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This is the stack of broken cells that
came from the first pound I sorted
through. Some here are outright broken
in half, but most just had hairline
cracks. I found cracks by gripping every
corner of the cell all at once, and lightly
twisting the entire thing back and forth.
Any cracks would make themselves known
by making a high pitched creaking,
caused by the rubbing of the adjacent
edges. Close inspection revealed what
kind of crack it was, and its severity.
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Here's a stack of some of the usable cells I
wound up with. It was about a 60% survival
rate. I probably can still use some of the
cracked cells, as a few of the cracks don't
break any of the silkscreened lines, which
doesn't interfere with output. However, I
wanted to get as many perfect cells as I
could get; I'd deal with the less-than-perfect
ones later.
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A month or two had passed now since the buying of the original pound of cells. I figured
that these things could be used in full-sized panels without nearly the trouble of the
little chips I'd been working with before. Problem was, the seller's supply was limited.
So I decided to take a risk and load up on the cells while the getting was good, even though
I wasn't sure if I could produce a good design for a panel. I went on a road trip, from
eastern Pennsylvania to the seller's location in a town 30 miles south of Boston, Massachussets.
This meant I could see the cells myself before buying, and it also meant that they would not
be subjected to the rough handling of UPS/FedEx/USPS/DHL/Whatever Shipper Inc.
Net result of this trip? 60 pounds of cells that needed to be sorted through. Talk about a time
consuming process...but the yields are still good. Each good cell is capable of about 1.5 watts.
And the best box I've sorted thus far had a survival rate of over 90%. So at this point, I had
more than enough cells to work with; it was time to draw up blueprints for a prototype panel.
Head to Page 3 for the info on the good prototype (as opposed to the lousy one on the first
page).