07-23-2020, 10:25 PM
Recently, I happened to turn off my ceiling's exhaust Delta 120mm fan, and saw just how much dust had accumulated on the leading edges of fan blades and the hub support stator vanes since i last wiped their leading edges, many moons ago. I looked back in this thread, and this fan has not been thoroughly clean since install, in late November last year. So ~8 months of accumulated build up.
I bought some dollar store Q tips the day before, and removed the fan from the ceiling.
i was very impressed, and disgusted, at the level of build up on the blades. I am used to fans in this location getting caked with oily compacted dust, as I cook at least one meal under this fan each day and make a batch of coffee each day too. I removed the C clip on the hub, and removed the impeller to find a lot of dust impacted on the circuit board too, but no white green corrosion on the wire entry solder joints the oily dust likely protecting them to some degree. The 8 months of build up, and the fact that this fan moves so much more air than the previous fan combo, and the faster speed the impeller can turn, compresses and compacts the dust to a much greater degree, and is significantly harder to remove that the silversonte fm121's blades ever were. I use 3 q tips at once, dipping them into the rubbing alcohol bottle's filled cap, which I refill as needed. One is too slow, two is better, three is perfect, 4 becomes unwieldy.
It took me at least 90 minutes and likely 80 Q tips and about 6 capfuls of rubbing alcohol to completely clean impeller and stator blades, casing and circuit board. I wanted to harden the circuit board last night but I was done with it at this point and reassembled it and reinstalled it.
Amazing how much different it sounds when clean and how much more air seems to get sucked towards it at its highest speed. I never did upgrade its wiring either. There is still significant voltage drop before the voltage bucker at high speed. It moves so much air anyway, that it would likely be a waste of 10AWG. just to allow it to feed on ~1.5 more volts.
Next time I clean this fan, I am going to weigh the impeller and stator casing, before and after, to see just how much weight in compacted dust/lint/dander is removed in such a cleaning.
Today, I took the fan back down and into workshop to further balance it using the accelerometer app on my phone. I had cooked one egg and made one batch of coffee, and the impeller would not allow the tape I use in the balancing process, to stick. Basically had to give everything a quick wipe with the Q-tips soaked in rubbing alcohol again, before the tape would stick.
Each time I balance one of these Delta fans, the weight added, a small strip of electrical tape about 3/16 wide, needs to go on the same area of the fan, according to some markings on the impeller itself left from the mold. This time i just cut the same size piece of electrical tape and put it in the expected spot and the phone showed improvement. I moved it around just to see if there was any difference from previous fans, but any other position balance got worse. Only the amount of weight added to this one spot changes among this fan to improve its balance or I can move it from the hub perimeter to the nearest fan blade instead of a larger piece of tape.
This fan did not require much weight, was pretty good to begin with. Sadly the worst balanced Delta fan was the most recent used arrival, but all are now very similar.
Not perfectly balanced like one of the 92Mm delta's seems to now be, but more than good enough.
The worst Jaro fan, balance wise, in my front window shroud for a few weeks now, has been removed and replaced with the recently arrived and hardened balanced Delta fan. While I had improved its balance greatly before returning it to service, when cranked to higher speeds it was obvious it was far from perfectly balanced with the whole door and window vibrating with it. These Jaro fans one blade seems to be out of whack with the others, slightly higher and this worst fan has 3 large pieces of tape stacked on this blade itself, and a few on the hub of the two nearest blades.
Some stinky amazing goop is drying while holding the voltage bucker to the Delta's fan body, so I will go the night without those two fans running at their minimum speed up there. I usually draw the curtain at night anyway separating the front seats from the rear anyway, so at most in the morning that area will just have some hotter stale air.
The removed 6$ 120mm Jaro fan is the worst balanced fan of the lot of 4 I bought, is much improved with the efforts I put in before returning it to service. I'm going to attach one of the few remaining Lm2596 3 amp buckers i have to it, instead of a XL4015 5 amp bucker, and gift it to an acquaintenance who lives in his van, and has No ventilation whatsoever, and little ability to recharge other than alternator while parked. He always complains about not being able to cook in his van. I doubt the fan will change this, but it could. The guy buys every single meal, and complains how broke he is.
He won't miss the extra rpm that the xl4015v bucker can deliver over the lm2596 at the same input voltage and the bad balance at high speed should also not be a factor in his usage.
Running the worse balanced Jaro fan at highest speed for long is not really required, and his single battery and its lack of adequate charging sources, would not appreciate it anyway.
I could hook him up with one of the better balanced Jaro fans, but those have my favored 5 amp XL4015 voltage buckers already adhered to them with 10 turn bourns potentiometers, and additional thick copper heatsinks, and i'd rather keep them just in case I need to employ them myself.
I bought some dollar store Q tips the day before, and removed the fan from the ceiling.
i was very impressed, and disgusted, at the level of build up on the blades. I am used to fans in this location getting caked with oily compacted dust, as I cook at least one meal under this fan each day and make a batch of coffee each day too. I removed the C clip on the hub, and removed the impeller to find a lot of dust impacted on the circuit board too, but no white green corrosion on the wire entry solder joints the oily dust likely protecting them to some degree. The 8 months of build up, and the fact that this fan moves so much more air than the previous fan combo, and the faster speed the impeller can turn, compresses and compacts the dust to a much greater degree, and is significantly harder to remove that the silversonte fm121's blades ever were. I use 3 q tips at once, dipping them into the rubbing alcohol bottle's filled cap, which I refill as needed. One is too slow, two is better, three is perfect, 4 becomes unwieldy.
It took me at least 90 minutes and likely 80 Q tips and about 6 capfuls of rubbing alcohol to completely clean impeller and stator blades, casing and circuit board. I wanted to harden the circuit board last night but I was done with it at this point and reassembled it and reinstalled it.
Amazing how much different it sounds when clean and how much more air seems to get sucked towards it at its highest speed. I never did upgrade its wiring either. There is still significant voltage drop before the voltage bucker at high speed. It moves so much air anyway, that it would likely be a waste of 10AWG. just to allow it to feed on ~1.5 more volts.
Next time I clean this fan, I am going to weigh the impeller and stator casing, before and after, to see just how much weight in compacted dust/lint/dander is removed in such a cleaning.
Today, I took the fan back down and into workshop to further balance it using the accelerometer app on my phone. I had cooked one egg and made one batch of coffee, and the impeller would not allow the tape I use in the balancing process, to stick. Basically had to give everything a quick wipe with the Q-tips soaked in rubbing alcohol again, before the tape would stick.
Each time I balance one of these Delta fans, the weight added, a small strip of electrical tape about 3/16 wide, needs to go on the same area of the fan, according to some markings on the impeller itself left from the mold. This time i just cut the same size piece of electrical tape and put it in the expected spot and the phone showed improvement. I moved it around just to see if there was any difference from previous fans, but any other position balance got worse. Only the amount of weight added to this one spot changes among this fan to improve its balance or I can move it from the hub perimeter to the nearest fan blade instead of a larger piece of tape.
This fan did not require much weight, was pretty good to begin with. Sadly the worst balanced Delta fan was the most recent used arrival, but all are now very similar.
Not perfectly balanced like one of the 92Mm delta's seems to now be, but more than good enough.
The worst Jaro fan, balance wise, in my front window shroud for a few weeks now, has been removed and replaced with the recently arrived and hardened balanced Delta fan. While I had improved its balance greatly before returning it to service, when cranked to higher speeds it was obvious it was far from perfectly balanced with the whole door and window vibrating with it. These Jaro fans one blade seems to be out of whack with the others, slightly higher and this worst fan has 3 large pieces of tape stacked on this blade itself, and a few on the hub of the two nearest blades.
Some stinky amazing goop is drying while holding the voltage bucker to the Delta's fan body, so I will go the night without those two fans running at their minimum speed up there. I usually draw the curtain at night anyway separating the front seats from the rear anyway, so at most in the morning that area will just have some hotter stale air.
The removed 6$ 120mm Jaro fan is the worst balanced fan of the lot of 4 I bought, is much improved with the efforts I put in before returning it to service. I'm going to attach one of the few remaining Lm2596 3 amp buckers i have to it, instead of a XL4015 5 amp bucker, and gift it to an acquaintenance who lives in his van, and has No ventilation whatsoever, and little ability to recharge other than alternator while parked. He always complains about not being able to cook in his van. I doubt the fan will change this, but it could. The guy buys every single meal, and complains how broke he is.
He won't miss the extra rpm that the xl4015v bucker can deliver over the lm2596 at the same input voltage and the bad balance at high speed should also not be a factor in his usage.
Running the worse balanced Jaro fan at highest speed for long is not really required, and his single battery and its lack of adequate charging sources, would not appreciate it anyway.
I could hook him up with one of the better balanced Jaro fans, but those have my favored 5 amp XL4015 voltage buckers already adhered to them with 10 turn bourns potentiometers, and additional thick copper heatsinks, and i'd rather keep them just in case I need to employ them myself.
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