Hinged Solar Wings Work! (Testing and Iteration)

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Little too strong for the gas struts, but we have we have actuation. Well, my friend Kevin has just arrived.

[00:00:12]>> Good morning. It's day 10. Can't actually believe it, but I've got Kevin with me and we're about to watch a rocket launch.

[00:00:25]Now I'm back at the shop and we're going to start getting this thing put together, get documentation written, make sure that we've got everything on order that needs to be, and then just game plan to make sure we can execute on everything. So, time to get started. I'm just going to eat breakfast first.

[00:00:44]What would I put across the back? I mean, my >> Where would I put it? I think this can look good, though. That to me looks bulky. Yeah.

[00:00:54]>> Um, now if if we go to >> something like this, >> see, I think >> it looks great.

[00:01:01]>> That's what I was anticipating.

[00:01:03]>> This is heavier. This is a thicker material. You can't get it in the drilled out.

[00:01:06]>> Yeah, >> it's probably only like an extra pound or something for the same length as what we're looking at. It's been so good having a couple extra hands in the workshop for just bolting things together, lifting and moving panels around. We worked to just figure out if we can get one panel to lift with some gas struts. And turns out we can, but unfortunately the gas struts I have are too powerful. They're 200 lb of force each. That's a lot of force.

[00:01:36]Yeah. So, I've ordered some new ones.

[00:01:38]Once they arrive, I'll slap them on and see how it works then. But at least I know that I can get a panel to articulate. Uh, the other part of today was just figuring out the geometry.

[00:01:49]That's why I wanted to use this rack to test it so I can change easily where that mount point is. I'm planning on having this up here, right? So that it goes higher. Let me get the ladder. That way you can kind of hold and I can slide these up to like somewhere up here.

[00:02:05]Everyone wants to say hi.

[00:02:10]Hi.

[00:02:12]Because if you tweak the geometry of a gas strut system even just a little bit, it can completely change the force by like 100 or 200 lb. So, it's good to be able to fine-tune that without like redrilling all new holes and things like that. We did try out a two panel array to see how the gas struts would perform on that. And they were still too strong.

[00:02:33]It was better, but they were still a little too strong. And we didn't have a good mechanism to keep the panels from like sagging in the middle. Anyway, not a problem for right now. I'm going to fix that. But it was just awesome to see this thing in reality up high at like 135°. That's just that's such a crazy angle. Yeah, this is far too much force.

[00:02:55]It would just sling off. Yeah, it would take somebody out.

[00:03:04]>> Okay.

[00:03:05]>> What about up here though?

[00:03:08]>> Um, tell me what you think about that.

[00:03:10]Do you think it's just like it's too much and I should go lower or do you think it's not enough and I need to go even higher so that the sun if it's on the other side of the trailer can can hit the top panels? Let me know. I'm I'm curious what you would do if you were in my shoes. Oh, today something else exciting happened. I finally sold off the original solar powered lawn care trailer I built a while back. That's gone to a good home. My friend's going to use it on his off-grid cabin and I'll be doing some more videos with that one so that we can kind of see how it's performing over length of time.

[00:03:41]>> There it goes. Bittersweet moment, but he's going to have a fantastic time with it. Powering his offgrid cabin. So, I'm excited for him.

[00:03:48]>> I'm going to get back to work on a different method of securing the panels to the hinges and that whole rack system cuz I want to try out a couple different options before I commit fully to ordering a bunch of materials. I still have some time. So, I think it's worth it to to pursue a uh you know, optimize it a little bit. Maybe it's stronger, maybe it's lighter, maybe it's better looking. I don't know. So, you'll be seeing more of Kevin around the shop. Uh he's really good at project management, documentation, so he'll definitely be helping out with all of those things and trying to keep me on track cuz I can easily get distracted as you probably know. That is so tall. What do you think, Zelda? What do you think? And I'll see you in the morning. Good night.