Tom you inspired me and my friend Tom to make the Devil (after destroying the angel). We were so close! I thought our sound would be better but I suppose not so your congratulations remains.
@@avanmaterwell you had 100 RPM to spare over the dragon wing, so just a tad more aggressive pitch and you'd easily have more CFM with that efficient blade geometry.
That blower sounds like an air raid siren because it doesnt have enough throughput going around the outside. I think making the outer shell like a a snail profile, kind of like on a turbo, you'd both cut the sound and also drastically increase airflow.
If it could leave all sides open it would be like my Remington beard trimmer with vacuum. Yes, I modified the fan... MB6850 is a newer version than mine.
what's even more crazy is from his testing we know the devil and the dragon wing can beat the A12 buy another 2% if resin printed meaning both would be over 530 rpm or over 70cfm
I rally like how the smoke test visually predicts the tunnel performance in most cases. The devil had a beautiful, almost straight, vortex for it's exhaust.
Unfortunately for the A12x25 blower designer, if he had ever seen how an air raid siren is constructed, he pretty much was making half of an air raid siren. He just needed another disk with a different number of blades to make a full on air raid siren lol.
@@Nevir202 Remember, this is a centrifugal fan. It accepts air into the middle, and blows it out the sides. The same air that comes out will get sucked straight back in, resulting in very little benefit. This is why they have to mask off so much of centrifugal fans.
@@tsm688 The whole point of a centrifugal fan if to install it in a place where intake air and discharge can't mix. The reason they leave such a small outlet in most centrifugal fans, is that they are more concerned with pressure than max airflow.
The blower fan’s exhaust has square edges parallel to the fins. That’s what’s causing the air raid sound. If the exhaust was a diamond shaped where there were no parallel edges from the perspective of the fins it might be quieter.
The blower model needs a horn intake to keep all that air from getting blown sideways. And a larger output for sure. Or if we're getting crazy, a deeper fan blade (and thus larger outlet) with a spacer assembly to make the enclosure deeper as well.
The big problem was that it was intended for places that _don't_ have that room, and required the low profile. Larger / better shaped exhaust would help, it seems to be trying to suck in more air than it could exhaust.
Andy also made the Angel, the fan in 4th place currently. Is that the same Andy? If so and that's the same Tom then it looks like the 2 best fans teamed up.
I think it could be really interesting to add weight to the list of metrics on your spreadsheet. There may be some correlation to mass vs. performance.
@@ghomerhust-- I doubt mass will change top RPM much at all. Spin up time sure, but once the fan it up to speed, the only losses are drag and friction, neither of which are tied to mass. Larger fans have more mass though, and a larger surface area will have more drag, so there might be some correlation.
the Blower has such an air raid siren-esque sound due to the top edge of the stator being so sharp from the inside. Plenty of sirens have a "knife-edge" on the ports to better shop the air, and that's exactly what it happening here.
The "Air Raid" sound is the edge of the nearly straight blade passing the edge of the blower housing output. See 4:23 for what I'm referring to. Changing the blade profile or the upper edge of the blower output (as situated in the picture) should change the sound profile.
I can't get enough of these fan showdowns! I'd love to see you extract a motor from a hard drive, make a frame for it to fit into and slap some fans on it!
The A12 got beaten by *ahem*.. The Devil and the Dragon Wing, while right behind him is.. Angel. I think I will just submit a brick and call it The Hellbringer 😂
The Blower housing is the cause of the air raid siren issue. Two ways to improve it. First, to improve airflow the area beyond the blades needs to gradually increase in the direction you’re trying to move it. Secondly, to prevent the air raid siren noise the exhaust port can not be squared off like that. This noise is caused by each blade slapping that wide flat edge with a air pressure front. The pneumatic equivalent to putting a playing card in the spokes of your bicycle.
I think the Huracan fan produced a fair amount of backwash in the smoke test because of the rimward edges of the blades' profile. They look like they'd push air backwards more than a little bit. Looks sick, but just a little bit of revision needed to make it even more solid.
Have you looked into using PETG as support interface for PLA prints? You don't need to use it for the entire support structure - just the support interface layers at the top of it. It allows you to reduce the top support distance to 0 for smoother bottoms on overhangs, and the support remove very easily (PLA and PETG don't bond to each other).
run the blower without the cover/ also print it mirrored the concept with centrifugal blowers is to force the air mass to spin so the mass of the air forces it outwards so a lot the the designs look backwards from what your mind expect it needs to look like. but really just chop off the first 3-4mm that has the sharp leading edge that creates most the noise and leave the cover off so it can toss the air without building pressure and causing a tall on the leading edge making the noise even worse
I think for the next season of the fan showdown it may be a good idea to do noise normalized testing, rather than testing noise and airflow separately. Generally it would be interesting to see how each fan performs at different noise levels and when pushing air through different levels of restriction, though that would very quickly turn into a lot of tests.
6:35 not only is Tom in 1st with the Dragon Wing, but there's an Andy in 4th with the Angel... and then in 2nd is Andy AND Tom.... they hold the top 3 spots! (ignoring the a12x25)
Upon reviewing the video, I observed that the 'Huracán Hurricane' airflow appeared overly turbulent. However, turbulent air is known for its efficient heat extraction. To enhance measurements, consider adding a loaded radiator to monitor CPU and expelled air temperatures for a more comprehensive analysis.
The blower needs a bigger shroud, there is nowhere for the air to go around it except one small corner. Look up centrifugal supercharger, thats what the housing need to look like internally.
It's funny how the Blower was outperformed in what it tried to do (expelling air sideways) by the Huracan Hurricane. And the HH seems to just be a fan that has an unintentional design flaw that somehow keeps it from expelling air "correctly". And as an added bonus, the HH doesn't sound like an air raid siren. So the way how I would improve the Blower is to actually start from the HH and amplify the feature that makes it expel the air in this unusual way.
If there were just a little more room in the scroll, the noise issue from the blower could probably be improved. This could be done by undercutting the radial part of the mixed flow impeller, so that the inducer is still there but air can move around the outside of the blower inside the scroll. The blower is backing up lots of air pressure at the outside edge of its blades, which is seen in the smoke test by additional smoke being flung out radially on the intake side.
Thomas made acceleron, Tom made dragon wing and andy+tom made devil, I think all Tom's and Thomas's should unite to make the ultimate pc fan company to rival Noctua
the hurican hurricane (probably exagerates it due to the changes) shows exactly why id bet the rims are shaped like that on the actual Hurican, it spreads air in a wide arc over what would be a brake rotor behind it cooling it more effeciently. now if this was intentional by Lambo is something i cant say for sure but it surely is interesting
The blower has too much backpressure, and no way to evacuate it. Either shorten the height of the fan itself, or create a lobe that is heighest at outlet tapering away.
And one thing that was interesting about the (non-)"blower" is that because of its shape you had to face the a12's motor frame in the opposite direction, meaning that he had to give the blades the opposite pitch, also meaning that you had to put it on the opposite side of the smoke-test barrier, and also meaning that you had to do the air-tunnel test in vacuum mode instead of blower mode, ironically, which might have given us more of an apples-to-oranges comparison. Right?
As soon as I saw the smoke pattern for the Devil I expected it to put up some big numbers. It produced a very smooth looking profile. Adding some "cheater" shrouding and it may well set some records.
3:29 His impeller design looks at leas "ok', but his scroll-shell appears to have EQUAL clearance all the way around the perimeter of the impeller. The scroll-cage fan (blower) design relies on the outer edge of the housing having a SPIRAL contour, rather than circular, in order to function efficiently and quietly (allows roughly equal outflow from the impeller around all points of the perimeter).
I'd like to see a dual fan season of fan showdown. 1 fan is cool but 2 is cooler and I think it opens the door for some awesome design. Maybe some push pull, push push or even pull pull?
The blower's impeller needs to be closed off(the blades should curl up on the side where they suck). Currently it just vents out because the inlet is much bigger then the expected outlet. If the blades curl up, they will create a barrier for the air, so the pressure will have to vent out the other side.
Blower needs a turbocharger style diffuser and or scroll to converter the very angular velocity of the air to lower veloctiy higher pressure, as well as not sharply opening as blades pass by
You did the blower dirty on the radiator flow test. It should be mounted at a 90° angle so it blows through the radiator, not trying to suck through as you have there!
Kind of looks like the Blower needs more of an opening to exhaust the air. It would be interesting to see it with various size openings (maybe make one with a slider so you don't need to make several?).
Okay so I don't have the design skills to practically design it, but if you were to take that exit for the blower, close it by like 35-40-ish% then have an opening pointing the opposite direction it would create enhanced suction pulling more air with it., now for the "air raid siren" sound I'm not sure cause that design lends itself to how air raid sirens/tornado sirens tend to work.
I think the noctua blower would do a lot better if it just straight-up copied the design of a typical blower fan. Make a backplate that covers the edges of the blades to reduce backflow on the intake side. Then making the housing a snail shape (which typical blowers do have, just not very pronounced) and probably more fins overall would work. Then the trailing edge of the blade needs to follow the leading edge, giving the fins a bit of rake/angle relative to a line from the center of the fan hub. Also there needs to be a gap in the middle with no blades for the air to enter cleanly. The air raid siren sound is caused by the edge of the fan blades being too close to the housing, so the hard edge between the blade and the housing at the output causes the siren effect. Speaking of the output/exhaust, it needs to be larger. Typical larger blower fans have it extend halfway across or even slightly further.
The blower was really interesting to see! I've been hoping for noctua to make some, to be used as part cooling fans on 3d printers. Maybe I should give a try at making a smaller one, could be fun.
If the variance at the top of the table is under 0.4% and I can see what Dragon Wing was printed... in detail without any burrs against Devil. So it would be a good idea to print Dragon Wing and Devil, at the same exact settings, and give it another test.
The Hurrican's performance should tell you why. I think even though sportscar hubs are meant to look cool they also need to be aerodynamic. It seems like even with the slanted air passages it's pushing more air along it's face than it's actively sucking through. Kinda like the dimpled golf ball fan it slipped though the air more than it pushed.
Huh you know what, the wheel for the Mercedes McLaren SLR was actually a fan to help cool the brakes. I wonder if its any good after seeing a modified wheel to be a fan.
