Solar Death Ray

I figure this will be good for something after rollover

http://www.solardeathray.com/index.html

LOL!

I love his captions. Found myself reading more than actually looking at the pictures of destruction brought about by the crule merciless beams of the Death Ray.

This might be good for heating water to power a steam engine. Are there any small steam engines available?

hitssquad said:

This might be good for heating water to power a steam engine. Are there any small steam engines available?

Click to expand...

absolutely. this is what is known as an array heliostat, and most used to generate steam are 12 feet square and use 6 inch mirrors. from what i ubderstand, it is possible to create enough steam to run a 5+ kw generator.



as i am living in nevada, this is the one way to create my own power that i am seriously looking at (it's cheaper than PV anyway).

from the site:

The Solar Death Ray is made of 112 mirrors mounted on a platform 4 feet
wide and 6 feet tall. Each mirror is a square roughly 3.5 inches on edge. All
these mirrors focus the sun to a single spot 5 feet, 6 inches from the mirror
platform.

Using some basic principles of Black Body Radiation, I estimate that the
Solar Death Ray can heat things up to between 500-600 degrees Celsius
(930-1100 degrees Fahrenheit) under good conditions. This assumes that
heat is not lost due to conduction and convection of the air around the
target, which is unlikely.

as for steam engines, you can build a scaled up steam turbine from the one listed here:http://www.prismz.com/minipower/


or you could convert an old diesel engine into a steam engine.

here's a site i found selling steam engines...

http://www.pioneer.net/~carlich/RSE/RSEengines.html

Great. Thanks, CFI.

You can take it one step further...

Take an old (solid metal) sat dish and sand it smooth, paint it with chrome (good) or gold (better, more reflected IR) paint, and then clearcoat it. My 12" Fresnel lens will melt copper and lead. My Primestar dish that I "mirrorized" will melt most common metals. The "mirrorized" DSS dish will heat a cup of coffee FAST!

If you really want heat, Edmund Scientific sells a 3 foot by 3 foot Fresnel lens!

I am in the process this summer of backmounting my 10 foot dish, mirrorizing it and mounting a stainless steel boiler "target" at the focal point/point of rotation of the system. That way, the system can track the sun and I can get good heat even on the cooler days.

Back in the 70's or 80's they had set up a field of mirrors that all concentrated their reflections on one sopt at the top of a tall "building" that housed a boiler. I believe that it was out west and they called it something like the solar power tower.

Loup Garou

Christian for Israel said:

absolutely. this is what is known as an array heliostat, and most used to generate steam are 12 feet square and use 6 inch mirrors. from what i ubderstand, it is possible to create enough steam to run a 5+ kw generator.

as i am living in nevada, this is the one way to create my own power that i am seriously looking at (it's cheaper than PV anyway).

from the site:

The Solar Death Ray is made of 112 mirrors mounted on a platform 4 feet
wide and 6 feet tall. Each mirror is a square roughly 3.5 inches on edge. All
these mirrors focus the sun to a single spot 5 feet, 6 inches from the mirror
platform.

Using some basic principles of Black Body Radiation, I estimate that the
Solar Death Ray can heat things up to between 500-600 degrees Celsius
(930-1100 degrees Fahrenheit) under good conditions. This assumes that
heat is not lost due to conduction and convection of the air around the
target, which is unlikely.

Click to expand...

ok I understand all the little mirrors concentrating solar power on one spot 5 feet away..but WHAT are they concentrating on? What is at the end of that 5 foot arm? And how is that something reflecting the power elsewhere? Inquiring minds want to know.

it's not really a 'ray-gun', it's focusing on one spot in the center and that thing you see is a holder for objects these kids are burning for fun. that's what this is, a way to use the sun to burn junk and take pictures of it.

here they're burning a junk cell phone:


and here are some toy soldiers in the focal point of the device...

Think magnifying glass and ants. Think antcity--

http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/games/gameson4/ant_city.html

lol! that's great lars.

I've checked this idea out as far as my limited skills will allow me to. I want a steam engine I can mount on my bike. The steam engines are fairly cheap...but the boilers are very expensive. Lindsay Publications has an article about a guy who actually did mount one on his bike. He ran it off of charcoal brickets. He got somewhere around 35 miles an hour speed and (I think) figured he would get 200 miles per gallon of water. The articles were writen years ago so you will have to go to their archives...if they have one.

hey caplock, what about mounting a small steam engine on something like this:

found it, lol.

http://www.lindsaybks.com/gallery/Jorg/index.html
http://www.lindsaybks.com/gallery/Jorg/cycle/index.html