Do-it-yourself fan from a cooler and a disk. How to make a fan with your own hands: the best homemade models How to make a powerful fan with your own hands

You are sitting at the computer, summer is outside, there is no air conditioning. The hand is already tired of endlessly fanning itself with a newspaper, and sweat drips from the forehead onto the keyboard. Familiar situation? If there is no extra money, help homemade fan. To make it, you do not need to run to the store for details. Everything you need for a blower is in the house. Don't know how to make a free fan at home? Follow the text!

What is an air cooler made of?

  • engine
  • fan blades
  • stand
  • source of power

The last point can be omitted if you do USB fan with your own hands. The computer has a voltage of 5 volts. You will need a printer cable, an old "mouse", or any unnecessary device with a USB cable.

If you are a fan of homemade products, there are probably some in the house useful trash. Otherwise, you do not need to know how to make a fan with your own hands.

Did you find an electric motor in the box with unnecessary parts? You can make a fan out of a motor from an old drive or a broken toy. Consider a few examples of how to make a mini fan from improvised materials.

Glue, cardboard, toy motor

To make a small propeller, you will need a piece of corrugated cardboard 30 × 30 cm.

We glue the support in 2-3 layers, the area is not less than two palms. We make a rack for the engine in the form of a prism 10–15 cm high. For cutting, we will use a clerical knife. We bend the design along the line.

How to make a mini fan durable and stable? Let's use a glue gun. No other adhesive will make the connection as secure.

We connect with hot glue, and as thick as possible: the design should turn out to be monolithic. The blades can be made from thinner cardboard. Suitable packaging from an accessory for a mobile phone.

This is the most critical element: the blades must be exactly the same in shape and weight. Otherwise, your propeller will vibrate during operation, and quickly fall apart.

We glue the blades (carefully) on a cardboard sleeve, observing aerodynamics. The planes should be turned 30–45 degrees in opposite directions. For simplicity of design, we assemble a USB fan with two blades. They are easier to balance, and such a propeller will cope with cooling no worse than a three-blade one.

Trial run and balancing

We make a hole in the very center of the bushing (using an awl), put it on the motor axis, and carry out a test run. Of course, before assembly, it is necessary to coordinate the angle of attack of the blades with the direction of rotation of the motor. Otherwise, the fan will blow reverse side. If vibration is present, the propeller can be easily balanced by simply crawling the blades. After making sure that the propeller spins smoothly and blows where it is required, we glue the motor onto the stand. Clay do not feel sorry!

We connect the USB cable to the power wires of the engine. Of course, it is better to do this with a soldering iron, but given the meager power, you can get by with a simple twist. The main thing is not to forget to insulate the connection with electrical tape or tape.

How to determine the power contacts of a USB wire

Any USB connector consists of 4 pins. We are not interested in the middle ones, these are information wires. The 5 volt supply is at the extreme contacts. Desoldering in the illustration:

If you reverse the polarity, nothing bad will happen. The motor will just spin in the wrong direction. How to determine the motor supply voltage? There is no need to look for markings. If the toy (where it was installed) is powered by three batteries (1.5 volts each), then the motor is 5 volts. If it is powered by two batteries, it will not work for USB power.

Compact disc

You don't know how to make an efficient CD fan? It's easier than it looks. We mark the disk into 8 sectors. An even number of blades is easier to balance if axial runout occurs.

Cut out the blades with regular scissors. You can do this work with a construction knife, or melt the sectors with a soldering iron - there is not much difference. If you inadvertently break a CD, get a new one.

The extra segments are broken out, the rest are given the aerodynamic shape of the propeller. To do this, it is enough to heat the workpiece over a candle or with the help of building hair dryer. If you make a mistake with the geometry, you can always correct the situation by reheating. This is the advantage of crafts made from a CD.

Glue a thickening in the center of the structure: any piece of plastic 5-10 mm. We drill a hole in it for landing on the motor shaft.

Where to get an electric motor

In this design, a drive from a disk drive is used. Power supply 5 volts, moderate speed. Most likely, you do not have a separate disk drive gathering dust on the shelf, it can be found in system unit. No one uses floppy disks anyway, you can safely disassemble it for spare parts.

Convenient flat motor housing allows you to assemble the fan on a flexible leg. To do this, we twist a piece of single-core copper wire into a pigtail, and wind it to the power cable with electrical tape.

A motor with a propeller is glued to a flexible stand either with hot glue or wrapped with the same electrical tape. Unless you're going to enter a fan design contest, you don't have to worry about aesthetics.

After spending 2-3 hours, you get a convenient portable "device" that can be installed anywhere without leaving your computer.

Aesthetics from a plastic bottle

If you want not only fresh air, and to make the product pleasing to the eye - we use other materials. The basic components remain the same: a motor from a child's toy and an old USB cable. By the way, you can connect such a fan to a 220 volt outlet using Charger for smartphone (with that de usb port).

The highlight of the design is the body. The propeller is made from plastic bottle. The twisted plug will serve as an axial sleeve. The rack can be made from a bunch of straws for a cocktail.

We assemble an elegant base from the second PET bottle and a CD glued from below. With free accessories, you can install a connector and a switch.

Despite the “lightness” of the design, the fan turned out to be quite stable. If necessary, you can put some weight in the case.

Using Factory Parts

We return to the presence in the home workshop of conditionally unnecessary components for the computer. For example, a cooler from a power supply or a system unit.

The electrical part of the work is reduced to a minimum. If the power supply is 5 volts, we work according to the scheme: USB cable. To supply 12 volts, you will have to look for a power supply, or a phone charger. In addition, there are "turbines" that are connected to a 220 volt network.

Actually, to make a fan out of a cooler from a computer, it is enough to fix it on some kind of stand. And if you use batteries instead of a USB cable, you can organize a flow of fresh air anywhere.

Related videos

AT southern regions very hot, nothing will stop you from getting such a "super powerful" portable fan.

You can take an 18-volt electric drill motor, an RC airplane propeller, and a laptop battery. 4 volts is best option and not too noisy when working. At 12 volts the device will be heavy duty, loud and will "rattle" (due to vibration) on the table.

Required Components
Motor and batteries are the most expensive parts. You can buy a cheap used drill with a broken battery and just use the motor. Used laptop batteries usually have 6 cells and cannot work if one cell is dead. You can buy these batteries for next to nothing and take working cells to make powerful battery(http://www.instructables.com/id/Free-lithium-Ion-Battery-Pack).

Required Parts:

  • electric motor direct current electric drills;
  • laptop battery;
  • plastic fan blades;
  • 1/8" plywood;
  • plywood and 2x1" engine mounts;
  • switch (in our case 2P2T switch for 2 speeds); - electric cable.

Checking the engine and batteries
Secure the fan motor to something solid.
You can try applying different voltages to it to adjust the desired wind strength. In our case, for a 4-volt battery, a current of 1.5A turned out to be ideal. An 8-volt battery for good power corresponds to a current of 3A.
Use 4 batteries, 4 in parallel at 4V and 2 sets of 2 batteries in parallel at 8V. So at low power they will last about 5 hours, and for high power for approximately 1.5 hours.
Connect the 2P2T wires with a switch to switch between series and parallel circuit.


Creating an air duct and mounting the engine
First, glue the 2x1” bars together to form a T. Measure the pieces to give the propeller about half an inch of clearance on each side.
After gluing the bars, round off their edges to give them a streamlined look.
To mount the engine, cut 2 triangles out of wood. Soak a piece of 1/8" plywood in water, then bend it and let it dry. You can cut 3 3.5" strips of wood grain perpendicular to the piece to make it easier to bend. Use the T-stacks as a base and glue 3 pieces of plywood over it, overlapping the joints and leaving one joint. Then glue the 3 ends of the T to the duct plywood. It is important to also try on the motor mount to make sure there is sufficient clearance.
Then cut two pieces of 1/4" plywood about 4.5 x 1.5 to form the duct support at the top. Glue these supports to the duct and to the "T".





Glue a piece of wood to the "T" to stop the motor from sliding backwards as the motor pushes the air forward and the motor itself then pushes back.
You can use 2 zip ties to secure the motor from below.

Battery layout
Use a 6-cell laptop battery to power the fan. For a bicycle fan in motion, you need a 12V fan. As a desktop fan, 4V or 8V is more than enough.


Wires to the engine
Solder two 14 gauge wires to the motor. Insulate with tape. To prevent the wires from falling into the blades, secure them to the fan support.

Testing
Feed the motor in parallel with 2 sets of 3 combined cells. The voltage should be around 11.8V. Even the multimeter should read 3.38A. The multimeter has some resistance, so the current is actually around 4A. More than 47 watts. This is already very powerful. small fan. At 16V, this fan can already push the bike decently.

Installation of protection
The propeller rotates too fast, so you need to install protection.
Using pliers, cut out a circle from protective grid a large fan so that its radius is larger than the duct by about half an inch. Wrap the wire around the duct. Then hot glue the front and back protection.


Switch installation
Install a switch. Now the fan can easily turn on and off. You can apply 2T2P switch, and get two rotation speeds.

Working in the summer at the computer, or just on vacation, sometimes you want a slight breeze, a “local” coolness. The airflow of an office air conditioner doesn't create the sweet comfort of a gentle, directed blow that a mini fan provides. It is very easy to make such a device with your own hands.

How to make a "personal breeze"

The most famous invention in this field since ancient times is folding fans. They were made from colored paper and ostrich feathers, from painted silk and carved bamboo sticks. Such a device has only one drawback: to obtain such a desired coolness, you need to hold it in your hand, which is not always convenient. It is ridiculous to imagine a manager or an economist working at a computer and fanning himself with a fan.

Therefore, let's return to our topic and figure out how to provide yourself with a pleasant breath in the heat. To make a mini-fan with your own hands, you need to solve the following few tasks:

  1. What will be the rotating propeller, from what material.
  2. Where can I get a motor.
  3. From what power source will the device work.
  4. Is it possible to completely do without an engine.

How to make a mini fan?

Let's start with the simplest: making blades. If you take a square from an ordinary sheet of paper, cut it diagonally, leaving about a centimeter intact in the center, you get a blank for a turntable. Then 4 sharp corners are bent to the middle and alternately strung on a nail, having previously stuck it into the center of the workpiece. That's all! Too bad it's just a baby spinner.

For functional and useful design take 2 CDs or DVDs. From one you get the blades, from the second - a stand for the device.

The circle that has served its purpose is cut into several equal parts(from edge to center). To make the process easier, you can hold the plastic for a few seconds over the fire. Each of the resulting sectors of the softened workpiece is slightly rotated around its axis to form a propeller.

What other components are needed in order to assemble a convenient mini fan? Here is the list:

  • Cork from a wine bottle.
  • Cardboard or plastic straw for attaching the engine to the stand.
  • Small motor.
  • Two wires.
  • USB cable or batteries.
  • Good glue, scissors, a strong large nail or awl.

Where to get a micromotor

It happens that in the home bins are stored appliances that no one has been using for a long time. It can be hair dryers or mixers, blenders and children's cars. Even a motor from an old tape recorder, player or some other mechanism may come in handy. We disassemble the unnecessary device and remove the engine, after disconnecting all the wires.

Since we make a mini fan, the motor is from the old washing machine, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner or other large unit will not work due to its size and noise.

Continuation of the assembly of the device

A hole is made in the cork and placed on the axis of the selected engine. To fix the shaft, it is pre-coated with glue. Then, a propeller cut from the disk is fixed with glue on the part of the axis sticking out of the plug hole.

Next smeared with glue paper tube in diameter and put it on the plane of the second disk. Then the motor is installed on top and its contacts are connected to the leads from the USB cable. If the propeller spins in the opposite direction when plugged into the computer port, you need to disconnect the contacts, swap them and solder them again.

By connecting a battery to such a device, you can use it anywhere in the room, in the car, near the pool.

Wind turbine without engine

How to make a mini fan at home and do without a motor? A very popular option is to create a device using small neodymium magnets.

They take the cooler from the computer and separate 4 transformer coils from its case. Instead of copper windings you need to install and fix the same number of pieces of the magnet. Usually they buy neodymium in the form of semi-arcs or remove them from an unusable hard drive. The magnets are placed exactly in the places where the transformer windings were removed, that is, along the perimeter of the cooler frame.

As soon as the last piece is fixed, the mini-fan will begin its rotation. Using permanent magnet technology, it is possible to assemble almost perpetual motion machine. To stop it, one of the pieces of neodymium that replaced the coil is removed from the circuit.

The field of the magnets must be equal in strength to the field of the disconnected coils, otherwise the propeller will not be able to rotate in a constant stable mode. The poles are arranged diagonally, alternating plus and minus.

What to do if none of the above methods are suitable, if there is not enough time or details to homemade fan? In this case, you will have to use the usual factory product.

Summer has come, which means heat, heat and an eternal lack of coolness. But this problem is fixable, and pretty easy. You only need a few details and some free time to make your life easier with your own hands, fill it with light coolness, which you will certainly get by making a USB fan at home. Of course, you can go and buy a fan in the store, but how nice it will be to sit near the same computer, and a light breeze will blow on you from the USB fan you created. And a thing created by one's own hands always pleases not only the eye, but also develops selfishness.

We offer you to watch a homemade video - usb fan:

Tools for usb fan:
- Regular CD (not necessarily new);
- A tube of silicone glue is empty;
- Wooden block;
- Mini disk;
- USB cable;
- Motor;
- Holder;
- Adapter;
- Silicone glue gun.


Three holes must be made in the tube, one in the lid, and two on the sides. Holes are easy to make using a regular nail, which must first be heated.

AT wooden block it is also necessary to make a slot or recess. This can be done easily with sandpaper.

The mini disk easily turns into a propeller. To do this, it must be drawn into uniform blades, then heated with a clerical knife and cut along pre-drawn lines. And after that, we heat the base of each blade with a lighter and with the help of our hands we bend each blade a little to make a propeller.

We take the motor, holder and adapter from a non-working CD drive.

Now let's start assembling the USB fan.

Heat up the glue gun. Lubricate the holder along the axis silicone adhesive from a glue gun. The propeller must be firmly planted on this glue. Press on all sides. Then, on the other side of the holder, we drip a drop of glue and glue the adapter. We are waiting for the glue to dry well. This usually only takes a couple of minutes.


Now we take a tube of silicone glue, remove the lid and grease the inside with silicone glue. And inside we insert the motor so that the part that we will connect sticks out of the hole that we originally made.


Then we put the USB cable into the side hole of the glue tube and connect the ends of the wires to the motor.

It is necessary to pour silicone glue into the recess in the wooden bar, and put the wire from the USB cable tightly there, and glue the tube with the motor inside to the base of the bar. And on the other side of the bar, glue the CD on silicone glue.

Now the propeller must be mounted on the side of the adapter glued to it on the sharp edge of the motor, which sticks out of the hole in the glue tube.

And finally, our USB fan can be plugged in and get that long-awaited coolness.

If there is no air conditioner or even a domestic fan at home, and the summer heat does not allow you to live normally, you can turn on your ingenuity and use old computer parts. Any craftsman can assemble a fan from a cooler, fortunately, building materials are always at hand, and in every home or office you can fish out something useful from computer trash.

Materials for useful crafts

To make this simple DIY device, you will need the following materials and tools:

  • soldering iron and related accessories (solder, rosin);
  • a piece of USB cable of any length;
  • knife, wire cutters, electrical tape;
  • myself computer cooler(one or more).

The fan will be connected via USB to the computer. This makes it possible to dispense with the use of a fan without third-party power supplies.

There are coolers different sizes. Their design includes wires with which you can adjust the number of revolutions depending on the temperature of the CPU. In our case, these wires are not needed - we will only work with a black (minus) and red (plus) wire, which are supplied with voltage from motherboard computer. The remaining strands can be cut off with wire cutters so that they do not interfere with assembly. We need to do this carefully so as not to damage the red and black wires we need.

Operating procedure:

  1. Take any unnecessary USB cable you need to connect the cooler to it. Perhaps it will be formally non-working, but here we need to find wires of the same colors as the cooler. The remaining wires are removed with wire cutters for ease of use.
  2. Remove the outer insulation from the USB cable with a sharp clerical knife: measure a distance of about 3-4 cm from the end of the wire and attach the knife to the wire.
  3. Then, in a circular motion, without pressing, circle the wire in a circle.
  4. Now pull on the insulation - it should easily move away and expose the bundle of wires.

If you apply too much pressure, cutting through the insulation may damage the insulation of the wires under the outer layer of plastic that you cut. Then you have to bite off the entire braid and repeat the procedure due to the fact that a small violation of the integrity of the insulation usually leads to a short circuit. Now that you have prepared the wires with your own hands, you can proceed to the next step.

Soldering and insulating wires

Take the wires of the cooler and the USB cable, loosen about 10 mm of insulation and twist them so that the red wire connects to red and the black wire to black. Next, you will need a soldering iron to tin the twisted ends and thereby give strength to the connection. To do this, you need to do this:

  • heat the soldering iron and prepare a piece of rosin or flux;
  • attach twisted wires to rosin or soak in flux;
  • melt a piece of solder or tin on the tip of the soldering iron;
  • run the tip over the twisted wires if they are fluxed, or attach them to a piece of rosin and apply a little pressure with a hot tip.

This process is called tinning wires or do-it-yourself processing of contact points with red-hot tin. Rosin is needed so that the tin can better bond to the surface of the bare USB wire.

Now you need to isolate the conductors so that a short circuit does not occur when connected to the computer's USB connector. So, unwind a piece of electrical tape about 3-5 cm long and skip between soldered wires. Wind one wire so that the tin-plated contact is securely insulated and no pieces of bare conductor are visible through the layers of electrical tape. Next, you need to cut off another piece of electrical tape and do the same with the second wire.

Stand

It's time to think about the fan stand you just made. You will need a piece of copper or aluminum wire. Take a piece of wire and bend it in the shape of the letter "P". Thread the ends through the bottom two bolt holes on the cooler. Bend the wire and thread the ends through the top holes. Now you can adjust the fan tilt level.

If there are many fans

You can make a whole battery of fans with your own hands. To assemble a fan from four or more coolers, you need to know how to properly connect them to a power source (computer USB connector), as well as how to connect these fans to each other.

Connecting cables

From school course In physics, we know that there are two types of connections - series and parallel. With the first type of connection, you need to take the red (positive) wire from the USB cable and connect it to the red wire of the first cooler, and connect the black wire of the first cooler to the red wire of the second cooler, and so on. The last one, black, is connected to a residential USB cable of the same color.

Parallel connection is much simpler: all the red wires are assembled in one twist, just like the black ones. The red wires connect to the red wire of the USB cable, and the black wires, respectively, to the black one. For greater contact reliability, it is necessary to make tinning and wrap the contact points with electrical tape, as described above.

Registration

Now you need to think about the design of the fan unit that you made with your own hands. In order to collect all the coolers together, you need to decide what shape the design will be in the form of. You may find it easier to fold them in a square or just line them up.

In any case, for these purposes you will need glue gun, which is usually used for the manufacture of do-it-yourself products in circles of technical creativity or floristry. You can use it to glue the ribs of the coolers in the right places and let it cool. But if you don't have a gun and only have wire and electrical tape, then you can fasten the coolers through the bolt holes with wire, and wrap the edges with black electrical tape.

So, you managed to make sure that making a simple blowing of the room with your own hands is simple and accessible even to a person who is far from technical creativity. Such simple solutions are able to help out in a situation where you need to provide coolness in the room in calm weather, and the usual fan has either broken down or is simply not in the house. In these cases, simple ingenuity comes to the rescue.