upgrade the design a little bit. We've got a new lens and we've got
materials for a frame and this design is going to be based a little bit on our
Desktop Solar Scorcher which I think will provide a little bit more sturdy of
a structure once it's complete. The first step is going to be isolating the
Fresnel lens itself so we don't have the obnoxious frame or any other layers of
plastic that may be attached to it
there's the part we want. We now have the frame and just this spare piece of
plastic that was in front of the Fresnel lens protecting it maybe we'll use that
for something. At this point I think we can discard this frame unless we want to
just use it for posing. After isolating the Fresnel lens the first step is going
to be to build a frame just around the lens portion of it previously, Grant used
2x4s ripped in half to build the frame around the lens I'm going to
base my design on that and I will use a 2x4 ripped in half for the top and
bottom of the lens but for the size I'm going to use 2x4s with their
complete width because I think that will add some more strength to the hinge
mechanism this lens is 41 inches wide by 31 inches tall let's build our frame to
match that
I'll leave three quarters of an inch space on the long sides of our Fresnel
lens because that's where the wider part of the frame is going to attach so for
the top and bottom we'll cut off two pieces of the half 2x4 and then cut a
groove down that so it fits nicely on the lens. Now these two pieces that we've
cut and added a groove to should perfectly house the ends of our Fresnel
ends our. 2x4 is about the width that I want but I want it to have a nice square
edge so I've got the table saw set to just barely wide enough to cut off that
curved edge and then it should meet up nicely without losing too much of the
width. Now that we have our two-by-four with the square rift edge we can measure
exactly how long we want it to be to line up just perfectly with the ends
that we've already cut.
Excellent, now just like we did it with the top and bottom of the frame we need
to add a groove that cuts three-quarters of an inch down into the middle of our
2x4s. We've now got all four sides of our frame cut let's see how
well they fit together. The hinge on this frame is going to have a long bolt that
runs through most of the side frame and then through the to supporting pieces
that hold the frame up we'll need to drill two holes into our 2x4 one that's
wide enough that the head of the bolt can fit and one that's slightly narrower
but wide enough for this piece of tubing we're going to have some spacers between the
frame and each of the legs but even with that we should be able to fit a fair
amount of the bolt inside our 2x4 this is the depth that we want the wider hole
cut and then our narrower hole will go all the way through the 2x4 from there
do that same thing on our other 2x4
the larger first hole we drilled should accommodate the head of our bolt we now
need to drill the smaller hole that will accommodate the copper pipe that our
bolt will run through
we did most of our drilling with our drill press but it doesn't have quite a
deep enough plunge to get all the way through this 2x4 so to finish it off
we've put the bit into the hand drill and we'll just be finishing the drill
hole with that we've measured off the length that we need to perfectly fill
this hole let's cut that off with a hacksaw and then push it down into the
wood dropping this bolt down through I'm hoping that this will let it pivot
nicely without the bolt wearing down on the wood do the same thing for the other
side excellent as a last step before I assemble the four pieces of the frame
around the Fresnel lens I want to add a router edge just to make it a little bit
nicer and cleaner looking
the screws I'm going to be using aren't long enough to reach all the way through
a 2x4 into the other piece of wood so I'll drill a larger hole to about here
one inch in and then I'll pre-drill the rest of the 2x4 as well as the side
piece of wood before attaching the screw
the frame that holds the Fresnel lens is now assembled so it's time to add the
four legs on to our MEGA Solar Scorcher I've got these 1x3 planks of
wood I'm going to use four of them as the feet there will be two on each side
instead of them being next to each other like they were before they'll actually
be overlapping each other with the hinge running through the middle let's measure
the lengths we want these legs to be cut them off of that length and then drill
the holes where we want our hinge to go now that's where we're going to have the
hinge go let's add another inch and a half on top of that just to make sure
it's a nice sturdy connection fifty nine and a half inches will be where we'll
cut our boards
each of these four boards now needs its own small section of pipe to act as a
hinge
all four of our legs have been cut to length drilled and had their own section
of hinge pipe added so we should be able to thread these on to the bolts and have
some feet we don't want just the wood flush up against the wood there will be
too much friction as we try and open and close it or swing our frame so let's add
some nylon washers to make our hinge turn a little bit more easily to add a
bit more strength and so that we have a spot where we can lay down a board to
focus our solar scorcher on whatever we're trying to burn let's add two
supports on each of these legs going down the sides I've got some 1x2
board and that's what we use for our side supports unlike on the last solar
scorcher these supports won't go in between the two legs one set of supports
will go on top of one pair of legs and the other set of sports will go on the
other side of the other pair of legs that way it should still be able to
collapse down all the way flat the way it's laying right now
our side supports are trimmed to the right length and we've smoothed down all
the edges using the router now we'll use a couple of screws on each side to
really attach them in place our frame holds itself up it has two supports on
the bottom and by tightening or loosening these wing nuts on the side we
can actually hold the frame in place to help make it easier to carry this mega
solar scorcher I've got a couple of gate handles I'm gonna attach those to the
outside legs on both sides with our handles attached there's one more
addition I want to make and that's something that we have on the mini solar
scorcher and that's the Sun pointing screws we'll add a screw on to the top
and bottom of our lens that should be perfectly perpendicular to the direction
that the lens is facing which means we can use the shadow of the screw to know
when the lens is perfectly lined up with the Sun
fantastic, I love this drill press, everything about it
Based on the design of the mini solar scorcher here is the mega scorcher 2.0
we're using the same style of giant fern L lens but a sturdier design for the
frame itself so it should be a lot easier to position to carry around and
to just have it stay working well for a long time the hinge works very nicely
and very smoothly and as you can see it's really well balanced anywhere that
I put it it just stops right there and then if I want to make it a little bit
more sturdy so it really can't turn I can tighten the wing nuts on the side
and that adds a lot more resistance to twisting it
our pointers at the top and bottom should work really well for aiming our
screen directly at the Sun which should help us get just the right amount to
focus when we're trying to burn something hey guys there's still more to
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