The End ???????????
You wanted to know where the heat sinks went? THIS is where the heat sinks went!
These heat sink pictures are some of my favorites. SO nice and orderly. Just LOOK at that brushed aluminum!
Heat sink city!
Badier is laying tile??? In a box? With a cardboard floor???? WHAT IS GOING ON???
Badier is thinking about the most amazing tile in the world...
Well folks… your wait is over… here is what we put our blood, sweat, and tears (in decending order of volume) into all this time….
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Our baby. Standing proud in the shop sans gearboxes and stage.
“What the hell?”
I can hear you say it now… Well let me explain: This device is a convention-ready representation of the product that Badier’s company is going to bring to market.
“… What the hell?”
Yeah, continuing on. It’s a solar collector. You see there are these new solar elements (think tiny solar panels) that are REALLY good at collecting energy but they’re also REALLY EXPENSIVE. One of the cool things about these elements is that they will turn an (almost) set percentage of any light energy that falls on them into electrical energy. So if you put it out in the sun you’ll get some juice; put it out in sun that’s twice as intense, you’ll get almost twice the juice.
Those clear “tiles” are actually Fresnel lenses that take all the solar energy that falls on them and condenses it down onto a TINY piece of the really-expensive-yet-awesome solar panel. This way you get to harness all the light energy that falls on that huge thing we’ve made and channel it into a few square inches of your awesome solar element. If it goes off as planned this device can be mass manufactured to be 20% cheaper (watt-for-watt) than traditional solar panels. Talk about cool!
So now you know. Following are a few more shots of us screwing around with our new creation and transporting it to San Diego for the Solar Power International 08 show.
We are ze proud papa!
If you stand back it magnifies the active element. Note: there are 30 in there. 6 of them make up the image you see in this shot...
Oh we're feeling goooooooood.
Damn Badier, lookin manly! I look like a squirrel with an overinflated ego... You have to understand that we haven't slept for over 24 hours at this point and are higher than kites on the adrenaline rush that comes with finishing off a large project.
We both hurt our backs putting this thing up. We are old men...
And now… the end of our long journey… we have to take the damn thing apart and bring it to San Diego…
Boxin' her up.... You wondered what that box in my living room was for (you and ALL my neighbors) well this is it! (Notice my sexy break-away walls that are ROCK solid after being assembled... mmmmm design)
The entire project ready to ship!
Driving 2 hours on 0 hours of sleep? San Diego here we come!!
As we pulled up we were surrounded by no fewer than six men on forklifts. They are the Forkmasters. You don't mess with them... It was like watching bees. Really big bees dancing with forklifts...
Our packages make it to the convention hall. Thank you Forkmasters!
Unpacking in the convention hall.
Our baby makes her debut at the solar show!
... shop is cleaned and we
Done! And still friends too! Notice it is dark out. This is the same day I previously mentioned that we hadn't slept before... We did catch an hour or two in the van. Only half an hour with the driver asleep...
Oh not only are we done we did such a good job we made it into CNET’s slide show! (The have 17 images from the entire SD Convention Center and our model was one of them! Hell yeah!)
And so it ends. It was a hell of a ride and some of the more extreme engineering I’ve done in a LONG time.
And after it’s all said and done I have but one thing to say:
Anyone else’s company need frackin’ amazing work done on insane time scheduals and is willing to pay through the nose for it? I know some guys who are really good…
<end autofellation>
PS. Unlike Fry in Futurama I finished my caffeine regimin (40 cups of coffee 24 diet cokes) and failed to run around the room in a blur fixing the ills of the world… I feel somehow cheated… Maybe next time if I hit 50 cups….
Filed under: Amazing, Engineering, Sleep Deprivation on October 17th, 2008
That is made of win, my friends. Good job. Also, that picture of it in the convention hall is perfect — you didn’t even have to photoshop in the lens-flare by the look of it. Don’t you just love it when the laws of physics concede that you’ve done a good job?
~KMarsh
Hey, those photos are really impressive–and from all those little pieces. You were always good at taking things apart–all those alarm clocks on the floor in bits when you were three. I’m glad to see you’ve learned how to put things together.
Congratulations to you and Badier.
Love,
Mom
Wow, that is so awesome that I… uh, never mind.
Seriously, though. AWESOME! And it looks so good on the convention floor! Wow, dudes. Just wow.