Monday, August 18, 2008

Forming Acrylic Mirror

I think all this information exists in previous entries, but it's nice to have all my knowledge, however little that is, dumped into one spot.

Heat forming acrylic (aka plexiglass) is pretty simple. Just get the temperature up around 220°F and it's pliable. I put it into the kitchen oven. Don't rely on the oven temperature, though, use something with a probe to tell if you've got the real temp. For one thing, you can put the probe right down where the mirror is, not just floating around in the air inside the oven. Also, when I was researching this I found some warnings about fumes. I think that's only if you overheat because I never smelled or sensed anything. Maybe I've silently shortened my life by 20 years.

I tried a couple different methods of using a form. The first couple tries were "open-faced," meaning I laid the acrylic on top of something and counted on the weight of the material itself to cause it to sag into the form. It isn't really heavy enough for that, so I moved to a two-part form. It takes longer to heat that way because of the mass of the form itself. Another disadvantage of this method is that you have to be able to force the mirror into shape before you heat it, which means no 2D curves (like a bowl, if you see what I mean). Actually, you probably could do that by putting the acrylic sheet between the halves of the form and then weighing the top part down. Like the open-faced method, but with extra weight. Drill a hole in the form so the temp probe can sit right on the acrylic.

The above should give pretty nicely formed acrylic sheet even in complex shapes. Unfortunately it's totally unworkable for acrylic mirror. I'm not sure if it's the acrylic or the mirror backing, but the heat stresses the material such that you don't get a smooth reflection anymore. For a while I thought it was imperfections in the form, but various experiments ruled that out. (You can get bumps and ridges from a rough form, though, which can be eliminated by loosening the form a little or by lining the form with some kind of bumper material. I used a sliced up silicone baking sheet.)

Also: I never got far enough to have this problem, but eventually you'll run out of space in the oven. Multi-part forms? Some other heating method?

The curve I wanted wasn't 2D, so how about cold forming (aka "bending")? I have not yet determined the point at which the acrylic cracks or deforms. I haven't even determined if there's some point short of complete destruction where the mirror breaks down, a la the heat deformation. It seems to be pretty sturdy and stable, but then I'm not making tiny radius curves. If you imagine bending a yard stick, that's about what it seems like, or maybe a little stiffer. Put another way: I have a square of acrylic mirror that's 2'x2' bent into a curve about the same as the side of a 55 gallon drum and I haven't see any problems with it. (This is the 1/8" thick stuff. There's also a 1/4" thick stuff that I've never tried.)

The trick with cold forming is that you have to hold it in place somehow. Even drilling a hole through the acrylic will deform it, although only in the immediate area surrounding the hole. I started with a sandwich method--cutting two parts and then cramming the mirror between. That works, but you have to have some method of securing the bread of the sandwich that doesn't involve drilling through the mirror. Also, you cover up some portion of the mirror surface.

Of course, you can drill through the mirror, but in that case why even have the top piece of bread? That's what I switched to: Put the mirror on an open-faced form and drill a few well-placed holes to secure it down. Don't overtighten, because the force isn't distributed over a wide area like with the sandwich, so the local area can get quite deformed. Maybe a reason to have the top piece of bread after all. Or maybe just some rubber washers or silicone baking sheet for padding.

You can't get too fancy with this method, but for a single, relatively gentle curve it works great.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Massively Unparalyzed

  • I think I'm out of the summer diet doldrums. I suddenly realized that if I stayed focused, I could meet my original goal by Christmas. I have to lose 1 lb every 10 days, which seems pretty reasonable. That's just ~350 calories/day. This is the same rate my overall history has been up til now, so as long as I keep, or *cough* get back on, that average I should be good. (I say "original goal" because after I meet that goal I think I'm going to go an additional 10 lbs. But I'll have to see how things stand when I get there.)

  • I needed to sense sunlight vs shadow and I'd read somewhere you can do that using an LED somehow. I got that working but they aren't made for that and so it didn't meet even the low standards of this application. Some photoresistors, even at RadioShack's redonk prices, were only $3 and work so much better.

  • Also needed, or at least wanted to evaluate, pulleys. McMaster-Carr's site is so awesome, why can't my local hardware store (or even Lowe's) have a website like that? Or McMaster-Carr have an outlet near me.

    That said, my local hardware store fits an amazing depth and breadth of stuff into their store. I don't think there's been a single thing I couldn't find there that I was able to find at Lowe's, in the fields the LHS covers. (i.e. they don't sell appliances at all, so obviously they have a smaller selection of dishwashers.) And the reverse is not true--I've found things at the LHS that Lowe's didn't have. And they manage to fit all this stuff into an area that's probably literally no larger than the area devoted to just cash registers at Lowe's. Like, how is it possible that my LHS has a 9 ft2 caribiners + pulleys display right next to the pumps I need (though are still more than I want to pay)?

    Oh and the staff actually know where things are and how to use them, unlike at Lowe's.

    I guess what I'm saying is, local hardware store:Lowe's::small European country:US. It may be a little more expensive, but the service and selection are great.


  • How can I completely waterproof a wooden structure? How about sunproofing? Like, is it going to get baked and shrunken on one side? Probably somebody already knows all this stuff. No wonder people just build with metal. Oh wait, how about PVC? Does that degrade in the sun? Oh and it's hollow, so you can put wires in there....HMMMMM

  • I was going to have an entry in here talking about all the things I suddenly (as of this morning!) have to do, but I can't even spend time enumerating them!

Monday, August 4, 2008

Paralyzed by Obstacles (i.e. whining)

(throughout this entry substitute "can't find at a reasonable price" for "can't find" and "free or under $40" for "reasonable price")

The next stage in the parabolic solar collector thing is to have the fluid circulating. I want to have it run through the collector, then down a hose into a tub of water and then back. Measuring the heating rate of the water will give me a better value for the power.

For this, I clearly need a pump. And can I find a pump? Clearly not. For simplicity, I think I want one that has garden hose fittings on both ends. Sump pumps usually have that on one end, but the other end doesn't have any fitting at all. (Maybe I could disassemble one to find out, but I can't find any to do that with either.) I bought a drill pump for like $6 but it was too wimpy to be useful.

Not that it has to be that powerful. According to the back of my envelope, I only need about 60 gph in the worst case. Typical sump pump numbers are 10x that. I could probably do it myself by putting a squeezable diaphragm inline and stomping on it. What a lot of work, though.

But I have feelers out on craigslist and freecycle, so in the meantime how about something else? I know, I can try to make a much larger stirling. What'll I use for the piston? Oooh, brill idea: a cut off bike pump!

Take 2: And can I find a pump? Clearly not.

Maybe I'm just too cheap. Or maybe I haven't figured out the right workaround. Or maybe I'm asking for too much. All of these questions (plus a couple other things I'm stopped on but aren't worth describing) has my brain in vapor lock. I am unable to move on anything.