Mother's Super-simple Solar Tracker

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As already noted, the doubleacting hydraulic cylinder on MOTHER's tracking collector has a 1-1/4" bore and a five-inch stroke. Any double-acting cylinder with a bore of one to two inches and a stroke of four to ten inches, however, should work as well (you'll just have to build your collector's base and vary its eccentric arm to fit). If you can't find a $2.00 bargain cylinder the way Dennis did, try these sources of relatively inexpensive hydraulic gear: Palley Supply Company, Dept. TMEN, P.O. Box 2066, Whittier, Calif. 90610 or Surplus Center, Dept. TMEN, P.O. Box 82209, Lincoln, Neb. 68501.

Bear in mind, as you design your version of MOTHER's tracker, that the relationship of the movable collector's center of gravity to its pivot point can be an important one. If the CG is too high, the collector can "slam" from one side to the other and not function properly at all. A lower CG, however, can smooth that erratic action right out and make your collector track slowly and smoothly, just the way it should.

ONE FINAL NOTE

After we'd had Dennis Burkholder's solar tracker working for a few weeks, we found out that Ole Dennie wasn't quite the genius we'd thought he was. A check of patents and papers in the solar energy field turned up the fact that [1] Dr. E.A. Farber and a couple of others working at the University of Florida's Solar Energy and Energy Conversion Lab had originated a very similar device almost a year before MOTHER's was built, and [2] still another similar tracker was patented in June of 1977 by Roland W. Robbins, Jr. of Ridgecrest, California.

So great minds, as the old saying goes, still do run in the same channels. And, no matter who was first with this particular idea, MOTHER's team looks forward to seeing one version or another of this simple, lowcost, trouble-free tracking mechanism put into very wide use.

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