Steampunker extraordinaire [Jake von Slatt] loves the idea of solar-powered garden lights soaking up the sun’s rays during the day and powering a LED in the evening. Commercially available solar lanterns, as [Jake], you, me, and everyone else on the planet have discovered, are widely awful and either don’t have solar panels large enough to charge a battery, or only last a year or so. [Jake]’s service was to make his own solar lanterns and in the process he came up with a great way of cutting his own solar panels.
[Jake] turned to ebay to source 100 3″ x 6″ solar panels for about $30. These are broken panels, factory rejects, but still are able to produce the 0.5 Volts they should. because these are rather large panels for a solar lantern, [Jake] needed a way to cut these panels into manageable sizes.
To cut the panels, [Jake] made a box to fit a Dremel with a best angle attachment and a port for a vacuum cleaner. There’s a sled for the panels with markings at 40, 80, 75, and 150 mm so the panels can be rapidly cut to size with a diamond cutting wheel.
After the boards are cut, [Jake] checks them out with a multimeter to be sure they’re producing the half volt they should. After that, it’s a easy matter of soldering them together and adding them to his solar lanterns.