bugone
New Member
Hi all,
Last summer I added solar to our house on an easily accessed flat garage roof + a couple more on our shed. Keeping the flat roof water tight was a priority, I wanted to avoid drilling into the roof, or adding any significant weight to it. I couldn't find anything available commercially that was suitable, so, I decided to design and 3d print my own mounting mechanisms.
The mounts are all printed in PETG with thick walls, with dense infill. Midway through printing I switched from grey to clear - mostly because the grey stuff was awful to print and I figured the clear would be better for not absorbing sunlight.
The panels needed different mounts to fit the different locations I had available on the roof - but all use a common clip design - so I was able to bulk print the clips. The designs were focussed on maximum strength, without using a kg of material each, and being able to be printed without supports. The big ones took 36 hours each.
The clips and mounts are held together with a removable 8mm steel bolt. Where they're against brick they're bolted to the wall with a 30mm washer to space the load over the plastic. Where they're sitting on the membrane, they're glued (waterproof exterior glue). The shed they're screwed with a bit of sealant - because it's an old shed. Not had any water coming through though.
So far they've survived 50mph winds and the hottest day in UK history without any issues.
Last weekend I've added a Solis RAI 5G AC Coupled Inverter with a PylonTech US5000 battery. Installation was relatively straightforward - only complication being that I only had 2 spare slots in my Solar Consumer box, so had to swap out a 3 slot energy display for a 2 slot display to be able to fit the Acrel meter. That and the joys of Solis Cloud
Ground wire and battery => inverter cabling still needs a tidy when I can get hold of some crimping tools and I'm waiting for a T piece of trim for the trunking. The randomly clipped cable is a ring camera, not related to the solar.
Last summer I added solar to our house on an easily accessed flat garage roof + a couple more on our shed. Keeping the flat roof water tight was a priority, I wanted to avoid drilling into the roof, or adding any significant weight to it. I couldn't find anything available commercially that was suitable, so, I decided to design and 3d print my own mounting mechanisms.
The mounts are all printed in PETG with thick walls, with dense infill. Midway through printing I switched from grey to clear - mostly because the grey stuff was awful to print and I figured the clear would be better for not absorbing sunlight.
The panels needed different mounts to fit the different locations I had available on the roof - but all use a common clip design - so I was able to bulk print the clips. The designs were focussed on maximum strength, without using a kg of material each, and being able to be printed without supports. The big ones took 36 hours each.
The clips and mounts are held together with a removable 8mm steel bolt. Where they're against brick they're bolted to the wall with a 30mm washer to space the load over the plastic. Where they're sitting on the membrane, they're glued (waterproof exterior glue). The shed they're screwed with a bit of sealant - because it's an old shed. Not had any water coming through though.
So far they've survived 50mph winds and the hottest day in UK history without any issues.
Last weekend I've added a Solis RAI 5G AC Coupled Inverter with a PylonTech US5000 battery. Installation was relatively straightforward - only complication being that I only had 2 spare slots in my Solar Consumer box, so had to swap out a 3 slot energy display for a 2 slot display to be able to fit the Acrel meter. That and the joys of Solis Cloud
Ground wire and battery => inverter cabling still needs a tidy when I can get hold of some crimping tools and I'm waiting for a T piece of trim for the trunking. The randomly clipped cable is a ring camera, not related to the solar.
