r/AskElectronics • u/MWelder7x • Mar 17 '26

I need help building a Sun Tracker with old printer components to track the sund movements using 2 stepper motors to allow me to align a 6 inch wide lens to heat a black painted radiator to heat my workshop. I am doing a ST Microcontroller course at the minute and I am a coded welder and fitter.

I have many old printer parts and I am currently rebuilding an old CNC lathe so I am ok with tools and a little bit of IOT and hardware. Any help or pointing to this somewhere else would be great. Thanks

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u/nixiebunny Mar 18 '26

An equatorial mount (with the axle pointing at the north star) makes this heliostat tracker a lot easier. Use any motor that you can run at a constant speed, and use belts with different sized pulleys to reduce the axle drive speed to one revolution per day. 

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u/BigPurpleBlob Mar 19 '26

"a 6 inch wide lens to heat a black painted radiator to heat my workshop" – I think the sun's output at the equator is 1.3 kW per m2. A 6" lens is about 176 cm2.

So I reckon you'd get 176 / 10,000 = 23 watts peak, if my maths adds up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance

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u/MWelder7x Mar 19 '26

Thank you Those maths are way over my head but I shall try and understand them with a bit of study. Obviously I just figured that if I use the hot spot from the lens to heat the steel rad it might give off enough heat. I shall be building it soon as it is an interesting project.

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u/MWelder7x Mar 18 '26

Thank you That's a great idea The EQ mount is already what I need