Jeff Wittrock
01-04-2014, 7:18 PM
A little tired of working on big projects, so decided to just make something for fun. My sone had a DC motor laying around that I had been thinking of making into a small desk fan and decided to finally do it. As things progressed, I think I got a little carried away for a desk fan, but it was fun to make.
I wanted to make something with a kind of retro aviation look to it.
The body is just a piece of schedule 40 pipe. I made the end plates, knurled knobs, and propeller hub from mild steel plate that I had laying around. I flame blued the steel parts except the body which I just didn't have enough heat to blue.
The base, uprights and blades are red oak. The uprights were laminated to produce the curve.
I designed a little PWM speed controller that mounts inside the steal tube along with the motor. The PWM controller gives me continuous speed adjustment from ~30RPM to maximum (I don't know quite what max RPM is, but it moves pretty good air). So why would anyone want to run a fan at 30 RPM? Well it doesn't move any air to speak of at that speed, but it looks pretty cool. The power supply is just a 12V wall wart that plugs into a connector on the back plate.
As you can see, there is no blade guard, which adds a little to the excitement of using it, but at 12W max power, it doesn't do to much damage even if I am careless.
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I wanted to make something with a kind of retro aviation look to it.
The body is just a piece of schedule 40 pipe. I made the end plates, knurled knobs, and propeller hub from mild steel plate that I had laying around. I flame blued the steel parts except the body which I just didn't have enough heat to blue.
The base, uprights and blades are red oak. The uprights were laminated to produce the curve.
I designed a little PWM speed controller that mounts inside the steal tube along with the motor. The PWM controller gives me continuous speed adjustment from ~30RPM to maximum (I don't know quite what max RPM is, but it moves pretty good air). So why would anyone want to run a fan at 30 RPM? Well it doesn't move any air to speak of at that speed, but it looks pretty cool. The power supply is just a 12V wall wart that plugs into a connector on the back plate.
As you can see, there is no blade guard, which adds a little to the excitement of using it, but at 12W max power, it doesn't do to much damage even if I am careless.
279005279006279007279008