Balancing a fan that shakes too much

how to balance the blade of a box fan that is shaking too much. Ironically, this involves shaking the fan some more!
Using a box fan here, but the same procedure could be used on an oscillating fan.

[@severinoroseno4381]

It's not as powerful as I thought it would be, but it works very well. kzbin.infoUgkxGjG43--gYqIoT4Xkur2PqCrtbKwTv2h There are three options to circulate air, and best of all a remote control for us lazy people. Installation was a breeze (no pun intended). It actually took longer to open the box then it did putting the side extenders on and sitting it in the window opening. It's a perfect alternative when you want airflow, but not the AC. Just might order another one for a different room. UPDATE: Bought another one like I said. They work great. Why not have two...

[@nothankyouYouTube420]

"dad why are you staring at a still chip of wood on the fan?" " Because I did a good job son."

[@rbedford6965]

Just did this ... worked great. I made one change to the procedure. Seeing how you had to adjust the weight and position of the screw a few times, I decided to use a small bit of tape to position a screw into place before drilling any holes, then used the shake-shake method to see if it was the right weight and positioned properly. Careful ... don't turn the fan on with a screw taped to the blade ... duh! I made one screw-size adjustment, did the shake-shake again to be sure, then drilled and installed the screw. It turned out great! Thanks Matthais!

[@wesleycameron182]

Good call

[@WesBos]

I would like a full video with the science behind blowing hot air out / cold in / opening windows / closing them when its hot

[@DaveWirth]

I agree. The energy savings of this type of modified whole house fan versus running the AC.

[@aminorityofone]

@@DaveWirth ive been doing this for years. You have to like a colder than normal house in the morning to keep it cool by dinner time. And where I live, in the height of summer this doesn't work as night times will get as low as maybe 70f. But my house is an open layout single floor with a basement, so 1 window fan is enough for everything except 1 bedrooms.

[@onesixfive]

So would I, because during a childhood spent without AC we did this and I don’t think it did very much at all. Time for the Raspberry Pi and a breadboard loaded with sensors!

[@HannesMrg]

When it's colder outside than inside and then you open the windows, so that it becomes cool on the inside. To help that effect you can use fans and the fact that warm air rises to the top. So you open a window downstairs and upstairs and either blow cool in downstairs or warm air out upstairs. When it becomes warmer outside than it's indoors, you close the windows.

[@keithforbes4544]

just make a draft, one window a fan blowing out and one across the house blowing in, and everything else closed up. until it's too hot outside of course. and you don't want to fight the breeze if there is one

[@TexasGTO]

These are the videos I subbed for 🤣😂

[@CanadasElite]

Hell yeah your technique for finding the balance is a big help

[@FromThe3PointLine]

About time right?

[@Engineer9736]

Why the laughing? I didn’t see any jokes being made in the video. Looks a little bit like you’re thinking he is a joke or something in a disrespectful way.

[@FromThe3PointLine]

@@Engineer9736 you just don't see the jokes here kid. Just go do something else on yt

[@Engineer9736]

@@FromThe3PointLine There was no joke, child. Laughing at someone who is explaining something is rude. If people are rude then i say something about it.

[@rootvalue]

This is an ingenious solution to a problem almost everyone with a cheap box fan has. Thank you!!!

[@paulsmyers203]

We had a house in the south with an attic fan - holy cow sucking the hot air out of the house was AMAZING.

[@harlanbarnhart4656]

AirKing makes powerful window fans that work the same way. I open all the windows about two inches and it freshens the whole house.

[@jonanderson5137]

@@harlanbarnhart4656 I have a house fan that vents to the attic, I'd like to see one for a window though!

[@steveyknoxville]

So would it be SUCKING the hot air out or BLOWING the hot air out? 🙄

[@dave5194]

@@steveyknoxville both

[@akunog3665]

@@steveyknoxville "So would it be SUCKING the hot air out or BLOWING the hot air out? 🙄" I think it would be sucking the hot air toward the exit, then blowing the hot air out. So, i'll go with blowing, but I don't think it really matters obviously lol.

[@andrews420]

These seems like, as crazy as it seems, something the manufacturer shouldve done when they made the stupid fan

[@frostedlambs]

Cheap fans arnt ballanced they are just made good enough, it doesnt happen when it's on the ground, they could have done lots of things like make it faster lighter or better air thrust they can only choose a few things to focus on to keep it cheap or RND goes up

[@Ludak021]

he got the cheapest fan he could.

[@-Gadget-]

Couldn't agree more 👍🏻

[@RedHeadForester]

I like it when I get recommended tips like this that are actually a solution to a problem I have right now.

[@AntaresSQ01]

Ho ly shiet, so tru, I was like, my stupid crappy amazon fan vibrates so much the feet are rattling and I literally can't sleep at night, this is exactly what it needed.

[@LLOOYYYDD]

*Matthias sounds like the kind of guy who if someone annoyed him, he'd just calmly fix them and keep walking lol*

[@REALDEALFLEXSEAL]

No he fixes things that dont need fixed...

[@matthewluedtke9653]

I use like three of these $20 box fans so this actually helps me a lot thank you.

[@Hoaxer51]

I think everyone has at least one of these rattle boxes in their home! Let’s get them balanced!

[@equinoxproject2284]

One thing to be careful of is drawing air in through gas appliances with a pilot light and chimney. We blew it the pilot light on the hot water heater. We closed all the window but one and reduced the opening to just a crack, to see how much air would rush in. Ten minutes later I started to smell gas.

[@gabrielvieira6529]

@@Hoaxer51 I dont

[@alejandrogil180]

Drilling a small hole on the heavy side would've worked too 🤔

[@dave5194]

Might be easier to trial and error by adding weight rather than removing

[@ТимонСамошин]

@@dave5194 and the weight of a drilled plastic piece is much less than the weight of a metal screw or something similar

[@heli400]

I would’ve used a piece(s) of tape: easily added, easily removed.

[@Skiman21632]

Also you can us epoxy or ca glue. That is how we balance our radio controlled airplane propellers.

[@ThiesRappen]

Drilling holes might introduce a whistling noise at certain fan speeds 🤔

[@ronaldspencer547]

Good thinking....shake the housing. I would have tried to build some king of balance jig.

[@daftnord4957]

When balancing rc airplane props i would sand the bottom side, not the airfoil, of the heavy blade. And if sanding can't remove enough material then add a piece of clear tape to the light blade, also the bottom of the blade

[@DullPoints]

This is good advice! I would love to see Matthias get into RC stuff, wouldn't you?

[@daftnord4957]

@@DullPoints he would be consumed entirely by RC. But which way would he go? Rc models? Nitro? Electric? Multirotors and highly programmable flight controllers? Acrobatics? Lol

[@brunogausa]

Matthias, I just wanna clarify, stainless steel can a do have Carbon on their composition. Thats exactly why it is an steel and not just iron. Maybe what you encourage is that ferritic stainless does not make any spark or that another element on it's composition has that efect, im not sure. But i wanted to clarify that, for example 4140 (the most used alloy for heavy equipment shafting) has 0.430% of Carbon, which is a lot. I love your videos, Cheers!

[@diego1694]

To add to this, cutlery and tool stainless steels often have a lot of carbon. To add some examples: VG10 (1%), D2 (1.5%) , M390 (1.9%, almost cast iron levels! yet very corrosion resistant).

[@brunogausa]

@@diego1694 thats true. Probably those screws have a lot of Mo or Pb, I guess they give that steel more ductility, but I have no idea hahaha.

[@matthiasrandomstuff2221]

Oh, I read somewhere that the development of stainless steel first required figuring out how to get the carbon out, cause the carbon interfered with the alloy.

[@cbalan777]

@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 Steel is iron and carbon, so it wouldn't make sense to try to make stainless steel by removing carbon. You could just start with iron and add chromium and nickel and skip carbon completely. But then I guess you'd have stainless iron? I don't even know if that's a thing.

[@brunogausa]

Well, actually, on the process of making steel Carbon is used (as a molecule of I think CO, but not sure) to break the FeO molecules, so that it forms CO, CO2 and other gases that flow towards the top of invesment in wich the iron oxide is melted. So, as a result of that process the steel, by defect, has a lot of Carbon which has to be taken out to get a known alloy thats useful. For example, cast iron and cast steel has the most amount of Carbon. Its a really interesting process the iron smelting. A lot of trouble goes into making common steel. At least here in Uruguay, we have that process as part of our formation as Mechanical engeneers. Cheers!

[@lglgmoreiracom]

Very clever maneuver to find the heavy side! You could also make holes on the heavy side or sand the corresponding blade to remove weight.

[@dadandme]

Good idea, not easy to fine tune the screw weight but you did it. For drone propellers, we use a Prop Balancer and we sand the back of heavier blade or we add transparent tape on the tip of the lighter blade.

[@CitarNosis317]

Be careful with driving screws into a fan..

[@Enderplays12]

That's just the blades, the engines is a bit further back. That said, yeah, some fans are closer and people don't check.

[@gamingSlasher]

Yes, I was a bit worried too about the length of that screw.

[@friedmule5403]

Conclusion may be: "Sometimes is it best to screw with your fans" :-)

[@Engineer9736]

It’s just a fan not a car engine or something. If it would hit something then it would just stop rotating within the first revolution.

[@odinoshi1486]

Shaking a fan that's too balanced, now that's what I want to see.

[@Schrimpieman]

A touch of common sense and simple ingenuity goes a long way. Good Job

[@nihildegrasse1700]

Simple, but really essential for making any high precision high rotation rotating things You got my sub

[@FrankGraffagnino]

man, i love videos like this. thanks!

[@-Gadget-]

I like the fact that you have shown an easy fix for an unbalanced fan. However, due to no fault of yours, what irritates me the most, is that crap like this is allowed to leave a factory, WITH, I might add, a big fat label that stipulates it has been "QC approved" on it. Since when has it become the purchaser/owners problem to sort out (and I say this with as much mallace as possible) the manufacturers defects? And then people wonder why I'm "That Person" who takes back defective goods multiple times (And by defective, I mean the product does not work as it should or has issues like your unit does, but has been QC passed by some idiot that should NOT be employed for QC control) 🤬

[@charliechuckleberry5307]

Circulating air thru the house is going to use a lot less electrical energy than an AC; and it has the bonus effect of cleaner air from outside. Of coarse, this only works when you live in a rural low populated area with less pollution. In most cases, a window AC unit is always better than circulating air costing a tiny bit more energy.

[@gatewaysolo104]

Or humid environments. When the humidity gets above 60% everything in the house starts to get damp and wood floors expand. The fans won't remove the humidity

[@JosephMcPhail]

I want to see more of that bracket.

[@RickEstrada]

This is awesome but instead of adding weight, why not drill away plastic on the heavy side to remove weight?

[@ryan__nz]

Harder to trial and error with like he was able to with screws and their weight

[@nicoro8872]

maybe beacause you cant remove the holes but you can make them bigger

[@Psi105]

Adding some insulation tape on each blade one at a time then testing works well too

[@marblecountertops3098]

Mattias it is boiling in Ottawa. My noisy box fan was driving me nuts last night. Thanks for the instructions

[@TheFoxholeLife]

I had the same problem, I superglued a watch battery slightly off center. Works well for me.

[@NeoNoggie]

You can also do this by super gluing a washer to the fan. I have taped them to the fan in the past to find the right position, then super glue it in the spot that works best.

[@marcoschwanenberger3127]

Awesome thing to know with the jiggling to overcome friction. Funny story. I had my car in for check up and TÜV just 2 weeks ago and since then the AC Fan made an awful lot of noise and vibration! I was just about to give them a call and bring the car there - I took a look at the fan If I could see something obvious and: There was a *tiny* dried up leaf in there, causing all the noise. It couldn't have weight more than 1 gramm at most. Nuts!

[@Xanthopteryx]

Did you shake the car to find the balance problem?

[@drbelli]

i believe you are doing this wrong (but not entirely , because u got results). in a fan like these, you should never add more mass to a lighter side, but only remove material from the heavier side, because those motors work with no torque but speed, that single screw u put there, made it consume more, and rotate less, thus reducing the fan efficiency.

[@Dr._Spamy]

In most cases I balanced stuff the random way, with duck tape and washers, and watched if it get worse or better. But this shaking method to cancel the friction is very clever.

[@matthiasrandomstuff2221]

I have used that method lots of times myself. wish I thought of this sooner.

[@yupsir791]

Two screws and an automotive clip C-clip and my dads fan no longer walks its self into a wall! Thanks!

[@Kineth1]

Thanks for sharing this trick. I know you have used screws as counterweights to balance your bandsaw wheels, but I hadn't thought of applying the same technique to general rotary equipment. However, with the recent trend of videos on this channel, I was hoping just a bit for a rasPi and a couple servos mounted to the center of the fan to balance it automatically.

[@wizzardrincewind9458]

you can put tape on the outside of the lighter fanblades (the way how you find the heavy blade is nice :)

[@ilikewaffles3689]

Pretty sure all stainless steels contain carbon. In fact, carbon is a requirement for something to be called steel.

[@ryangallagher7262]

Would it also work to just drill the hole on the heavy side and leave it empty?

[@EVLS10]

Yes. Actually would put the hole in one of the blades. Depending on the type of fan he could have drilled into windings through that center section which would be death for the fan.

[@bigdorkification]

I would have just sanded the blade down slightly

[@LasagnaSupreme]

Might create a noise (whistle) and won't leave as much holes as just by adding weight with screws on the other side

[@AlexeyMatushevsky]

Is there a way to make it less noisy? I tried to remove the protective plastic from both sides and it did not help. Do you have any idea?

[@MrVnick1]

Next video: Balancing my shaking house

[@dtec30]

man hole in the roof might be a better option for fan extraction?

[@matthiasrandomstuff2221]

yes, but that would also let the rain in!

[@dtec30]

@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 no the entry to the roof space here in oz we call it man hole like the street entry to the sewers in the usa

[@dtec30]

hmmm maybe i should have clarified ceiling and not roof my bad

[@FJRyder]

Instead of adding weights... You could have just drilled the heavy side. 🤷‍♂️

[@epicus2754]

just drilling a hole on the heavy side doesn't allow him to control it as well. What if he drilled too little? He'd drill another/wider hole. But then if he drills too much, he can't go back

[@FJRyder]

@@epicus2754 Plastic weights considerably less than stainless steel. So your margin of error is greater. Drilling is how machinist balance flywheels.

[@howder1951]

Just what the Dr. ordered for me. My stand up fan fell and broke a blade. I epoxied same with some fibre glass reinforcement, now it's out of balance and wants to walk across the shop. It is not that I am too cheap to buy a new one (sorta) but I prefer ugly stuff in the shop so no one else wants it. Enjoyed the vid, cheers Matthias

[@gorak9000]

That plastic they make those fan blades out of does not glue well at all. I had one that fell out of a window and snapped a blade off, and I used epoxy and carbon fiber reinforcement to glue it back together. Even with roughing up the surface, the epoxy just never sticks to it long term.

[@tseckwr3783]

Don't tip one of those over on concrete -- especially when running. It will break one or more the blades. I found that out last summer when I was running a couple of them in the garage to get the stink of the winding coating outgas reduced before using inside with a MERV 13 20x20 filter.

[@tseckwr3783]

This is really good advice.

[@ewout2211]

This is the reason why i like this channel so much: a clever trick to have a analogue vibration amplifier, and some kind of jog mode to eliminate friction. Love it tnx matthias

[@gurkiratsingh8747]

But you didn't show if it was balanced at the end.

[@b00573d]

Of course Matthias made a fan holder out of wood! I am surprised he didnt make a whole new fan out of wood!

[@Justchuck69]

Yeah lol that most likely ' wood ' of been step two if he could not get it working this way !

[@eDoc2020]

I believe he _has_ made a box fan out of wood. I remember seeing it on his website.

[@b00573d]

​@@eDoc2020 lol i would not doubt it at all

[@MCsCreations]

Fantastic work, Matthias! Really well done! 😃 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

[@GadgetAddict]

Nice simple fix. Any idea why it went out of balance in the first place? Or it was like that from the factory?

[@cool50500]

Probably from factory

[@Rudy97]

Those fans were never balanced.

[@louisfkoorts5590]

Mathias can from time to time be good at gaining from what others discard. (I refer to it in a positive way.) Maybe the fan started a "new life" with the family. Already with the imbalance. It is unbelievable how many valuable things end up at the landfill. I used to work at a furniture store (in South Africa) and was amazed how many used stuff was given to me, once you delivered the new item...

[@cbalan777]

I've noticed most fans eventually start to wobble, make weird noises, etc. People who sleep with fans on for "white noise" often complain about their fans noise. They want it to just make a gentle "shoooooooooo " noise but when it starts to "whir whir whir whir" it gets annoying. I think the problem might be what Matthias is showing here, where this molded piece of plastic is not balanced correctly, but it could also be the bearings inside. Some tiny fraction of an inch measurement being off inside a fan probably compounds as it moves out to the blades and so they aren't spinning perfectly even.

[@Francois_Dupont]

@@louisfkoorts5590 you wont believe me, but before the Vir... i got a working Honda Fourtrax (ATV) from the garbage and a Brass Trombone at another place.

[@probablynotabigtoe9407]

Would have been easier to just remove plastic off the blades... remove weight instead of adding it

[@firesurfer]

That is impractical because the plastic is too light. You would have to remove too much, destroying the blade.

[@shrikantdarne4467]

Why is this suddenly in my recommendations

[@truedox]

It's a great tip. Though I wonder if there is some precise way of measuring the imbalance and calculating the exact weight and position to place it.

[@dincerekin]

simple engineering, love it

[@jacobdegeling]

How well does the blowing of warm air out work? Sounds like a great idea, but sometimes in my house during summer it's almost as hot inside as it is outside 😒

[@mckenziekeith7434]

If you put a fan in one window in an unused room, blowing out, then open one or two windows in the room you are occupying, outside air will be pulled into the room you are in. It may not cool the whole house, but it will keep a breeze blowing on you and you don't have the racket of a fan nearby. In the evenings when outside air is cool, it can work really well.

[@peksn]

Now this is what an engineering degree is for

[@martinnedyalkov9185]

Plot twist! This video is shot in reverse :D

[@matthiasrandomstuff2221]

A little bit. I wasn't happy with the intro shot, so I had to take the screw out again to re-shoot that part, then put it back in.

[@fouroakfarm]

I like your balance trick with it still on the shaft/motor! I have several of these el cheapo box fans and theyre all out of balance

[@No_Way_NO_WAY]

Then screw away :P

[@MoneyManHolmes]

I bought one at Walmart and was surprised to see that it was made in the USA. Unfortunately, it shakes like crazy, even on low. It’s like they don’t even test them or something. I’m going to try this trick when I have some free time.

[@MeatEatingSissy]

you could have drilled a hole in the heavy part and skipped all these other steps

[@beurksman]

You can only do that if you know that the amount of weight by which you need to correct is small enough to be affected by a hole that is small enough not to cause a problem in the long term. Adding a screw and grinding it to size is probably the safest option

[@otm646]

You saw how much tuning it took, you would never get it right the first try. Then you start drilling holes on the opposite side try to balance it out and you've made a giant pain in the butt.

[@MeatEatingSissy]

Ok, never mind

[@NorthernChev]

The humidity level in a house is a far larger determinate in comfort than temp…

[@matthiasrandomstuff2221]

too hot is uncomfortable even when the humidity is low. very low humidities are uncomfortable.

[@gabrielvieira6529]

This is a pretty interesting fix, i wasnt expecting that.

[@ddnaveh]

matthias u r a Genius! thank u, i learned so much! id' love it if ull explain more about ur hose air flow.. its a great topic that most urban apartments know nothing about and can change their life

[@FutureCityTV]

I love it 👏

[@SilverWatcher.]

I'm a fan of screwing things too 🤭

[@zxxvcc]

Clever shoogling technique for overcoming friction

[@equinoxproject2284]

Shoogling is the exact right word.

[@RossTheGenMan]

You should make some sort of sheilding to go on the sides so air can't come back in that way. The biggest problem with just moving air is that it doesn't get rid of humidity which is the real killer in the summer, depending where you live.

[@robertmoore1099]

Canada.. = less humidity

[@brianaustin1328]

I’m a big fan of this method.

[@krisraps]

Emm , This Is NOT How You Do It man, Ehhh, Good Attemt, But Not Hopw You Do It, You Don`t ADD Weight, You Take It Down, Its Nota Car Rim

[@BigEightiesNewWave]

Stainless steels are united around one key material property: excellent corrosion resistance, attributable to high Chromium content (>10.5% by mass) and low carbon content (

[@flaviusfake271]

Thank you I wss trying to think of a practical way to figure out where to put counterweight. I am trying this right away looking forward to less shacking from my fan tonight. 😁👌

[@pauljs75]

But do you have the fan indexed to the motor? Seems like if you ever take it apart completely for cleaning, then it'd need to be rebalanced if you can't keep that alignment just right.

[@1framistan]

Right out of the box, My Lasko box fan shook worse than ELVIS. Your method worked and I couldn't believe I had to use a screw and 3 small nuts to get it to stop! THANKS because my method of trying to balance the blade on a pencil DID NOT WORK.

[@davidplenderleith4176]

Very interesting thanks

[@ramosel]

Why add weight to the light side? It's a plastic bladed fan. Nip, sand, shave a bit of weight from the heavy side and reduce the overall rotational mass... and not introduce 2nd ordinal harmonics with the weight of the screw behind the thrust vector of the blade face. Fans are difficult... axial, radial, then blade thrust. On the other hand, it worked... it is just a box fan... and 3 years later there is a chance it's in the trash or separated into parts bins in Matthias' basement. When I stumbled on this I was hoping to see some load cells and a raspberry pi at work.

[@Vitaliuz]

Much obliged.

[@Cammi_Rosalie]

I wish I could fix the 60 hz hum of my ceiling fan. When on high, there's barely anything. When on medium, it's quite noticeable. When on low, it's downright maddening! The balance is perfect. the extra long pull-chain for the light doesn't wobble or sway at all. No vibration, nothing. But that damn 60 hz hum... GAAAH! Same with my vent fan in the window. It's on a dial and in several spots around the dial, I guess the AC frequency resonates through the motor, into the metal blades and makes them ring out a dull tremolo tone. I have to sit and fiddle with the fan to stop that sound. And if West Penn Power fails to supply a regular 60 hz, or regular voltage, (Which they RARELY do,) that fan starts to ring out again. Thankfully the sound of my AC drowns mot of that out in the summer. But in the winter,that's a different story. The fans sing me the song of WPP's shitty "service"

[@jeffreybell436]

Robertson screws ftw.

[@АлексейМолчанов-щ8з]

You can immediately mark the place for the self-tapping screw and use hot glue to adjust the weight and better fixation.

[@Goatsmilkuk]

Thanks, I've just balanced a cheap Asda aka Walmart fan. Used blutak on the inside of the hollow center. No more shaking itself apart.

[@kodez79]

Adding a small cardboard cutout to close the fan in and avoid recycling air back around the sides will improve airflow massively. I made the same solution at our old place, and the cardboard did the trick.

[@vinnylaw]

This shaking method totally works. Cheap fan now vibrates 10x less.

[@MiniLuv-1984]

That's one hell of a balancing act!

[@woodsprout]

I do this too (take the house down to 62 degrees in morning) to make the house more comfortable on 80 F to 100+ F forecast days. With less or no air conditioning.

[@SamZarifYT]

You should really buy a vintage box fan. They are worth the extra investment. General Electric made some amazing high quality box fans back in the 50s and 60s.

[@acoow]

I live down south in the state of Georgia. Box fans in windows was a big part of my life growing up! It was part of my life last summer when the AC unit broke and it made better sense to replace it than repair it. We had fans in the back of the house blowing in and fans in the front blowing out. It did a good job of making the house mostly comfortable, but I wouldn't want to deal with them during pollen season!

[@AoIndigo]

After reading the comments I've realized; the people asking "Why not buy a new one?" Simply don't understand that this video isn't for them. If you can't see how this is helpful, then you're not the audience for this, and I hope you're lucky enough to never be I guess.

[@Snowmirage6453]

Tesla and Apple think you infringed on the Fan manufacturers copyrights. Also by adding that screw its no longer a "fan" anymore its something else. :P Nice idea for a fix though I'll keep this in mind thanks for sharing :)

[@rafaelanaia3187]

You could have just made a hole in the heavy part. I mean, maybe, taking some material off by doing a hole, could be enough to balance.

[@thatrudager]

I have a DC motor fan with unbalanced fan blades. It's DC (brushed) so it doesn't rotate freely. The shaft is a double "D" profile so i can't just slip it on a smooth shaft either. I can't think of a way to test this fan without 3D printing something custom.

[@orbixdental]

Been doing this for years on cheepo fans. I always do it by removing material from the leading edge of the blades. The effect of the adjustment increases the closer to the diameter it is made. Sometimes the heaviest point is between two blades so you make a guess and remove a proportional amount from the two heaviest blades. Hand rocking is a great way to overcome the static friction in the bearings. It is low-tech way to statically (single plane) balance almost anything that rotates. I've asked you before, with inexpensive accelerometers available, wouldn't building a dynamic (two plane) balancer be a great project for you?

[@genericuser321]

I had a fan that would vibrate itself all over the floor, and violently shake. I thought it was unrepairable and I was going to have to buy a new one, but you saved me! Extremely simple, clever, and effective! 🎉🙏

[@tirsek]

I love how a simple fix can turn something from nearly useless to useful again.

[@ZartruS]

*Only* _Balanced_ *Fan !*

[@chrisg0001]

How would you approach balancing ceiling fans? Every video says just guess and check again and again

[@TheKb117]

Most balancing weights I see on fan blades are metal clips, thicker than hair pins, attached at the ribs behind the central structure of the fan blade. One can slide it along the rib, towards or away from the center, to adjust the weight and balance the blades. Might be easier to do on a desk or stand fan, more clearance to the rear of the blades without the grills, than with a box fan. Ymmv.

[@VladQuake]

Why drill out to add weight, instead of drilling out the plastic to.. reduce weight?

[@dscrive]

I wondered the same thing, at a guess, this is a case where it's easier to adjust by adding rather than subtracting, if you removed too much you would need to add weight anyway

[@VladQuake]

@@dscrive I'd shave off the tip of th eblade, there's usually loose plastic at the blade tips from manufacturing, from my understand, you only need the minimal the further away you are from the center the axle, so while you may need a big hole in the middle you might need a few shaving off the edge

[@xz3693]

Well, if you are shooting buck shot at a bottle from 300 feet away while blind folded... You have a chance of hitting, at some point... Would have been a lot easier to just take off the blades and find a balance point. Then you could calculate the balance.

[@Netbug]

I jam a box fan in the screen door, held down by the sliding glass. I made a foam surround that goes around it to seal it and give maximum negative pressure. On high speed, the airflow will slam inner doors closed when I open a window. Works great. Can cool the entire upstairs in about 10 minutes in the evening.

[@jp040759]

Damn!!! Wish I ran across this vid 5 to 7 years ago. I have a similar fan form factor with one blade almost completely broken off that I dumpster dove for. I figured free fan for garage. If I could balance it I would have a good tool. I did exactly the same thing with multiple screws in the blade. I did it totally by trial and error and intuition. Ended up with 6 screws in the blade. Got it balanced and have ben using all this time. I wish I knew about your technique of finding heavy spot though. That would have saved time and screws. Thanx.

[@alessandropinto5204]

What about using a glue gun to build up the counterweight? This way if you mess it up you can just scrap it off, and it makes easy to adjust the balancing by adding or removing material.