Check out how you can build your own solar cooker using an old satellite dish!

The basic idea was to use a satellite dish and rivet sheet aluminum to it. This is because a satellite dish is already a paraboloid shape with a pretty exact focus. The sheet aluminum was to be cut into triangular pieces and then be drilled in 3-5 places for the rivets. They would conform to the shape of the paraboloid and not lessen the integrity of the focal point. We wanted the aluminum to be as exact as possible to ensure that it would reflect enough light to fry some potatoes. I wanted to do more than boil water with my cooker. The hot plate grill was to be constructed out of conduit and bike rims. We would flatten the ends for easier attachment to the center pipe and rims, and then bolt it all together. We decided that a gimble would be the best for this project, so that we could move the pan (or pot) in any direction necessary to get the most sunlight. This is a more difficult design, but it gives the dish more freedom and a higher heating capacity.

We began the project by testing a dish that Bart had at the Bike Library. It was slightly oblong and wasn’t concave much, so we decided to test how accurate the focus was. I taped a few pieces of mylar on it and Bart and I took it out into the sun. It turned out that the dish had a few foci because of its’ oblong shape. I had to set out to find another dish if I wanted to be able to fry food with it. The one we had just wasn’t going to cut it.

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