Throughout the long winter, we look forward to pleasant summer days, and with the onset of hot weather, for some reason we begin to dream of coolness. How delightfully a light breeze created by a small homemade fan will help restore strength and relieve fatigue. Plus, making it is incredibly fun, right?
We invite you to familiarize yourself with step by step instructions on assembling the simplest effective devices from literally waste raw materials. The article presented to your attention describes in detail how to make a fan with your own hands and what a home craftsman will need for this.
At your disposal is a detailed description of the manufacture of options, the effects of which have been tested in practice. You can make such devices yourself without having any experience at all. For a complete understanding of the information, attached step by step photos and video instructions.
The simplest fan can be made from CD discs. It can be used, for example, for local impact on a user who spends a long time at the computer.
Let's prepare the raw materials to complete the work:
- CD discs – 2 pcs.;
- low-power motor;
- wine bottle stopper;
- cable with USB plug;
- a tube or rectangle made of thick cardboard;
- soldering iron;
- candle or lighter, hot glue;
- pencil, ruler, squared paper.
For our purposes, you can use a motor from an old toy, for example, from a toy car. A toilet paper roll slightly decorated with decorative finishing paper can be used as a cardboard tube.
The main advantage of this model is that almost any do-it-yourselfer will have all the materials needed for its manufacture.
The assembly process of the mini fan is quite simple.
Let's take one of the CDs and use a marker to divide its surface into eight identical sections. The easiest way to do this is to use a sheet of checkered paper.
Draw a cross on it from a horizontal and vertical line. We divide each of the four resulting right angles in half. Using cells, this is not difficult to do.
Using a very simple method using a checkered piece of paper, we can achieve the perfect layout of the disk into eight equal sectors
We place a disk on our drawing so that the intersecting lines are in the very center of its hole. Alternately applying a ruler to the lines diverging from the center, we make markings on the disk. This way the sections will be the same.
To divide the disk into blades, follow the marking lines with a soldering iron from the transparent part to the edge.
You can also use scissors for cutting, but there is a danger that the workpiece will crack during the process. If you don’t have a soldering iron, you need to use a knife preheated on the stove. When working with a soldering iron, deposited plastic is formed along the edges of the cut, which can be easily removed with a knife.
Cutting a disk with a soldering iron is the most effective method, in which the workpiece will not crack or deform, and the remnants of the deposited plastic can be easily removed with a knife
We heat the surface of the disk over the flame of a burning candle so that the blades can be slightly expanded. If you don't have a candle, a lighter or a soldering iron will do.
The central part of the disk should be heated, and all blades should be turned in the same direction. A wine cork is placed in the hole of the disc. To fix it better, you need to pre-treat the edges of the hole with hot glue.
The USB cable must be connected to the motor. If we don’t guess the direction of rotation of the propeller, we can swap the reins, that is, change the polarity.
The motor needs to be glued to a cardboard tube, and the tube itself to a second CD, which will act as the base of the stand.
When the plug is installed in the hole, the stand from the second CD and cardboard tube, as well as the connecting device are already assembled, it is very important to correctly fit the propeller onto the motor shaft
Now the propeller needs to be “planted” on the rod of the future fan. We will try to make sure that it is installed strictly in the center. You can secure it in this position using hot glue.
After all work is completed, the fan is ready for use.
Although the construction of this device will not take you much time, the result of the work performed will undoubtedly please you
How to make a similar, but slightly more complex design by including a regulator in the circuit, look at the video posted at the end of this article.
Do you find these homemade instructions complicated? Then you may be interested in information about and rules for choosing them in order to purchase a ready-made device offered by household appliance manufacturers.
Fan based on a plastic bottle
What our craftsmen don’t do from plastic bottles! The time has come to say that they also make a very good fan. It may not ventilate your entire room, but it will definitely help those who have to work at a computer.
We offer two options for creating such a fan model.
Option #1 – hard plastic model
To complete the work we will need:
- plastic bottle with a capacity of 1.5 liters;
- a motor from an old toy;
- small switch;
- Duracell battery;
- marker;
- scissors;
- candle;
- hammer and nail;
- foam;
- hot glue gun.
So, let's take the ordinary one plastic bottle 1.5 liters with plug. At the level of the label line, cut off its upper part. This is exactly what we need to make the propeller. We divide the surface of the plastic blank into six parts.
We try to mark it out so that we get equal sectors: the quality of operation of the future device depends on this.
We cut the workpiece along the markings almost to the neck. We bend the blades of the future propeller and cut off every second of them. We are left with a blank with three blades equidistant from each other. The edges of each blade must be rounded. We do this carefully.
To remove those parts of the blades that are closer to the neck of the workpiece, it is better to use a utility knife; do not forget to round the edges of the blades
Now we will need a small candle. Let's light it up. We heat each blade at the base on it to turn it in the direction we need. All blades must be turned in the same direction. Remove the lid from the workpiece and punch a hole in the very center using a nail and hammer.
We place the plug on the rod of a small motor. Such motors can remain from old children's toys. As a rule, getting them is not difficult. Secure the cork with glue.
Now you need to make a base on which the motor will rest. For this purpose, we take, for example, a piece of polystyrene foam. We attach a rectangle to it, which can also be cut out of foam packaging.
Our motor, to which the propeller is attached, will be fixed on the upper surface of this rectangle. To do this, you need to make a recess in the foam that corresponds to the parameters of the motor.
Hot melt adhesive is used to secure the elements of the product. If it is unavailable, other adhesives can be used. It is important that the fastening itself is as reliable as possible.
Hot. If I may say so, even too much. That is why you can think about how to make a fan. You will say that it can be purchased at the store. But, firstly, their cost increases significantly. Secondly, they are quickly sold out and it is not always possible to find what you need on store shelves. Therefore, several practical advice about how to assemble a fan. After all, it is quite possible to arrange it even at home from available materials. Here are a couple of options.
How to make a fan based on an old cooler. If you have an old one, you can take it from there. You can also borrow a switch there. In order to make a homemade fan, you will also need some kind of battery holder. There are many of these, you can take it from some broken toy or something else in the same spirit. Of course, you will also need several batteries themselves. All that remains is to connect all these components together, and a simple fan will be ready. If you don’t want to bother with the holder, you can use a regular USB port to supply power. The stand can be made from anything. It all depends specifically on your own imagination and what you have at hand.
You can, for example, make a stand from ordinary rigid wire attached to something. It is not so important what materials will be used, but how stable the entire structure will be.
Another option on how to make a fan may be useful for enthusiasts. An excellent tool Computer disks will be used for production. What else is needed? A motor from a simple toy, a cork left over from champagne, some kind of handy switch and several batteries. We take the disk, and then make as many cuts as we need for the blades. It is necessary to leave about a centimeter to the inner edge. Then turn each blade slightly at an angle. It bends much better if the disk is heated, for example, over gas. Then you will need to insert a champagne cork into its center. If you make a small puncture in its center, for example, with an awl, you can easily attach the entire structure to some kind of pin. You will need to make a leg - absolutely any cylinder-shaped object that can accommodate batteries and wires can play its role.
You will also need to design a base for the entire unit - it can also be anything, the main thing is that it is stable and can support the structure. All that remains is to add a few additional tips - when cutting out the blades you need to make sure that each of them is approximately 45 degrees - you will end up with about 8 pieces. The plug inserted into the center of the disk will need to be secured with glue. In any case, the process should not cause you any difficulties.
If you've been thinking about how to make a fan, you now probably understand that it's very simple. Each of the proposed models is extremely easy to manufacture, and you will not need much time to create it. You don’t need any special things, the above is quite enough. These fans are very convenient and compact. You can put it on your desktop. Or, if there is such a desire, take it with you to the garage or country house, where these devices will serve as cooling means. It’s hard to argue with the fact that they have tangible dignity - after all, these, by and large, very useful things are collected from various rubbish.
As you can see, it is quite possible to make a fan yourself, from scrap materials, without bothering with going to the store and looking for a unit that suits you at an affordable price. Everything is much simpler.
Let's make a simple fan.
You will need:
1. 3V motor
2. Section for 2 batteries of 1.5 V each. I bought it from the CHIP and DIP store.
3. Switch.
4. Wire 15 cm.
5. Reels from fishing line or ropes, a jar from Polysorb, a jar of gouache.
6. Impeller from the power supply cooler.
7. Soldering iron.
8. Thermal gun.
9. Self-tapping screws 11 pcs. 2 cm long.
1. Take spools of thread with a diameter of 5 mm and a height of 4.5 cm - from fishing line or cord.
Mark a hole for the switch with a marker and use nail scissors to cut a hole slightly smaller than the size of the switch and insert the switch into the reel:
2. Now we form the fan frame: put 3 bobbins together and mark four holes for bolts or screws with a marker on the bottom of the upper bobbins. We burn holes through the edges of two bobbins:
3. Using a lighter, melt and clear the red wire from the section with batteries and attach it to one terminal of the switch, and to the other - the second red wire. To isolate the terminals from contact with each other, fill them with hot glue:
4. We attach the red wire to the plus + of the engine, and the black wire, respectively, to the minus - of the engine:
5. The top can be made from a gouache box: on the lid with a soldering iron we form a hole for the wires and 3 holes for the screws. And on the box itself we cut a hole with nail scissors slightly smaller than the diameter of the engine and place it inside. As in the case of the switch, you can pour hot glue on the outside for reliability.
6. We place the impeller from the cooler on the plug, fill the voids with plasticine or fill it with paraffin, use a screw or an awl to make a hole in the plug, fill it with epoxy glue or hot melt glue, and place it on the engine. If it is epoxy resin, leave it to dry for a day and only then turn it on!
The weather is getting warmer outside, it's time to think about ventilation. In this episode Roman Ursu will do bladeless fan. You can easily repeat this product with your own hands. Four pieces of cardboard are used in the product. The width must match the width of the cooler. 120 mm. A switch and power connector are built into the housing. Let's take the dimensions and make a hole according to the required diameter. You will also need a 12-volt power supply for a cooler that consumes 0.25 m. The unit is 2 amperes, so that’s enough. Upper part The Dyson fan is cylindrical in shape. This means that we draw two circles with a diameter of 15 cm. One of them is 11 cm, the other is 12 cm. To ensure that the parts stick well to the base, we take one of the walls, apply the parts, draw a line and cut them off. Now, to form the cylinders, you will need three segments with the following dimensions: 12 x 74, 12 x 82, 15 x 86 cm. We will figure out what and where to glue at the assembly stage. Let's make cuts in each wall. These will be the air channels. They look like nice legs.
Let's start assembling a beautiful bladeless fan, placing the courier in the middle. We glue each wall one by one. The wires can be removed as shown in the video. It would be nice to figure out the connection. We use a switch, so we separate one of the wires and form a circuit. The wires go to the power connector, black to minus, red to plus.
You need to connect all the previously prepared parts with your own hands. Take a ring with an internal diameter of 11 cm. It will be in front. And the segment is 12x74. We connect as in the video.
We repeat the same with the second ring and the 12 x 82 blank. To keep the rings fixed and stable, we use five small strength partitions. The length is just under 12 cm. All that remains is to close the structure.
We use the last piece of 15 x 86 cm.
Finally, we make it beautiful, remove excess glue, and cover it with paint. In general, the bladeless fan is ready.
There's a lot ahead useful homemade products, we are waiting for the warm sun to shoot the next video and show it on the channel.
If there is no air conditioning or even a household fan at home, and summer heat doesn’t allow you to live normally, you can use your wits and use old computer parts. Any craftsman can assemble a fan from a cooler, fortunately, the materials for construction 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 device with your own hands, 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;
- the computer cooler itself (one or more).
The fan will be connected via a USB connector to the computer. This makes it possible to use the fan without third-party power sources.
Coolers come in different sizes. Their design includes wires with which you can adjust the number of revolutions depending on the temperature of the central processor. In our case, these wires will not be needed - we will work only with the black (minus) and red (plus) wires, which receive voltage from the computer motherboard. The remaining wires can be cut off using 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 cores we need.
Operating procedure:
- Take any unnecessary USB cable you need to connect the cooler to it. It may not be formally working, but here we need to find wires of the same colors as the cooler. For ease of work, the remaining wires are removed using wire cutters.
- Remove the outer insulation from the USB cable with a sharp utility knife: measure a distance of approximately 3-4 cm from the end of the wire and apply the knife to the wire.
- Then, in a circular motion, without pressing, draw the wire in a circle.
- Now pull the insulation - it should easily come away and expose the bundle of wires.
If you press too hard, cutting the insulation may damage the wire insulation underneath the outer layer of plastic you cut. Then you will have to bite off the entire braid and repeat the procedure due to the fact that a slight violation of the integrity of the insulation usually leads to a short circuit. Now that you have prepared the wires yourself, you can proceed to the next step.
Soldering and insulating wires
Take the wires of the cooler and USB cable, remove about 10 mm of insulation and twist them so that the red wire is connected to the red, and the black to the 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 the twisted wires to rosin or soak them in flux;
- melt a piece of solder or tin on the soldering iron tip;
- run the tip along the twisted wires if they are treated with flux, or apply them to a piece of rosin and press a little with a hot tip.
This process is called tinning the wires or treating the contact points with hot tin with your own hands. Rosin is needed to help the tin bond better to the surface of the bare USB wire.
Now you need to isolate the conductors to prevent this from happening. short circuit when connected to a computer's USB port. So, unwind a piece of electrical tape about 3-5 cm long and pass it between the soldered wires. Wrap one wire so that the tin-coated contact area is reliably insulated and no pieces of bare conductor are visible through the layers of insulating 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 a stand for your DIY fan you just made. You will need a piece of copper or aluminum wire. Take a piece of wire and bend it into a “P” shape. Thread the ends into the bottom two bolt holes of 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 the power source (USB connector of the computer), as well as how to connect these fans to each other.
Connecting cables
From the school physics course we know that there are two types of connections - serial 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, connects to the core of the USB cable of the same color.
Parallel connection is much simpler: all the red wires are assembled into one twist, just like the black ones. The red wires are connected to the red wire of the USB cable, and the black wires, respectively, to the black wire. To make the contact more reliable, you need 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 yourself. In order to assemble all the coolers together, you need to decide what shape the structure will be in. You might find it easier to fold them into a square or just line them up.
In any case, for these purposes you will need a glue gun, which is usually used to make DIY products in technical creativity or floristry circles. You can use it to glue the ribs of the coolers in the right places and let them cool. But if you don't have a gun and just have wire and tape, you can fasten the coolers through the bolt holes with wire and wrap the edges with black tape.
So, you have managed to make sure that making a simple room air blower with your own hands is simple and accessible even to a person far from technical creativity. Such simple solutions can help out in a situation where you need to keep the room cool in windless weather, but a regular fan is either broken or simply not in the house. In these cases, simple ingenuity comes to the rescue.