I would like to see one day a fan showdown wherein the challenge is for viewers to submit variations of a certain fan that performed well in the showdown, the goal being to refine and maximize the abilities of that design.
I am astonished that ludicrous Cheeze Greater did so exceptionally well lmao. Doesn't even make any sense. It was literally knocking on the door of that Prandtl fan.
@@onionknight2239 I was admiring the quality too. So good that he has the smoke clip with rotating mini window too. But for some reasons the thing that he shows first isn't the first one he tested (tested tesla first).
New to this channel so have he tried to smooth the surfaces first after the printing? Like manually or with acetone etc? And would it make things better or worse. Good stuff!
The channels in the blades of the tesla fan are basically trapping air, which is then travelling radially outwards due to a centrifugal effect. It's sort of working like a blower fan, except when it hits the ring at the edge of the fan it's spewing out the front and the back.
I am not a pc enthusiast, nor do i have huge interest in 3D printing. So how is it then that the Fan Showdown got me hooked? I do not know. But i do know that you have an amazing show and i appreciate it for what it is. I think i speak for everyone here when i say thank you for the time and effort you put into this.
And it has production quality, and really nice background music, and someone who is genuinely passionate and interested in the things he does. There's way too many boring channels that brings nothing to the table... like every single reddit channel...
I think the turbulence in the Tesla valve inspired fan is due to the air moving outwards with a considerable speed due to the ridges in the fan blades. If the air moves on top of the blade towards the outside it eventually hits the shroud and then will split. Half of it goes down, the other half goes up, which is what we see as a small whirl at the outer edge.
Been watching the channel even before the fan showdown, and I think the voiceover on the smoke test is really helpful! Really looking forward to more episodes! And congratulations on the new printer!
I love how this series has gone from “dongs” on a hub to being based of paper’s written by aerodynamics, supported by research inspired from military aircraft and done by NASA on the ISS, in space, like daim Love the series, keep up the good work
The level of enthusiasm that you have for receiving the new printer, almost matches the my level of enthusiasm when I see that you post a new video. With the addition of this new printer, I can only hope to see some interesting designs being tested. Keep on doing what you're doing!
Get a VSt spectrum analyser plugin (or standalone) and set up a mic next to the db meter running into your audio interface. You'l get a lovely real time audio spectrum on your PC/lappy. It should run nicely in your video prod suite or run it thru Audacity if you dont have a DAW to use. I used to use Voxengo SPAN and Fre(a)koscope by Smart Electronix.
Studio engineer here to confirm that SPAN is excellent. I'd also recommend iZotope RX, which has an intro version currently on sale for about $30 US. It gives an incredible amount of precision for measuring and visualizing loudness, pitch, harmonics, etc.
Been watching since Season 1 :D love this show! Glad to hear that you now have a new printer to help print the insane things the "fans" can come up with :D
For fans like the Tesla valve i think a test rig that does static pressure would be more ideal. so a chamber wrapped around a 120mm Radiator with a U of water to show if the area between the back of the fan and the radiator becomes more pressurized when the fan is moving air and if so how much.
Now that you have a printer that can do dissolvable support material, what if you made a new radiator with improved tolerances, using your copper powder. Perhaps we can achieve better performance? A return to the Cooling Tower with our Fan Showdown Leader would also be interesting.
Copper, wood, etc. filaments are usually only a few percent of that material, it would be more than useless to print something that's actually supposed to conduct heat.
I think what's happening with the tesla fan is that air is getting caught in the channels rather than sucked in, then "centrifugal force" (technically just inertia I know) kicks in and flings it outward toward the edge of the fan. It then hits the wall of the fan and "splashes" in wharever direction it can. To fix it, I think you'd probably want to add a different shapeat the end - something that would redirect the air in the channels to the inside of the computer.
Look at that YOUNG Man !!! Mr. baby face haha. Brotha the video is on point. Your cameras are dialled in perfect and the quality is perfect. Keep up the great vids !!
Aerospace engineer thoughts: Consider a simple pressure differential test. Air movement at zero pressure (the fan operating in open air) is not really relevant to actual operating conditions. So put the fan in a box with limited airflow into the box, and build yourself a manometer pressure measurement tool (a very simple u-shaped clear tube with liquid in it). See how much pressure the various fans can produce. You don't need absolute values to see the relative answers, but even a simple manometer gives you real numbers (the change in height of a column of water). A simple noise test is interesting, and the flow vis with smoke is interesting too, but doesn't tell you much about what the fan is GOOD at - moving pressure from one side to the other. Also, the noise will change significantly when the fan is "under load" because it dramatically changes the airflow around the blades. Also, there are plenty of inexpensive or free spectrum analyzing apps for smartphones, that will work well enough for this purpose.
I haven't subscribed because these are the only videos I have any interest in on your channel. That being said, your presentation has gotten MUCH better! This video had a really good energy and the flow kept me engaged when I normally skip the smoke tests. I feel like it shows a lot of improvement. It's great to see you improve along with your resources.
I'm excited to see what you can print! The possibilities are endless! I sent you one a couple of weeks ago that follows a design similar to the whisk, but hopefully improves on it. I wasn't hopeful you would be able to print it, but this changes everything!
Stay as you are, so natural, impartial and professional. As absurd as the idea with the fans is, it's always exciting to see how they perform and you present it to be enormously accessible. Thanks for that!
This is really cool. As a drone enthusiast, I was designing a drone/technology class for my students, and learned a lot about the properties of props and the drones with the extra airfoil around the blades is another way to reduce sound and create extra lift. It's intriguing stuff.
I've always imagined one of the big, limiting issues of "scaling down" propeller/impeller designs, particularly this much, is that zones of turbulence and undesired "air cushion" effects do not scale linearly. Especially when the surface area get this small and RPM goes up. Air has mass, and viscosity. Am I thinking of this wrong?
Man I've loved the progress of this channel from pre Fan Showdown to where it's at today. I never thought fans could be this interesting. I look forward to seeing the crazy designs people imagine. It's also surprising which ones end up on top.
:( I've watched all the fan show down vids. When that one vid popped up on my homepage, and I kept scrolling past it, and eventually clicked it just to make it go away, I never thought I'd be here crying for more! Such a great series. I love all the crazy designs and often unexpected wins. I'm kinda glad I've never used design software, 'cause I'd be spending hours designing fans to send in xD
What design? Noctua didn't design jack shit. There's like 3-4 Fans that look exactly like the Noctua A12x25 that are much older than the Noctua A12x25...
I really love the commentary for the flow test over just music. I tend to skip the smoke test because I have no idea what I am really looking at. It was much the same to me. So thank you for this change and I hope it sticks.
As always, one of the most unique and interesting TH-cam content. Thank you for doing that! Try investigating a bit some measuring microphones - even relatively cheap one in combo with some software will give you good sound spectrum representation
Fellow Mech. Engineer. I don't even own a desktop pc but I really enjoy the creativity you foster and the application of various engineering theories. Have used spectrum analyzer apps for quick dirty, back of the envelop assessments, picking up bearing harmonics etc. They're free, give it a shot
for 12 cm fan blade tip to reach super sonic it would need to spin more than 50 000 rpm or 875 revolutions per second :D I dont think blade tip noise is an issue in computer fan.
I used to work at a car stereo shop and we had a RTA meter. Real time analyzer. It would show how loud each frequency was in real time so we could see the effect of changes we did to the systems. Lot's of the cheap spl meters won't read low frequencies. Thanks for the great vids.
Ther second he said "loudest propeller driven aircraft" i was like "oh god the bear"...and then he said the thunderscreech. this channel makes me so happy every time i watch it
Finally someone puts a huge buffer at the end of the video for cutoff prevention and for keeping the "next video" links from obscuring the visuals, and not just for putting in a humorous stinger.
I felt like I learned alot more about fan concepts that I didn't think were ever possible. Enjoyed the video to say the least! Tesla valve fan was the most surprising as I've heard of it before, but never thought someone would put it into a fan.
As someone who remembers the days of the insane high-RPM Delta fans being the cool (no pun intended) things to run in your PC, I'd love to see a sound test with a Delta fan motor. Love the vids keep up the good work!
Hey, grab a UMIK-1. Not only is it fairly cheap for what it is, because it's a usb based measurement microphone it can pretty much perfectly measure the spl as well as the exact frequency response 20hz-20khz. All you need once you have the mic is a computer and a free program called REW (room EQ wizard). Hope this helps!!!
You can use REW, but it's really not needed here. Any audio application that has an FFT in it can do what he wants, like Audacity (also free, and has more knobs on the FFT)
Thanks for the content, I'm happy to see all new ideas submitted get always a fair tryout, it's easy to just look at some designs and just say no, but here is just why not. Good luck with the new submissions, hope you can keep up with the weird. Is great to see how much you format have evolve over the months, new equipment, new display options, etc. On the mic test, I guess is fine but what if you measure at different speeds or ranges? I know is asking for a lot but is an idea. Good luck and keep it up
You could get a Mini Dsp UMIK and use REW. It would be less then $80 USD and I would imagine it would give you quite accurate spectrum analysis. While the UMIK isn’t laboratory quality test gear it does come with a calibration file and should give you a pretty decent indication of what’s going on.
this was a really good range of fans, from the high tech pringles fan to the curious grindr fan... it's the full range of testing out an idea and seeing what happens. Haven't seen the results yet but I bet they surprise me!
The cheese grater works because there are air flow guiding fin designs that are like that, the the tips mimic Owl feathers, as owls need their quiet flappings dampened. Similar designs can be seen in Thinkpad fan blades you can even find patents for it.
I think the equipment you need is called an RTA. They are used for tuning frequency response in large sound systems. You might also look for SPL meters. They show the peak decibels at X frequency. Hope this help!
As a car audio nerd the first thing that comes to mind for an SPL meter/RTA. Check out the Audio Control DM-RTA or though they are discontinued, an Audio Control SA-3050A. I'm not sure if they would fit the bill for what you need, but they've been used in car audio and loud bass for ages.
*@Major Hardware* 9:55 Can you mount the fan onto a plexiglas or similar, to stop the "back-flow" of air from the back side of the fan into the front again. (film it especially from the side, but it would also be interesting to see it from like 45* angle & from the front too)
I have had Qidi X-plus for a little over a year now and it is simply awesome. It works great without modifications and includes high themp extruder. Another great thing is that Qidi customer support is simply outstanding. I had a minor issue with my printer in the early days, and they answered promptly to emails and sent instructional photos and videos to accompany the trouble shooting. After the trouble shooting, they promptly shipped the replacement parts to me (the issue was x-axle coupling that wouldn’t stay tightened for long time).
I submitted a Prandtl fan design the first week you had the fan showdown open and I am very sad to have seen someone else get selected for the same design and to have never seen my submission get tested, but kudos to them, they seem to have made a much better looking design than what I created and submitted
I like the commentary during the smoke test over the music. I would have missed the back feed of air on the Tesla. Have you every put any thought into how you could measure static pressure? With a radiator I'm thinking this may have a higher impact on cooling than air flow since you need the pressure to push the air through.
@Major Hardware You could use Octave and run a recording of the fan through an fft (fast Fourier transform) filter to get the frequency breakdown for each fan. Octave is free, and you already have a mic that should work well enough. The program you would need could be as little as three lines of code.
Given the potential value proposition of the Tesla valve design, maybe adding a static pressure test to the standard battery of tests would be a good idea.
You should also take into account ambient humidity. Higher relative humidity improves cooling capacity and therefore there could be changes in the ranking!
Hey @Major Hardware, I think you can set up a "flat response" microphone just the same way as you use the decibel meter (same distance, position) and use the spectral analisys tool included in DAWs (Like Reaper). There is a big difference on how the human ear react to different frequencies. Let me know if I can help!
Just want to say, this series is amazing, I Discovered it around ep3 of season 1 and I quickly caught up and ive been hooked ever since. Really enjoyed the voice over during the smoke tests this episode, but im torn as i enjoyed that 80s style music as well.
You're right that there's almost no decibel meters with a built in spectrum analyzer, at least no good ones I know of. But what you could buy is a calibrated microphone meant for room correcting speakers. miniDSP makes a few models (though ~$140 is pretty expensive) you'd be able to use with software on your pc to see a frequency response/sound spectrum, measure SPL very accurately and of course you would be able to record audio straight from the mic itself. Might also be worthwhile to set up a small enclosure with wool blankets or other sound absorbing materials to get an isolated and more accurate measurement/recording. I also find measuring and room correcting speakers pretty satisfying, so if that's something you're interested in it's not just a single use purchase. Hope this helps and great videos as always. Love your dedication to improving quality.
Thought on the whisk, I know what was meant by noticing the force when using a hang blender. I think the difference is the hand blender was being used in a narrow vessel. Use a hand/such blender in a glass as you make a milkshake. I think adding a housing such as we've seen in the more complicated multi part fans would help get a lot more performance out of it.
You will want to upgrade the Ifast to an IDEX setup as printing with a dual-extruder system on a single carriage can lead to heat-creep on the extruder waiting to print. I am not saying you cannot get them dialed-in but an IDEX (independent extruder) setup would allow the support material extruder/hotend to park until needed which will eliminate the heat-creep problem. Plus the IDEX setup will add much greater potential to your overall 3d printing setup with many features unavailable with a single carriage printer (unless you go tool-changing). Def looking forward to to learn more about this printer and how it prints with dual extruders as I was not impressed with the Replicator clones in that aspect.
The thing about concerns of wide air cones is sometimes _you might want that_ in a bigger build. The interior of a PC enclosure could be a _giant_ chasm but there are discount fans that can spread the air into a wide cone for use by other fans that'll just grab that air right up, ancillary components may be kept cooler than otherwise with a more narrow cone of air.
So you're telling me cheese grater with some random fingers designed by bob living in moms basement is within margin of error to mathemetically calculated fan based on theory of some popular scientist?
Many years ago, I worked at U-M Hospital. During that time, they were buying new helicopters for survival flight. One of the main drivers (besides age of the machines) was that the 2-bladed rotor design was too loud going over populated areas. The forward-moving tip of the blade, when they were heading somewhere fast, was creating sonic booms. I remember hearing it go over when they were really pushing to get somewhere and I can confirm that it was VERY loud. The new helicopters have 4-bladed rotors, which could be cranked at a much lower speed (and also gave better control, anyway) and the flyovers became much quieter.
The Whisk also looks just like those disks you put in a seed planter to plant fields, the scoops pick up a seed as it rotates and carries it up to a hole where it drops it through to the ground as you roll it, so evenly distributes the seeds. Not very good for air though it seems lol
In the Tesla valve fan the air travels outward in the curved areas/channels of the “blades.” That is why it spits the smoke out. There is no proper resistance to keep air centered.
The noise of the Tupolev Tu-95 Bear comes not only from the propeller tips but a very large part of the volume comes from the counter-rotating propellers.
I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the smoke visualisation would benefit from a box or shield to prevent smoke being drawn round the sides of the fan by a combination of the smoke's own velocity and the Bernoulli effect from behind the fan. You could achieve this with a PC case with a see=through side panel, or just by setting the fan body in the middle of a sheet of plexiglass. If you don't want to do it permanently, you can cut it to fit loosely then fill the gap with something like plasticine. With the overspill removed, the true flow of the smoke will be far clearer.
You may have some luck attempting contact with a group that tests other parameters or physics and see if the can help. It'd be cool to see the static pressure of some of these, and I think the tool you want to see the frequency would be called an oscilloscope. Gamers Nexus or Applied Physics may be up for a collab.
A fixed ring of material will drag air around with it and pretty much create a turbulent interruption there, which is basically what's happening at the tips of the Tesla valve fan. The Prandtl fan has something going for it as many aircraft wings have a similar design called "washout", where the airfoil gradually points more downward toward the wing tips to avoid tip-stalling at lower airspeeds, reducing turbulence there.
To answer your dB meter question: you can get a calibrated measurement microphone (or if your meter has an RCA output you can connect it to an interface). Then you can use software like Room EQ Wizard - use your meter's display to calibrate the levels and then you should be good to measure!
I'd like to suggest mounting the fans in the middle of a sheet of acrylic. This would separate the exhaust from the intake on the camera footage and more clearly highlight that performance as well as show a more true visual of airflow when the unit is in a case.
I wonder how much the fan designs with an outer ring would benefit from a printed (or purchased) skirt of some sort around the inside edge of the housing. could be interesting to take a bunch of those styled fans that performed decently and put them through a gauntlet to see different ways of sealing that area in practice
I'm an acoustician in the UK and use the NTI XL2. There is a 3rd octave Spectrum Analyzer software extension built into it. Its known as a Class 1 device and is used for professional noise survey applications. Also, its about as cheap as a Class 1 unit gets. Hope this helps.
The supersonic blade tips discussion reminds me of a silly thing from motorcycling. Kawasaki has a few models under the H2 line with a supercharger designed by their aerospace division. Shortly before engine redline the tips of the compressor vanes exceed the speed of sound. Since they're small the sound is a rather high-pitched chirp.
The hand/stick blender one didn't do so well, for moving air, but the cool pattern was interesting to note. That might be what gives it the astonishing mixing power it has. I've noticed that if I'm blending something, water, soup, whatever, in a 1-1.5 litre jug, I can lift the stick blender up, and the rotational/suction force is enough to lift the jug with it. If you get a chance to play with one, check it out. Just keep a hand underneath, as it's not a perfect effect ;) Love your work man. I really enjoy watching you go through all the crazy designs people come up with, and appreciate you sharing it with us all.
Bro.. please keep your beard.
We had a mustache mishap it was unsaveable so you get fat face for now
@@MajorHardware good, we thought we lost you to the clean-shaven!
@@MajorHardware Better without the facial hair. IMNSHO. Your life, your face, your choice.
Do the tesla valve without the shroud ring and at 2 different lengths.
Lol omg so that's what's off here 😂
I would like to see one day a fan showdown wherein the challenge is for viewers to submit variations of a certain fan that performed well in the showdown, the goal being to refine and maximize the abilities of that design.
I like this idea. The Biohazard (not sure if that is it's name), should be the first one in the series.
Great idea!
Surely if you're taking the competition at all seriously that would happen anyway...
I like the idea too!
The Fan Shownup
"There's no fan I can't print now" - famous last words
We need a clockwork "fan" with multiple tiny 3d scanned copies of James rotating around, pure spectacle, performance be damned!
Challenge accepted!
Someone’s going to design a multi-turbine fan with internal printed ball bearings.
@@JesusisJesus Did you just describe a gang whistle? Will that be an air raid siren? We gonna win the noise war! Contrary goals; bring it!
I wonder if I could design a tiny 3D printed internal combustion engine to power it....
Challenge accepted, be ready for a 5 rotor beast
I am astonished that ludicrous Cheeze Greater did so exceptionally well lmao. Doesn't even make any sense. It was literally knocking on the door of that Prandtl fan.
Probably just the big flat surfaces. The holes dont really matter too much after the air starts moving. I am surprised it wasnt louder.
@@liberatorkramit noise might have something to do with that too, since the holes are fairly even and large. Not much room for whistle development
I was wondering if the wispy fins disrupt tip vortices, could be part of it.
You got all your cameras dialed in this week, all the footage looks fantastic! Kuddos.
definitely
@@onionknight2239 I was admiring the quality too. So good that he has the smoke clip with rotating mini window too. But for some reasons the thing that he shows first isn't the first one he tested (tested tesla first).
New to this channel so have he tried to smooth the surfaces first after the printing? Like manually or with acetone etc? And would it make things better or worse. Good stuff!
The channels in the blades of the tesla fan are basically trapping air, which is then travelling radially outwards due to a centrifugal effect. It's sort of working like a blower fan, except when it hits the ring at the edge of the fan it's spewing out the front and the back.
sounds like its performance will improve significantly if they fix this issue
I am not a pc enthusiast, nor do i have huge interest in 3D printing. So how is it then that the Fan Showdown got me hooked? I do not know. But i do know that you have an amazing show and i appreciate it for what it is. I think i speak for everyone here when i say thank you for the time and effort you put into this.
because it's something different and unique from all the other cookie cutter copycat junk on youtube. :)
Agree
And it has production quality, and really nice background music, and someone who is genuinely passionate and interested in the things he does. There's way too many boring channels that brings nothing to the table... like every single reddit channel...
I think the turbulence in the Tesla valve inspired fan is due to the air moving outwards with a considerable speed due to the ridges in the fan blades. If the air moves on top of the blade towards the outside it eventually hits the shroud and then will split. Half of it goes down, the other half goes up, which is what we see as a small whirl at the outer edge.
The narration of the smoke test was an awesome addition!
Been watching the channel even before the fan showdown, and I think the voiceover on the smoke test is really helpful!
Really looking forward to more episodes!
And congratulations on the new printer!
Same here my friend, same here!
No way. lol I zone out to his music and watch the smoke at that point lol. I gotta have the music🤣
I did like how he pointed out the turbulent flow or blow back on the first fan i think the tesla turbine. I really like his music though. hahaha
I came here to say this, great commentary!
I love how this series has gone from “dongs” on a hub to being based of paper’s written by aerodynamics, supported by research inspired from military aircraft and done by NASA on the ISS, in space, like daim
Love the series, keep up the good work
and....cheese graters
exactly.
That ....rocket.... fan performed surprisingly well though... :D
The level of enthusiasm that you have for receiving the new printer, almost matches the my level of enthusiasm when I see that you post a new video. With the addition of this new printer, I can only hope to see some interesting designs being tested. Keep on doing what you're doing!
Get a VSt spectrum analyser plugin (or standalone) and set up a mic next to the db meter running into your audio interface. You'l get a lovely real time audio spectrum on your PC/lappy. It should run nicely in your video prod suite or run it thru Audacity if you dont have a DAW to use. I used to use Voxengo SPAN and Fre(a)koscope by Smart Electronix.
Studio engineer here to confirm that SPAN is excellent. I'd also recommend iZotope RX, which has an intro version currently on sale for about $30 US. It gives an incredible amount of precision for measuring and visualizing loudness, pitch, harmonics, etc.
My first thought.
well...I was looking to see if anyone suggested a guitar tuner.
Loved the narrated smoke test! Definitely should keep that around
Been watching since Season 1 :D love this show! Glad to hear that you now have a new printer to help print the insane things the "fans" can come up with :D
For fans like the Tesla valve i think a test rig that does static pressure would be more ideal. so a chamber wrapped around a 120mm Radiator with a U of water to show if the area between the back of the fan and the radiator becomes more pressurized when the fan is moving air and if so how much.
Now that you have a printer that can do dissolvable support material, what if you made a new radiator with improved tolerances, using your copper powder. Perhaps we can achieve better performance? A return to the Cooling Tower with our Fan Showdown Leader would also be interesting.
Copper, wood, etc. filaments are usually only a few percent of that material, it would be more than useless to print something that's actually supposed to conduct heat.
he was only able to do that because it was a resin printer, not a filament printer. the new one is for filament only
I think what's happening with the tesla fan is that air is getting caught in the channels rather than sucked in, then "centrifugal force" (technically just inertia I know) kicks in and flings it outward toward the edge of the fan. It then hits the wall of the fan and "splashes" in wharever direction it can.
To fix it, I think you'd probably want to add a different shapeat the end - something that would redirect the air in the channels to the inside of the computer.
Love the show, Such a unique program! I will have to send in a fan! Keep it up!
Look at that YOUNG Man !!! Mr. baby face haha. Brotha the video is on point. Your cameras are dialled in perfect and the quality is perfect. Keep up the great vids !!
Aerospace engineer thoughts: Consider a simple pressure differential test. Air movement at zero pressure (the fan operating in open air) is not really relevant to actual operating conditions.
So put the fan in a box with limited airflow into the box, and build yourself a manometer pressure measurement tool (a very simple u-shaped clear tube with liquid in it). See how much pressure the various fans can produce. You don't need absolute values to see the relative answers, but even a simple manometer gives you real numbers (the change in height of a column of water). A simple noise test is interesting, and the flow vis with smoke is interesting too, but doesn't tell you much about what the fan is GOOD at - moving pressure from one side to the other. Also, the noise will change significantly when the fan is "under load" because it dramatically changes the airflow around the blades.
Also, there are plenty of inexpensive or free spectrum analyzing apps for smartphones, that will work well enough for this purpose.
I haven't subscribed because these are the only videos I have any interest in on your channel.
That being said, your presentation has gotten MUCH better! This video had a really good energy and the flow kept me engaged when I normally skip the smoke tests. I feel like it shows a lot of improvement. It's great to see you improve along with your resources.
I'm excited to see what you can print! The possibilities are endless!
I sent you one a couple of weeks ago that follows a design similar to the whisk, but hopefully improves on it. I wasn't hopeful you would be able to print it, but this changes everything!
Stay as you are, so natural, impartial and professional. As absurd as the idea with the fans is, it's always exciting to see how they perform and you present it to be enormously accessible. Thanks for that!
the end result with the fans spinning in separate boxes and you talking in the background. that is some top notch editing, I really like it.
This is really cool. As a drone enthusiast, I was designing a drone/technology class for my students, and learned a lot about the properties of props and the drones with the extra airfoil around the blades is another way to reduce sound and create extra lift. It's intriguing stuff.
I've always imagined one of the big, limiting issues of "scaling down" propeller/impeller designs, particularly this much, is that zones of turbulence and undesired "air cushion" effects do not scale linearly. Especially when the surface area get this small and RPM goes up. Air has mass, and viscosity.
Am I thinking of this wrong?
Atmosphere and gravity give limits. That is why aircraft are not any larger.
I loved the buck of water joke and would have totally not noticed had you not provided that fantastic visual aid. Great video :)
I swear you have the best "smoke blowing into a fan" footage on the internet. :D
Vapenation
@@MajorHardware Those are some impressive rips. 😂
Love the descriptions of the airflow over the old music played during it as before
Man I've loved the progress of this channel from pre Fan Showdown to where it's at today. I never thought fans could be this interesting. I look forward to seeing the crazy designs people imagine. It's also surprising which ones end up on top.
This keeps getting better and better
:( I've watched all the fan show down vids. When that one vid popped up on my homepage, and I kept scrolling past it, and eventually clicked it just to make it go away, I never thought I'd be here crying for more! Such a great series. I love all the crazy designs and often unexpected wins. I'm kinda glad I've never used design software, 'cause I'd be spending hours designing fans to send in xD
Loving the new fan potential AND the commentary over top of the smoke test. It's exactly what I felt that section of the video was missing.
Shows just how impressive the Noctua design is. Although, they also know the KV of the motor, so a bit of an unfair advantage.
i think some smart people would have figured out the KV, as a few have outperformed the stock fan
What design? Noctua didn't design jack shit. There's like 3-4 Fans that look exactly like the Noctua A12x25 that are much older than the Noctua A12x25...
I really love the commentary for the flow test over just music. I tend to skip the smoke test because I have no idea what I am really looking at. It was much the same to me. So thank you for this change and I hope it sticks.
i like the new design with the cooling performance. your comentry on the smoke test is also a nice touch
As always, one of the most unique and interesting TH-cam content. Thank you for doing that!
Try investigating a bit some measuring microphones - even relatively cheap one in combo with some software will give you good sound spectrum representation
You have an amazing personality. You are marketable. branch out, invent, take risks. your talent will pull you through.
Thanks for the video! Suggestion for the next time: Please show a clip of the supports being dissolved underwater; I would love to see that!
Oooooooooooooooooooooooo I like
The editing really had me cracking up my man, great vid!
Fellow Mech. Engineer. I don't even own a desktop pc but I really enjoy the creativity you foster and the application of various engineering theories.
Have used spectrum analyzer apps for quick dirty, back of the envelop assessments, picking up bearing harmonics etc. They're free, give it a shot
I don't think I've ever been this early to one of your videos. Can't wait to watch this one.
for 12 cm fan blade tip to reach super sonic it would need to spin more than 50 000 rpm or 875 revolutions per second :D I dont think blade tip noise is an issue in computer fan.
Love the new format!!! Printer, video, and analysis 👌
I used to work at a car stereo shop and we had a RTA meter. Real time analyzer. It would show how loud each frequency was in real time so we could see the effect of changes we did to the systems. Lot's of the cheap spl meters won't read low frequencies. Thanks for the great vids.
Talking over the other segments really kept up the flow of the whole video and made it more engaging to watch imo, great stuff!
Why was the Cheeze Greater so good? Hahaha. I enjoyed your analysis of the smoke shows.
Ther second he said "loudest propeller driven aircraft" i was like "oh god the bear"...and then he said the thunderscreech. this channel makes me so happy every time i watch it
Finally someone puts a huge buffer at the end of the video for cutoff prevention and for keeping the "next video" links from obscuring the visuals, and not just for putting in a humorous stinger.
i like that you talk trough the smoke test. makes it way more intresting :) i usually skip the smoke test but not this time :)
I felt like I learned alot more about fan concepts that I didn't think were ever possible. Enjoyed the video to say the least! Tesla valve fan was the most surprising as I've heard of it before, but never thought someone would put it into a fan.
As someone who remembers the days of the insane high-RPM Delta fans being the cool (no pun intended) things to run in your PC, I'd love to see a sound test with a Delta fan motor. Love the vids keep up the good work!
video production today was on point... loved the included smoke commentary... excellent job sir
Nice presentation and narration upgrades! Fantastic!
Hey, grab a UMIK-1. Not only is it fairly cheap for what it is, because it's a usb based measurement microphone it can pretty much perfectly measure the spl as well as the exact frequency response 20hz-20khz. All you need once you have the mic is a computer and a free program called REW (room EQ wizard). Hope this helps!!!
You can use REW, but it's really not needed here. Any audio application that has an FFT in it can do what he wants, like Audacity (also free, and has more knobs on the FFT)
@@gorak9000 REW is better because it automatically reads the calibration file for the UMIK-1
@@Anthony_DeSouza Precisely! That and a bunch of extra features that can be super useful!
Thanks for the content, I'm happy to see all new ideas submitted get always a fair tryout, it's easy to just look at some designs and just say no, but here is just why not.
Good luck with the new submissions, hope you can keep up with the weird.
Is great to see how much you format have evolve over the months, new equipment, new display options, etc. On the mic test, I guess is fine but what if you measure at different speeds or ranges? I know is asking for a lot but is an idea.
Good luck and keep it up
You could get a Mini Dsp UMIK and use REW. It would be less then $80 USD and I would imagine it would give you quite accurate spectrum analysis. While the UMIK isn’t laboratory quality test gear it does come with a calibration file and should give you a pretty decent indication of what’s going on.
☝I was just about to suggest the same thing. I own a UMIK-1 and know that it should be perfect for this use case 😊
this was a really good range of fans, from the high tech pringles fan to the curious grindr fan... it's the full range of testing out an idea and seeing what happens. Haven't seen the results yet but I bet they surprise me!
wow they were so quiet
I'm halfway into this video, and it is amazing. You're awesome, thank you for your hard work
The cheese grater works because there are air flow guiding fin designs that are like that, the the tips mimic Owl feathers, as owls need their quiet flappings dampened. Similar designs can be seen in Thinkpad fan blades you can even find patents for it.
I think the equipment you need is called an RTA. They are used for tuning frequency response in large sound systems. You might also look for SPL meters. They show the peak decibels at X frequency. Hope this help!
As a car audio nerd the first thing that comes to mind for an SPL meter/RTA. Check out the Audio Control DM-RTA or though they are discontinued, an Audio Control SA-3050A. I'm not sure if they would fit the bill for what you need, but they've been used in car audio and loud bass for ages.
*@Major Hardware*
9:55 Can you mount the fan onto a plexiglas or similar, to stop the "back-flow" of air from the back side of the fan into the front again.
(film it especially from the side, but it would also be interesting to see it from like 45* angle & from the front too)
I have had Qidi X-plus for a little over a year now and it is simply awesome. It works great without modifications and includes high themp extruder. Another great thing is that Qidi customer support is simply outstanding. I had a minor issue with my printer in the early days, and they answered promptly to emails and sent instructional photos and videos to accompany the trouble shooting. After the trouble shooting, they promptly shipped the replacement parts to me (the issue was x-axle coupling that wouldn’t stay tightened for long time).
I submitted a Prandtl fan design the first week you had the fan showdown open and I am very sad to have seen someone else get selected for the same design and to have never seen my submission get tested, but kudos to them, they seem to have made a much better looking design than what I created and submitted
The studio is looking awesome! It really pops in 4k
I like the commentary during the smoke test over the music. I would have missed the back feed of air on the Tesla. Have you every put any thought into how you could measure static pressure? With a radiator I'm thinking this may have a higher impact on cooling than air flow since you need the pressure to push the air through.
I really want to see what happens when you run the "Tesla valve" fan backwards.
This.
I appreciate the color commentary on the smoke tests!
@Major Hardware You could use Octave and run a recording of the fan through an fft (fast Fourier transform) filter to get the frequency breakdown for each fan. Octave is free, and you already have a mic that should work well enough. The program you would need could be as little as three lines of code.
I like the commentary during the smoke test instead of the music of previous episodes
Given the potential value proposition of the Tesla valve design, maybe adding a static pressure test to the standard battery of tests would be a good idea.
You should also take into account ambient humidity. Higher relative humidity improves cooling capacity and therefore there could be changes in the ranking!
Hey @Major Hardware, I think you can set up a "flat response" microphone just the same way as you use the decibel meter (same distance, position) and use the spectral analisys tool included in DAWs (Like Reaper).
There is a big difference on how the human ear react to different frequencies.
Let me know if I can help!
You can actually see the Prandtl Fan keep the air spinning behind it! Very cool!
Just want to say, this series is amazing, I Discovered it around ep3 of season 1 and I quickly caught up and ive been hooked ever since.
Really enjoyed the voice over during the smoke tests this episode, but im torn as i enjoyed that 80s style music as well.
You're right that there's almost no decibel meters with a built in spectrum analyzer, at least no good ones I know of. But what you could buy is a calibrated microphone meant for room correcting speakers. miniDSP makes a few models (though ~$140 is pretty expensive) you'd be able to use with software on your pc to see a frequency response/sound spectrum, measure SPL very accurately and of course you would be able to record audio straight from the mic itself. Might also be worthwhile to set up a small enclosure with wool blankets or other sound absorbing materials to get an isolated and more accurate measurement/recording.
I also find measuring and room correcting speakers pretty satisfying, so if that's something you're interested in it's not just a single use purchase.
Hope this helps and great videos as always. Love your dedication to improving quality.
Thought on the whisk, I know what was meant by noticing the force when using a hang blender. I think the difference is the hand blender was being used in a narrow vessel. Use a hand/such blender in a glass as you make a milkshake. I think adding a housing such as we've seen in the more complicated multi part fans would help get a lot more performance out of it.
You will want to upgrade the Ifast to an IDEX setup as printing with a dual-extruder system on a single carriage can lead to heat-creep on the extruder waiting to print. I am not saying you cannot get them dialed-in but an IDEX (independent extruder) setup would allow the support material extruder/hotend to park until needed
which will eliminate the heat-creep problem. Plus the IDEX setup will add much greater potential to your overall 3d printing setup with many features unavailable with a single carriage printer (unless you go tool-changing). Def looking forward to to learn more about this printer and how it prints with dual extruders as I was not impressed with the Replicator clones in that aspect.
The thing about concerns of wide air cones is sometimes _you might want that_ in a bigger build. The interior of a PC enclosure could be a _giant_ chasm but there are discount fans that can spread the air into a wide cone for use by other fans that'll just grab that air right up, ancillary components may be kept cooler than otherwise with a more narrow cone of air.
So you're telling me cheese grater with some random fingers designed by bob living in moms basement is within margin of error to mathemetically calculated fan based on theory of some popular scientist?
Many years ago, I worked at U-M Hospital. During that time, they were buying new helicopters for survival flight. One of the main drivers (besides age of the machines) was that the 2-bladed rotor design was too loud going over populated areas. The forward-moving tip of the blade, when they were heading somewhere fast, was creating sonic booms. I remember hearing it go over when they were really pushing to get somewhere and I can confirm that it was VERY loud. The new helicopters have 4-bladed rotors, which could be cranked at a much lower speed (and also gave better control, anyway) and the flyovers became much quieter.
Daaaam i love this videos!! Please don‘t stop to make this kind of video! It is so cool!
The Whisk also looks just like those disks you put in a seed planter to plant fields, the scoops pick up a seed as it rotates and carries it up to a hole where it drops it through to the ground as you roll it, so evenly distributes the seeds.
Not very good for air though it seems lol
I loved the breakdown on the smoke test.
In the Tesla valve fan the air travels outward in the curved areas/channels of the “blades.” That is why it spits the smoke out. There is no proper resistance to keep air centered.
The noise of the Tupolev Tu-95 Bear comes not only from the propeller tips but a very large part of the volume comes from the counter-rotating propellers.
I didn't like your new camera at first, but it looks awesome now. It's a very unique look.
I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the smoke visualisation would benefit from a box or shield to prevent smoke being drawn round the sides of the fan by a combination of the smoke's own velocity and the Bernoulli effect from behind the fan.
You could achieve this with a PC case with a see=through side panel, or just by setting the fan body in the middle of a sheet of plexiglass. If you don't want to do it permanently, you can cut it to fit loosely then fill the gap with something like plasticine.
With the overspill removed, the true flow of the smoke will be far clearer.
You may have some luck attempting contact with a group that tests other parameters or physics and see if the can help.
It'd be cool to see the static pressure of some of these, and I think the tool you want to see the frequency would be called an oscilloscope.
Gamers Nexus or Applied Physics may be up for a collab.
Cool printer. Maybe i'll get to see my design 'the triple decker' now too. Because that might've been really hard to print before!
your show is getting better - nice to see :)
A fixed ring of material will drag air around with it and pretty much create a turbulent interruption there, which is basically what's happening at the tips of the Tesla valve fan. The Prandtl fan has something going for it as many aircraft wings have a similar design called "washout", where the airfoil gradually points more downward toward the wing tips to avoid tip-stalling at lower airspeeds, reducing turbulence there.
To answer your dB meter question: you can get a calibrated measurement microphone (or if your meter has an RCA output you can connect it to an interface). Then you can use software like Room EQ Wizard - use your meter's display to calibrate the levels and then you should be good to measure!
I'd like to suggest mounting the fans in the middle of a sheet of acrylic. This would separate the exhaust from the intake on the camera footage and more clearly highlight that performance as well as show a more true visual of airflow when the unit is in a case.
I wonder how much the fan designs with an outer ring would benefit from a printed (or purchased) skirt of some sort around the inside edge of the housing. could be interesting to take a bunch of those styled fans that performed decently and put them through a gauntlet to see different ways of sealing that area in practice
I'm an acoustician in the UK and use the NTI XL2. There is a 3rd octave Spectrum Analyzer software extension built into it. Its known as a Class 1 device and is used for professional noise survey applications. Also, its about as cheap as a Class 1 unit gets. Hope this helps.
The supersonic blade tips discussion reminds me of a silly thing from motorcycling. Kawasaki has a few models under the H2 line with a supercharger designed by their aerospace division. Shortly before engine redline the tips of the compressor vanes exceed the speed of sound. Since they're small the sound is a rather high-pitched chirp.
The hand/stick blender one didn't do so well, for moving air, but the cool pattern was interesting to note. That might be what gives it the astonishing mixing power it has. I've noticed that if I'm blending something, water, soup, whatever, in a 1-1.5 litre jug, I can lift the stick blender up, and the rotational/suction force is enough to lift the jug with it. If you get a chance to play with one, check it out. Just keep a hand underneath, as it's not a perfect effect ;)
Love your work man. I really enjoy watching you go through all the crazy designs people come up with, and appreciate you sharing it with us all.