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This project started with 1 simple question I said to myself; "I still have lots of that galvanized steel sheet I tore from an old washing machine, can I make a ventilating fan out of that?". Later that night, I whipped out a parts centrifugal blower I've been keeping, a Sanyo 8" ventilating fan as size reference, my mega scissor, some drawing tools, and went straight to cutting up the galvanized sheet. I had absolutely no idea how the internal mechanisms would turn out, so I played it safe & made the fan's body rather deep. I bent the sheets with the same jig & method as I did in this video: • Bending besi simpel , but unfortunately the sheet of metal I had wasn't wide enough to create a full box, so I had to settle with a C channel & patched the hole with a separate sheet of metal I glued & taped to the bigger piece to create a box.
In the middle of this project, I opened the PSC blower motor I intended to use for this fan to lubricate the bushings, and discovered to my disappointment that the windings are designed in such a way that the rotor is impossible to remove without snapping the windings AFTER I pulled the rotor straight out. So I was left with this bricked motor & absolutely no alternative, so I sent it to be rewound, which didn't turn out well. Operating temperature with the original winding is no higher than ambient temperature, but it got as high as 55°C after the rewind, and worse, the motor's torque went down. So I shelved this project for quite some time, until I remembered I have a Maspion centrifugal exhaust fan with a blower wheel slightly larger than the one I intended to use. I then tore that fan & the original design for this 'Refresh' apart so that I could marry the 2 together. With the previous blower, the motor is located on the intake side of the fan which requires that extra depth I had originally put into the fan's frame, but this Maspion's motor is mounted on the exhaust port, and that meant the aforementioned space is now unused. In a perfect world, I'd make the metal body shallower, but I had no tools to do so, so I left it as is. I then hastily made internal support structures out of wood as I spent more time focusing on creating the front cover, which at first I designed it without any sort of light fixtures. I can't exactly remember why I decided to add lighting on this fan, but I'm glad I did so, as the front panel looks a lot sleeker & more unique with the light covers on them than they would if I had opted for a straightforward square design. That front cover is coated with simple shellac as it's the cheapest nice way to finish the cobbled together scrap wood I used to make it.
For operating the shutters, I had 3 options; use mechanical linkages connected to the pullcord, a servo motor, or a solenoid/wax motor. I threw the first option out right away since there's no space nor time for me to adapt a lever mechanism to open & close the shutters. Same goes for the servo, as I didn't want to program things to do a dumb task, so I'm left with the last option. I would've loved to get a wax motor, but I can't find anyone that sells them, so solenoid it is. I purchased a solenoid meant for a door lock, a 12V adaptor from a flea market, and made lever linkages to connect the solenoid to the shutters, of which I made 5, as I didn't think that solenoid is strong enough to push 3 wider shutters. Turns out it's actually barely strong enough to open 5 narrow shutters, so that decision wasn't incorrect after all.
I initially intended to use the guts from a pendant lamp as the lights, but unfortunately the LED modules failed during my testing, so I had to buy more LED strips to put into this fan. To mount them on the fan, I made custom reflectors out of galvanized steel roofing sheets, and ordered custom sized acrylic panels to cover them, which I mounted on the front cover with hot glue. After all the components have been made, I took them apart & painted the parts that need to be painted, and re-assembled them. FYI, the transformer I use to drive the solenoid lives within the blower assembly, so as the wirings for the blower & lights. That means if for some reasons I want to access them, I have to pull the blower assembly out of the metal enclosure.
Speaking of the metal enclosure, do you know the term car people use when they speak about building a car, in that using the chassis from another car is much easier than making your own? Boy that applies with this project. Making the metal box, shutter assembly etc was HARD. Doesn't mean that I won't do it again though, as I had tons of fun building this fan!
#Homemade #ExhaustFan