After seeing so many posts on trackers and tracking lately, I decided to revisit the trash tracker.
If you missed it, the original post is
here... as you can see, the concept is pretty darn simple but it needed a little more... oomph.
Back then I messed about with some gearing.
I took an old Makita drill,
removed it's motor and put a gear box from some toy(I think it might have been the “rat-a-tat-tat†noise maker part from a gun) in it's place.
The tiny power from the panels wasn't enough to run the gear box's original motor so I replaced it.
If I remember correctly, this set up was good for about 2 pounds of force before the gear box's built in protection would start slipping.
I then made a gear box from “scratchâ€. I used the gears from an audio cassette or CD/DVD eject, I don't remember which, then added gears from a printer.
I had to cut my own “all thread†because I didn't have any that fit the pitch of the gears on hand.
This set up was good up to about 7 pounds of force before I started busting teeth off the final drive gear.
The project was forgotten for a long while.
I got a treadmill that was going to be tossed. I fixed that but couldn't find a buyer so I scrapped the thing and decided to use it's incline actuator for the tracker.
First thing was to remove the AC motor.
I tried my second gear box with the actuator...
but it just didn't have enough rpm so I made a new gear box.
This one used the ink pump from, I believe, an Epson printer. Once again I had to replace it's motor with one that could operate from the small power from the small panels and ended up using a motor from an audio cassette drive.
I don't have this set up as a tracker yet, I've only done testing. So far, using the same panels used in the original post, this set up was able to lift about 20 pounds in maybe 45 minutes... IIRC.
