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Please be careful...this is not only an eye hazard but (obviously) a fire hazard. I have a long way to go on polishing my six foot dish and it will already start a 3" thick green branch on fire almost instantly. I wouldn't like to find out what it can do to the human body the hard way. There are a few tricks to aligning solar collectors of all sorts and you can get help with that at the North Carolina Solar Center.
Sandia Labs has assistance for solar thermal design and does testing at it's New Mexico site.
A couple of other good solar links are Solstice Crest, and my neighbors at Alternative Energy Engineering who have given me insight and inspiration from time to time.
The International Solar Energy Society is worth checking out as is the Department of Energy's division of inventions and innovations. Look for "solar thermal".
In a similar vein the Department of Energy Technology Information Network is a source of information on technology and government assistance programs for implementing it. I have had intermittent luck with the doe sites so if they don't work now they may tomorrow. The National Renewable Energy Laboratories, NREL runs a high flux solar furnace in Golden Colorado and has information, pix and links also. I also found a few nice pages with pictures: A Swiss page including pictures of their solar furnace, a facility at Odeillo France including large pictures of their furnace (where some "métallurgie solaire" experiments have been performed) and Another Sandia page with pictures of their New Mexico ( U.S.) solar furnaces. On a larger scale you can check out this picture of a central receiver solar installation intended for generating electricity but which can achieve temperatures in a range suitable for melting metals.If you are an optical engineer you might like to check out the software at Breault Research.
Or you can search for yourself using words I havn't
If you can shed any light on the subject of solar metallurgy (especially concerning practical applications) please email me...
