Some of you guys may know I managed to score a nice solar panel. I've been wanting to do a solar addition to my camper for awhile but the costs were too prohibitive, until recently. I scored this panel just for the effort of picking it up off the road, reletivily undamaged. Puts out 31+- DC volts at about 400 watts.
A way to secure it to the roof of the camper was needed so I set to work figuring out a framework that would allow for adjustable tracking of the sun, in different angles and directions. Once again recycled parts came into use, an old bed frame provided the steel framework, and a recycled bagging carosel mounting bearing from a Walmart provided the pivoting base for the panel. For some reason that bed frame material is some of the hardest steel I've ever tried to drill through, I had to continously resharpen the bits I was using. So far total costs: $0.
After a couple of trial fittings on the roof of the camper the whole thing was welded up and painted with brushed on Rustoleum black, left over from some other project. I made a protective cover for the bearing from a re-useable drum lid, also a donation to the project, and re-used almost all of the aluminum framework from the original panel mounting for fabricating various brackets and stuff.
I did have to finally purchase some aluminum plate for mounting the framework to the camper, as the steel I had on hand was just too heavy, and I also purchased a small piece of channel aluminum to fab some brackets out of. I also took a chance and purchased through Ebay a solar controller that steps down the voltage and allows for charging and maintaining a bank of batteries that power the camper.