Solar Mirror Array

I managed to find 2 rear DLP projection TVs with mirrors in the back of them. When running calculations for surface area of the mirrors needed, I came up short, these 2 extra mirrors should help out. Besides there is a bit of a learning curve for cutting glass so I've got some room to make mistakes. The mirrors were removed from their frames and cut into 6" strips that I will later cut into 6"X6" squares. The cutting process is pretty straight forward, just score the glass, support the two sides with boards, place the score line on the tables edge and press downward. The next steps will be to sand the edges of the mirror and then seal them with specifically designed outdoor mirror sealant, then cut a 1/4" hole in the center of each mirror in order to attach it to the ball mounts. 

Each frame requires 64X 1/4inch holes to be drilled into the steel. I spent half the day drawing out the positions onto the frame, part of that time I spent fixing the problem I mentioned earlier about not taking the material width into account (rookie mistake). The enemy of high speed steel drill bits is heat!! and I can tell you now that it's not easy to slowly drive a corded power drill while also spraying lubricant on the bit. After getting frustrated a couple times and just letting the drill bit spin in the steel and ruining a couple bits, I decided it was prolly worth buying a couple of cobalt bits designed for cutting hardened steel. 

We are finally ready for welding up the frames!! After cutting all the steel I decided it was probably going to be too heavy and so I looked at options to reduce weight. I believe I could replace 3 cross beams per frame quadrant for total of 12 per frame with Composite Deck Balusters. They certainly weren't cheap at $40 per box of 14 at Lowe's. It wasn't exactly a drastic reduction in weight but it will work. My step-dad attempted to weld the corners with oxy/acetylene torch but the joints would crack as the angle iron cooled so we switched over to an arc welder that worked perfectly and we didn't even need to brush the paint off the bed frames before starting the weld. In the image above you can see the completed frames with the balusters setting in place. 

After having the dimensions planned I started cutting the bed frames into 63" long pieces. With that length it will allow 1" of space between the mirrors (I forgot to take into account the thickness of the angle iron itself and therefore lost 3/4" of space between the outermost mirrors and the second outermost. I later fixed this by giving a 1/2" of space to the outermost and 3/4" to the next outermost. If anything it will just give it an interesting look in the end.) I chose to make a notch and cope joint on the corners and lap joints for all the cross beams of the frames. All of the cutting was done with an angle grinder by hand. 

Today I spent cutting apart the bed frames and removing all the rivets with an angle grinder. I would grind off one side of the rivet and then use a punch and hammer to drive it out the opposite side. Later after getting length measurements from the bed frames I sat down and drew up a plan for the frames. I found that having a 10x10 mirror arrangement allowed minimal use of steel while also keeping it structurally strong. You can see this in the image with the red,orange, and green highlighter.