In this section, we are continuing the design of our solar yard light. Okay, so we're back in fusion 360. And we have our speed model here of our solar yard light. Now we're going to get into the details of designing this light. First of all, we can ask ourselves if any of these components are actual size of those, we can say that our battery is the proper size because I, I checked it, this LED, we scaled to the proper size of an LED. And so we have a good CAD model for that in here.

And then we made of the solar cell that we found on Amazon, we made that exactly two sides. So these three components we can actually use in our final CAD model, and then these two components we're going to have to find solutions for when we think about this in general as to where the components would go. We talked about how the solar cell would probably be at the top of this product. The solar cell is Going to, of course be exposed to the sun. And so we want to have maximum exposure to the sun and so we would put it at the top, two wires are going to run from the solar cell, they'll go to the battery, and then the battery will power the LED. So this order looks good.

I would say that we can leave the solar cell positioned, of course, sideways like this for maximum surface areas to the sun. The battery we could flip 90 degrees like we originally had it, but I think we can start with it on its side like this. This might be good for space efficiency, and the led the wires are going to be pointing up that looks pretty good. So we might have something like this for a configuration the electronics are going to need to be closed in in some way. This is going to be outside. And so the battery should ideally of course have some kind of an enclosure or protection from rain.

Other elements, and so we're going to need some kind of an enclosure around the battery, the light is going to have to be wired into that enclosure. All of these components are going to have to be attached somehow. So we can start to visualize our design in this way. Now we have to find a place to start to get into the details. It's not always easy getting started. We really just in a lot of ways have to choose somewhere to start designing so that we can visualize where we're going from here.

I would say one of the first things we could do would be to figure out this enclosure. Create a new part, assemble new component. Let's just call this top for now. It's got a sketch, create sketch. Click on this plane let's create a circular shape. Give it a dimension of say, three, or we could go with 3.25.

Let's stop the sketch. And let's go to create extrude and extrude that, let's say, one eighth of an inch, I can actually type one slash eight and hit OK. Let's enable the assembly. And now let's place our battery on this. Let's actually use some joints to constrain the battery to some degree to this platform. So let's go to assemble joint. See if we have a good spot that we can use on the battery to constrain it to this place here.

I could possibly use this. Okay, so we used a planter joint and that looks okay, you can see that the battery split up which is in the animation here, but that's okay because we know that it's a rigid component. And then let's offset in the Y, a certain distance so that the battery is flat on the surface. Looks like it's should be the z direction Actually, let's put this back to zero. And I'm not sure what that height should be if it should be point two, five, I can go and measure this distance Measure, I should be able to measure this diameter point 551. And so now I can edit this last planar joint.

And let's just go a point 551 divided by two and that should put the battery right on top of this place. Now when I try and move it, they both move because nothing is grounded right now. So let's go ahead and click on the top, you can see that it activates in the tree over here. let's right click top in the tree and choose ground. So now the plate should be grounded. When I click on it, I can't move it and let's see if I can move the battery around that I can.

And so now when I move the battery around, it's just going to move on the surface and it's not moving up off of the surface. at all no matter what I do. So that looks good. So now what we could do is we could create a bit of a custom battery holder. Let's go ahead and do that. I'm going to put the battery to the side, because I might want to put other components on this plate.

And what I'm envisioning right now is that I create some kind of a holder for the battery. So this plate will secure the battery on above it. I'm going to have the solar cell I'm going to create some kind of a piece that We'll hold the solar cell and then that piece can also be the top and extend down to meet with this piece, a separate piece might be the light cover here, and then a separate another separate piece could be the actual ground stake. So let's just continue on and see if we can make some parts here. Let's secure this battery or if we activate the top let's go into this face sketch, create sketch. Let's draw something that would secure the battery on and I'm just going to draw a shape on this face and then we'll extrude it up.

I'm going to use the line command. And let's just go in detail here. Zoom in really far. Draw some shapes that will hold the battery in. I'm just gonna draw half of it actually, because what we can do is we can mirror this sketch. So far I've just created a fully enclosed sketch.

If I go to stop sketch, and let's say that I wanted to extrude this and I hit OK, you can see what this is going to look like. So we just need to do that on the front and the back. So let's delete that extrude that we just performed and go back into our sketch and finish it. I'm gonna pull this over a little bit, I'm going to create a centerline here just for reference, I'm going to go right off the center of the battery. And I'm going to right click that line and choose normal construction when you choose construction on the line, it is not a part of the sketch. It's simply just a reference line that you can dimension things off of.

And so we'll use that as a reference sketch here. So let's secure this centerline of the battery a certain distance from the center of the circle, just hit enter to select what it was at. And, let's choose you see, you can see I can drag this down. Let's choose this line and this center line I selected both of them by holding CTRL. Let's choose colinear and it pulled my sketch down so that now I have a central line of the battery. So that now I have a central line of the battery and my sketch is directly connected to that.

So this looks okay, let's go ahead and mirror these components over this line if I go to sketch and choose mirror first of all it asks me which objects to mirror. Let's go ahead and try a window select over all of these. If I hold CTRL and D select these two because I don't want those. And then I choose mirror line and I want to mirror over that and I hit okay. I have a centerline in here which I Don't want so I'm going to click on that and click Delete. Now let's stop the sketch and choose the light bulb to make it visible.

And we'll go to create extrude. And let's see, looks like it might still have a center line in there, but that's okay. I know that they're both meeting. So then this would be to enclosed shapes that I'm extruding or that is okay. And let's extrude it. Let's say that looks good to hold the battery and we can do something a bit more uniform than point 379.

Say what is point four look like that looks okay. And let's see what that looks like if we activate the whole assembly. move this out of the way So now we have this custom shape that we're gonna have to make but it will enclose the battery. And then what I can do is I could put metal terminals here for the battery to connect. And now let's do the same thing on the back to secure it in. And the back should be easier because there's not any kind of a, a detailed shape it should just be a U shape.

So let's activate this top. I'm going to click on the face. Go to sketch, create sketch. This time, I'll choose my line and let's go something like this. To zoom in and go to there. Let's again just go to the center line.

Okay, so we've created that. Let's make the thickness on these two equal. So right now the thickness is point oh five there. Let's also make this point oh five. And now we need to pull this in a bit. And now let's mirror these components across.

So let's go to create Mirror, and Windows, select those components. Oops, let's cancel. We go to that error just happened because I went to create mirror instead of sketch mirror. So sketch mirror because we're mirroring sketch components, drag a window across them, deactivate that we can. And I'm going to mirror across this line and hit OK. See if I can zoom in here and find this line. It's not necessary.

Let's stop the sketch. And now I want to extrude the same distance up and let's go to create extrude and choose Choose that and that and I think we said, point four for a height. So now we have the battery