broken fan

[badger]

I have a nearly-new stand up fan (the kind you use in the summer to move air about) that has stopped working. I think it's the motor thingy inside. It seems like such a waste to throw out something that looks great, but it's pointless for me to hang onto it as it doesn't work.

For those who have some mechanical know-how, do you know if this is fixable? I'm pretty sure it's the motor as it gradually stopped working until one day it just wouldn't crank anymore.

[Pax]

When you turn it on does it just hum? If you use a pencil to start the blade moving, does it continue to move or just slow to a stop?

[badger]

it used to hum and then I would give it a manual kick-start, but it doesn't do either now. Dead??

[Pax]

it used to hum and then I would give it a manual kick-start, but it doesn't do either now. Dead??

Most likely. A handy friend explained it to me once, a lot of newer fans have minimal "winding" so the motors fry much sooner than the older/better wound motors.

[badger]

it really is a shame, because outwardly it's essentially new. I guess I have to take it to the recycling depot. Thanks for the info!

[Pax]

it really is a shame, because outwardly it's essentially new. I guess I have to take it to the recycling depot. Thanks for the info!

It is a shame, I took a mostly new fan to a repair shop and the fella told me it would cost more than I paid for the fan to fix it, so he doesn't bother.

[Tri Girl]

that's disappointing.
I had a similar thing happen with my toaster oven- the heating element broke, but the repair guy said it's cheaper to buy a new one than to fix it. I even said "that's OK, just fix it anyway" and he said he wouldn't- not worth his trouble.

Not to get on my soapbox (but here I go stepping up anyway), but this irritates me about our "disposable" society. Something is made of poor quality, it breaks, and you have to throw it away and buy a new one. I'd rather spend more, have it last longer, and even pay to repair it than to always have the only option to be to throw it away. Grrr... (climbing down, now).

[Kitsune06]

How much did it cost? I mean... if you wanted to conduct some sort of science experiment, I'm sure there are directions online on how to wind a relatively simple AC motor.

(this comes with the disclaimer that you'd have to be very careful, yadda yadda, don't burn or electrocute yourself, don't chew on cables or touch two things at once and complete any circuits or ground live wires. ) FWIW, it probably wouldn't be that much of a stretch to get an insulated wire of a slightly larger gauge than was originally in the fan and solder the connections, but the bind you'd run into there is if it was originally engineered to use a stupidly fine gauge so the proper gauge would never fit. Tiny wires reap the benefit of a greater surface area for better conduction but if the resistance is too high, they overheat very very easily, and heat lowers the conduction of a surface anyway. :/ Kind of a bummer, but yeah, if they can churn out a few hundred thousand and assume that when A breaks you'll buy B, they still profit more by making an inferior (but cheaper) product. Shame.

Anyway, I was looking around and found some directions that seem plausible. My original disclaimer still stands though. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and if you fail, well, it was sort of broken already. Can't kill what's already dead, as I like to say.

http://www.ehow.com/how_7656697_do-r...an-motors.html
http://www.wikihow.com/Rewind-an-Electric-Motor


Before going too deeply into this, you might want to figure out if it's an AC or DC application. My bet is it's a DC motor with a transformer somewhere inside it, so you can plug it into your regular AC outlet and it uses DC so you don't notice the (albeit really fast) oscillation between currents. HTH!

[OakLeaf]

What Kit said, or if you don't feel comfortable trying it yourself, I'm pretty sure an alternator place would do it for you. That, or maybe a local appliance repair place.

I just went through the same thing with a microwave. We DID get the magnetron replaced - sure we could've had a new unit for the same price, but why? This way we kept a little bit of money local, the labor costs anyway, and a lot of microwave out of the landfill. I think the repair guy thought I was crazy, but eventually I was able to talk him into taking my money.

[badger]

that's disappointing.
Not to get on my soapbox (but here I go stepping up anyway), but this irritates me about our "disposable" society. Something is made of poor quality, it breaks, and you have to throw it away and buy a new one. I'd rather spend more, have it last longer, and even pay to repair it than to always have the only option to be to throw it away. Grrr... (climbing down, now).

I totally agree with you! Everything is made to be broken these days so that consumers keep buying products. When my 18 year old washing machine needed replacing (still worked but was very inefficient), I was told that machines these days will only last about 10 year.

It's fine and dandy for the manufacturers, but the amount of garbage that this results in sounds just too reckless IMHO. Sure, some bits can be recycled, but I think people by and large just take them to the dump and be done with it.

I'm not going to tinker with it, I'm so mechanically disinclined all I'll end up doing is making a mess. So, I'll just take it to the recyling depot and hope that it will be dismantled and disposed of properly.

[Kitsune06]

I can sympathize, though, with the shop folks not wanting to take your money. When I was working in the vintage motorcycle shop, we saw a LOT of people bring in old bikes they'd bought on Craigslist or some such for $400-$1000 and want 'fixed' so they ran, or ran right.

Unfortunately, those bikes will never be affordable unless the owner can either DIY the repair of have a friend help with it, if only because the parts themselves cost more (sometimes radically more) than the bike itself was worth.

Take my $450 CL motorcycle. All well and good 'til I had to put $160 into carb kits. Labor on something like that would have put the carb fix over $300. ...then there's the head job it needed, the regulator/rectifier that was toast, the alternator I had rewound....

All told, over 4 years of working on it, maybe I could have bought a new bike instead of resurrecting a 30 year old Japanese bike... but worth is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

[Xrayted]

Btw, Kit did most of the work herself on that cycle. She learned how to do all kinds of stuff, even stuff the local Honda techs can't. It was worth it to us to revive an old bike. It runs great and if anything goes wrong, she most likely knows how to fix it herself now. There are things worth saving and others that will forever be just throw away.

As far as the fan... Are there things you can recycle on it yourself? Like the fan cage... can you use that for your veggies to climb on or put over a hanging bird feeder like an umbrella to keep the squirrels from sliding down and eating from the feeder? The plastic housing of the fan... could it be used as a little flower pot that already has drainage holes? The pole, can you use it in a sliding glass door as a thief deterrent? The wiring cord, can you use it to make a small indoor clothes drying rack? The internal copper wire in the motor... maybe you can unwind it and use it for a kids project? You ever see those where people make little statues of stuff out of wire and bolts and stuff? It's all in the eye of the beholder. Get creative and reuse what you can. Now, it's no longer a throw away, it has many new lives.

[Kitsune06]

^ X keeps me sane and keeps my 'creativity' in check sometimes. Probably best (or at least safest) to listen to her.

[badger]

you know, I will admit I've never thought to recycle the bits for myself. I would love to be zero-waste, but I'm a long ways from that.

And good for you for restoring an old motorcycle! As much as I would love to be a grease monkey, I probably don't have the patience to follow through with it all.

Thanks for all the ideas and comments!