Doug DeHaven Recently added to the collection is an old 1970’s Weather Measure Corp, Solar radiation recorder ( Pyranograph )
How it works,
“This solar radiation measuring instrument was designed by M Robitzsch in Germany in about 1915. At first the instrument worked in the principle of two bimetallic rings placed one above the other. By the year 1929, the mechanical design had been changed to an arrangement of two horizontal bimetallic strips, placed side by side, and further developments took place.
The instrument now had a receiving surface, under the glass dome, constisting of two parallel rectangular white-coated strips of bimetal between which is placed a similar strip of bimetal coated black. At one end the three strips are connected to a common rod. While the other ends of the white strips are connected to the frame of the instrument, the other end of the black strip is connected to a simple lever mechanism and its movements are recorded on a chart placed on a normal clock drum.
These movements are proportional to the temperature difference between the strips, and thus radiation intensity.” —https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co55098/bimetallic-actinograph-m-o-mark-iii-by-casella-1955-actinograph
how it looked when I got it.
Next step was to fully dismantle it and prep it for refinishing.
Here are all the parts,
Everything was pulled, marked, bagged and tagged for restoration. Next main part is to sand blast the chassis and preop for paint.
What a surprise! Looks like solid brass lip was brazed to a galvanized steel box. the base plate was aluminum. There is every type of metal in this thing!
Some photos from the process, of going through and polishing every single component and cleaning everything. Now on to paint!
I loved the brass so much I decided to keep it exposed and masked it off, so I could just paint the silver parts white. I went with 8 coats of a durable white enamel.
Here is the assembly process of the all the finished parts.
The small screws where an adventure, the top metal plate was missing one of the mounts screws about 3mm in size, I was able to find some replacements, and used the black screw for the center mount and it looks original! Absolutely love how this turned out, I would bet this is the cleanest one out there!
Here is a video showing the finished project.
Here is some documentation I found on it.
I would love to find an original graph paper drum for it! If you have and leads let me know, if not I will work on printing one of my own from an image I found online.
Update! I found an old blurry image of what the drum graph looked like, so upscaled it and scaled it to print on legal paper, and made one! Love how it completes the look.
Speaking of the drum, it was time to test out the rebuilt clock mech that spins it! Wow is all I can say!
And I was curious if everything was working, so here is a time lapse, showing the final output gear ( top ) spinning!
What a project! I am excited to now get it calibrated and tested!
