No-Update update, and call for volunteers

I took the weekend off and then got sick.

However, my hope is this coming weekend we can really test the newly polished panels.  I have some hope that we can actually cook a 1/3rd of a hot dog, which will be a major breakthrough---and a long time coming, if you have been following this little project.

However, let me use this "dead air" to once again call for volunteers, or participants in this project.  It's really great working with Elliot, who is a fine mathematician and engineer.  However, I would love to get someone else involved in the project.

What needs to be done?  Well, in the first place we need people to join the conversation about what we are trying to do.  Is the idea of an demonstration project really worthwhile at all?  We need your help in working this through.

However, here are some other practical things that need to be done:

1. We need someone to design the cooking chamber in such a way that it actually is convenient to cook with.
2. We need someone to design the waist-high frame so that, just like a gas-powered grill, you can work at a convenient height and have little shelves to rest your food on as you prepare it on the grill.
3. We need someone to design the counter-balance that will let us use a Dobsonian telescope mount and keep the collector aimed at the son.
4. We need someone to start designing an electronic sensing and timing module.  For example, although it is not used by most people at the park, we would really like to be able to measure:

• The wattage produced by the collector,
• The internal temperature of food,
• The temperature history of a closed container (distinct from grilling, I know.)

Additionally, I would like to find someone who can figure out a "victory condition" to get our system installed somewhere.  For example, maybe you run a retreat center or something, and you like the idea of having a solar grill.  However, you need to be able, for instance, to cook 60 burgers an hour.  Or perhaps you are concerned about rain, or vandalism.  Basically, as in the design of any project, we have to do customer research, or marketing research.

One of my personal heroes is Buckminster Fuller.  I've ready everything he ever wrote, I think, and thought deeply about his life.  I would like to accomplish a fraction as much as he did.  But he made some mistakes.  He did now work hard enough to get his ideas accepted.  I am consciously not trying to create a new technology---I am trying to make an old technology acceptable.  In this, I need your help.  So, if you have any interest, or even just a comment, please comment or send me email (read.robert at gmail dot com).

Polishing Can be a Dirty Job

Dear Fellow Inventors,

Two weekends ago Elliot and I measured unpolished aluminum panels in our cooker and found that they were far less effective than aluminum foil panels.  We decided that we had to construct fully polished and correctly cut panels, both to measure them absolutely and to compare them to foil.

We found that polishing is rather difficult work.  There are videos on YouTube that show you how to do it, but a fundamental secret is that you need to the most powerful polishing tool you can get.  We bought one for about $200, a huge, heavy, dangerously powerful Hitachi tool pictured below.  Using this, I was able to polish all 4 panels in about 6 hours.  It is, however, a dirty, boring and time-consuming job.

The final result is a mirror-like, but not quite mirror-quality, reflective surface.  We hope to test the new oven with these panels soon, and I am optimistic we will have better performance than ever before.