how to balance the blade of a box fan that is shaking too much. Ironically, this involves shaking the fan some more! Using a box fan here, but the same procedure could be used on an oscillating fan.
Just did this ... worked great. I made one change to the procedure. Seeing how you had to adjust the weight and position of the screw a few times, I decided to use a small bit of tape to position a screw into place before drilling any holes, then used the shake-shake method to see if it was the right weight and positioned properly. Careful ... don't turn the fan on with a screw taped to the blade ... duh! I made one screw-size adjustment, did the shake-shake again to be sure, then drilled and installed the screw. It turned out great! Thanks Matthais!
@@DaveWirth ive been doing this for years. You have to like a colder than normal house in the morning to keep it cool by dinner time. And where I live, in the height of summer this doesn't work as night times will get as low as maybe 70f. But my house is an open layout single floor with a basement, so 1 window fan is enough for everything except 1 bedrooms.
So would I, because during a childhood spent without AC we did this and I don’t think it did very much at all. Time for the Raspberry Pi and a breadboard loaded with sensors!
When it's colder outside than inside and then you open the windows, so that it becomes cool on the inside. To help that effect you can use fans and the fact that warm air rises to the top. So you open a window downstairs and upstairs and either blow cool in downstairs or warm air out upstairs. When it becomes warmer outside than it's indoors, you close the windows.
just make a draft, one window a fan blowing out and one across the house blowing in, and everything else closed up. until it's too hot outside of course. and you don't want to fight the breeze if there is one
It's not as powerful as I thought it would be, but it works very well. ru-vid.comUgkxGjG43--gYqIoT4Xkur2PqCrtbKwTv2h There are three options to circulate air, and best of all a remote control for us lazy people. Installation was a breeze (no pun intended). It actually took longer to open the box then it did putting the side extenders on and sitting it in the window opening. It's a perfect alternative when you want airflow, but not the AC. Just might order another one for a different room. UPDATE: Bought another one like I said. They work great. Why not have two...
Ho ly shiet, so tru, I was like, my stupid crappy amazon fan vibrates so much the feet are rattling and I literally can't sleep at night, this is exactly what it needed.
Why the laughing? I didn’t see any jokes being made in the video. Looks a little bit like you’re thinking he is a joke or something in a disrespectful way.
@@FromThe3PointLine There was no joke, child. Laughing at someone who is explaining something is rude. If people are rude then i say something about it.
@@steveyknoxville "So would it be SUCKING the hot air out or BLOWING the hot air out? 🙄" I think it would be sucking the hot air toward the exit, then blowing the hot air out. So, i'll go with blowing, but I don't think it really matters obviously lol.
Good idea, not easy to fine tune the screw weight but you did it. For drone propellers, we use a Prop Balancer and we sand the back of heavier blade or we add transparent tape on the tip of the lighter blade.
One thing to be careful of is drawing air in through gas appliances with a pilot light and chimney. We blew it the pilot light on the hot water heater. We closed all the window but one and reduced the opening to just a crack, to see how much air would rush in. Ten minutes later I started to smell gas.
Just what the Dr. ordered for me. My stand up fan fell and broke a blade. I epoxied same with some fibre glass reinforcement, now it's out of balance and wants to walk across the shop. It is not that I am too cheap to buy a new one (sorta) but I prefer ugly stuff in the shop so no one else wants it. Enjoyed the vid, cheers Matthias
That plastic they make those fan blades out of does not glue well at all. I had one that fell out of a window and snapped a blade off, and I used epoxy and carbon fiber reinforcement to glue it back together. Even with roughing up the surface, the epoxy just never sticks to it long term.
This is the reason why i like this channel so much: a clever trick to have a analogue vibration amplifier, and some kind of jog mode to eliminate friction. Love it tnx matthias
I had a fan that would vibrate itself all over the floor, and violently shake. I thought it was unrepairable and I was going to have to buy a new one, but you saved me! Extremely simple, clever, and effective! 🎉🙏
matthias u r a Genius! thank u, i learned so much! id' love it if ull explain more about ur hose air flow.. its a great topic that most urban apartments know nothing about and can change their life
My old box fan's motor burned out and I bought a new one, which has a terribly out-of-balance blade unit. After watching this video and doing some calculations, I took the good blade out of the dead unit and installed it in the new unit. Worked like a charm. ;)
Matthias, I just wanna clarify, stainless steel can a do have Carbon on their composition. Thats exactly why it is an steel and not just iron. Maybe what you encourage is that ferritic stainless does not make any spark or that another element on it's composition has that efect, im not sure. But i wanted to clarify that, for example 4140 (the most used alloy for heavy equipment shafting) has 0.430% of Carbon, which is a lot. I love your videos, Cheers!
To add to this, cutlery and tool stainless steels often have a lot of carbon. To add some examples: VG10 (1%), D2 (1.5%) , M390 (1.9%, almost cast iron levels! yet very corrosion resistant).
Oh, I read somewhere that the development of stainless steel first required figuring out how to get the carbon out, cause the carbon interfered with the alloy.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 Steel is iron and carbon, so it wouldn't make sense to try to make stainless steel by removing carbon. You could just start with iron and add chromium and nickel and skip carbon completely. But then I guess you'd have stainless iron? I don't even know if that's a thing.
Well, actually, on the process of making steel Carbon is used (as a molecule of I think CO, but not sure) to break the FeO molecules, so that it forms CO, CO2 and other gases that flow towards the top of invesment in wich the iron oxide is melted. So, as a result of that process the steel, by defect, has a lot of Carbon which has to be taken out to get a known alloy thats useful. For example, cast iron and cast steel has the most amount of Carbon. Its a really interesting process the iron smelting. A lot of trouble goes into making common steel. At least here in Uruguay, we have that process as part of our formation as Mechanical engeneers. Cheers!
When balancing rc airplane props i would sand the bottom side, not the airfoil, of the heavy blade. And if sanding can't remove enough material then add a piece of clear tape to the light blade, also the bottom of the blade
@@DullPoints he would be consumed entirely by RC. But which way would he go? Rc models? Nitro? Electric? Multirotors and highly programmable flight controllers? Acrobatics? Lol
Great video! I did the same thing, sucking air out of the house when I lived in NM, it was always cool at night. I opened the bedroom windows and put a fan in the window on the other side of the house.
Smart guy, a lot of people think that fan=cold air, but you're using negative pressure to keep noise out of the bedroom only when it's cool enough outside to cool down the inside. It's nice to know that people like you exist.
Thanks for sharing this trick. I know you have used screws as counterweights to balance your bandsaw wheels, but I hadn't thought of applying the same technique to general rotary equipment. However, with the recent trend of videos on this channel, I was hoping just a bit for a rasPi and a couple servos mounted to the center of the fan to balance it automatically.
You can also do this by super gluing a washer to the fan. I have taped them to the fan in the past to find the right position, then super glue it in the spot that works best.
Damn!!! Wish I ran across this vid 5 to 7 years ago. I have a similar fan form factor with one blade almost completely broken off that I dumpster dove for. I figured free fan for garage. If I could balance it I would have a good tool. I did exactly the same thing with multiple screws in the blade. I did it totally by trial and error and intuition. Ended up with 6 screws in the blade. Got it balanced and have ben using all this time. I wish I knew about your technique of finding heavy spot though. That would have saved time and screws. Thanx.
I live down south in the state of Georgia. Box fans in windows was a big part of my life growing up! It was part of my life last summer when the AC unit broke and it made better sense to replace it than repair it. We had fans in the back of the house blowing in and fans in the front blowing out. It did a good job of making the house mostly comfortable, but I wouldn't want to deal with them during pollen season!
lol, I can hardly believe it… I bought a box fan and immediately thought about balancing that crap. Now a month later, I thought I’d do it today, after work, and you post this. Well now I’m definitely gonna do that
Cheap fans arnt ballanced they are just made good enough, it doesnt happen when it's on the ground, they could have done lots of things like make it faster lighter or better air thrust they can only choose a few things to focus on to keep it cheap or RND goes up
I followed your instructions with the exception of substitute the screw with a bolt and nut as @UCmHWM5i3AbfChco8t2BH_2Q had suggested in the comments. This made the distance from the center less important as you can add washers as needed. Balancing was fast and accurate and now the fan runs like a dream, many thanks Matthias!
I did this with two cheap fans a couple of years ago. I was so proud when they ran smoothly. First thing I tried was taping a coin to the fan to balance it
I recently tried to balance a Wind Machine box type fan. I was able to take the blade off. looked at it closely and found the blades were out of alignment no way to fix that. Matthias glad you got yours close to balanced.
Thanks for this. I made a frame to fit a sliding window with a panel to block the top half and box fan on the bottom in one of the windows in our master bedroom. I built it in case one of the family caught covid then they could have a slightly negative pressure room and bath. The fan vibrates a bit much so I'll make use of this technique.
In most cases I balanced stuff the random way, with duck tape and washers, and watched if it get worse or better. But this shaking method to cancel the friction is very clever.
Nice, a long time ago when sleeping and got upset at the fan noise vibration I took some string and fed some into the shaft of the fan and it self balanced
I my opinion none of your videos are unawesome... they are just to few! Thanks for keeping making interesting and actually educationally (intended or not) videos!
I jam a box fan in the screen door, held down by the sliding glass. I made a foam surround that goes around it to seal it and give maximum negative pressure. On high speed, the airflow will slam inner doors closed when I open a window. Works great. Can cool the entire upstairs in about 10 minutes in the evening.
Adding a small cardboard cutout to close the fan in and avoid recycling air back around the sides will improve airflow massively. I made the same solution at our old place, and the cardboard did the trick.
I bought one at Walmart and was surprised to see that it was made in the USA. Unfortunately, it shakes like crazy, even on low. It’s like they don’t even test them or something. I’m going to try this trick when I have some free time.
Circulating air thru the house is going to use a lot less electrical energy than an AC; and it has the bonus effect of cleaner air from outside. Of coarse, this only works when you live in a rural low populated area with less pollution. In most cases, a window AC unit is always better than circulating air costing a tiny bit more energy.
Or humid environments. When the humidity gets above 60% everything in the house starts to get damp and wood floors expand. The fans won't remove the humidity
Right out of the box, My Lasko box fan shook worse than ELVIS. Your method worked and I couldn't believe I had to use a screw and 3 small nuts to get it to stop! THANKS because my method of trying to balance the blade on a pencil DID NOT WORK.
I like your idea to shake the fan to cancel out the bearing friction. I might use this method myself on a window fan that I have (Air King 9155). But it's only a little out of balance so it might not be worth the effort.
They sell high velocity fans as well, they have a circular fan blade encased in a plastic housing with a slit for an outlet, you can move an all the air in your house out in a matter of minutes. Terrific fans for pulling air in our out of a room in case you're willing to buy one like that. Also you can set those fans on their low settings and they're much quieter than a box fan while drawing multiple times as much air out. I have one set up in my shed (I live in Florida), when I go out there in the summer to work it'll easily be 110 to 120 in there, but if I turn the fan on half an hour before I go in it'll draw it down to 90 degrees.
