Fans 2

I had resolved to try to “repair” one of our Caframo 747 fans by replacing a burned out motor.  I never found the exact same model, but I found one that was similar.

I received the motors and got one of them installed.  Looked like it was going to work.  The fan ran well enough on speed 1.  When switched to speed 2, it simply quit.  Nothing, zip, zilch, zero.  Wouldn’t run on speed 1 or hum or fizzle or spark. Found the 2A fuse blown.  OK…must have somehow shorted some wires when soldering everything back together.  No…hmmm….replace fuse, repeat.  Speed 1 OK.  Speed 2 not OK.  Fuse blown again.

I determined that most likely the motors that I purchased, though being very similar to the original, probably don’t have the necessary torque to run at full speed with a start current of less than 2A.  I abandoned this little experiment because if it takes more than 2A to get the motor running, God only knows how much current it takes to keep it running.

The second thing that I had resolved to do was to make my own fan.  Well, “make” is kind of misleading.  I was going to find “parts” that allowed me to assemble a yacht fan.

What I found was a fan made by a company called Noctua.  It’s a computer systems cooling fan and the mean time between failures is 150,000 hours.  Wwwhhhaaatttt???  17 years?  Are you serious?  For $25, I couldn’t pass it up.  Noctua makes a whole slew of models and the one that I went with was the NF-A14 industrialPPC-2000.  It is a 12 VDC fan that runs at 2000 rpm.  All I did was wire this puppy up to a 12 volt plug, attach it to the suction cup from the defunct Caframo and voila, a fully functioning, pretty quiet fan that actually pushes a fair amount of air.  It’s IP52 rated, which means it can handle a little water spray and dust and still work.  The current draw is 0.18 amp at full speed.  Not bad.

I just recently ordered and received the NF-A14 industrialPPC-3000 PWM.  Consider this the 2000’s big brother.  It’s 3000 RPM, but also 0.55 amp.  It was $27.  I don’t have a PWM (pulse width modulation) controller to vary it’s speed, so it will be like the 2000:  on or off, all or nothing.  (Yes, the 2000 speed can be varied by controlling the voltage input, but I didn’t feel like building a circuit for that either when it’s fine on full.)

The only thing that I really want to do is fashion a “professional” bracket so that I can attach the fans to a Panavise type suction cup.