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!
@@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.
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!
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.
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
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.
It's not as powerful as I thought it would be, but it works very well. th-cam.com/users/postUgkxGjG43--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...
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
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.
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
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.
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!
My old box fan's motor burned out and I bought a new one, which has a terribly out-of-balance blade unit. After watching this video and doing some calculations, I took the good blade out of the dead unit and installed it in the new unit. Worked like a charm. ;)
Smart guy, a lot of people think that fan=cold air, but you're using negative pressure to keep noise out of the bedroom only when it's cool enough outside to cool down the inside. It's nice to know that people like you exist.
@@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.
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 There was no joke, child. Laughing at someone who is explaining something is rude. If people are rude then i say something about it.
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.
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! 🎉🙏
lol, I can hardly believe it… I bought a box fan and immediately thought about balancing that crap. Now a month later, I thought I’d do it today, after work, and you post this. Well now I’m definitely gonna do that
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.
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.
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
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 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
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.
I did this with two cheap fans a couple of years ago. I was so proud when they ran smoothly. First thing I tried was taping a coin to the fan to balance it
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!
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).
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.
@@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.
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!
Bobbing the fan back and forth to overcome the friction of the motor and allow the heaviest part of the blade to settle to the bottom is brilliant. Thanks! 🤘🏻
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.
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.
I my opinion none of your videos are unawesome... they are just to few! Thanks for keeping making interesting and actually educationally (intended or not) videos!
Great video! I did the same thing, sucking air out of the house when I lived in NM, it was always cool at night. I opened the bedroom windows and put a fan in the window on the other side of the house.
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.
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.
I followed your instructions with the exception of substitute the screw with a bolt and nut as @UCmHWM5i3AbfChco8t2BH_2Q had suggested in the comments. This made the distance from the center less important as you can add washers as needed. Balancing was fast and accurate and now the fan runs like a dream, many thanks Matthias!
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.
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
I recently tried to balance a Wind Machine box type fan. I was able to take the blade off. looked at it closely and found the blades were out of alignment no way to fix that. Matthias glad you got yours close to balanced.
They sell high velocity fans as well, they have a circular fan blade encased in a plastic housing with a slit for an outlet, you can move an all the air in your house out in a matter of minutes. Terrific fans for pulling air in our out of a room in case you're willing to buy one like that. Also you can set those fans on their low settings and they're much quieter than a box fan while drawing multiple times as much air out. I have one set up in my shed (I live in Florida), when I go out there in the summer to work it'll easily be 110 to 120 in there, but if I turn the fan on half an hour before I go in it'll draw it down to 90 degrees.
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.
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!
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.
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. 😁👌
Thanks for this. I made a frame to fit a sliding window with a panel to block the top half and box fan on the bottom in one of the windows in our master bedroom. I built it in case one of the family caught covid then they could have a slightly negative pressure room and bath. The fan vibrates a bit much so I'll make use of this technique.
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.
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"
I like your idea to shake the fan to cancel out the bearing friction. I might use this method myself on a window fan that I have (Air King 9155). But it's only a little out of balance so it might not be worth the effort.
Nice, a long time ago when sleeping and got upset at the fan noise vibration I took some string and fed some into the shaft of the fan and it self balanced
Another way to balance is to put tape on the blades. It sits flat enough to not interfere aerodynamically, and is lighter overall but just as effective- being farther from the center. That is the way you balance RC props. You can also balance much more finely with a vibration sensor app on your cell phone. Gravity balancing is great for making big changes and static balancing, but if you want it super duper smooth, you can make tiny changes and monitor its effect with the vibrations via trial and error.
don't you also need a rotary encoder, so you can match the maximum amplitude of the vibration with the position on the shaft? Otherwise you're just applying tape around randomly to see if it gets better or worse
@@gorak9000 The way I described, you basically are applying tape randomly to see if it improves. It is much faster and easier than it sounds. The appeal is that it uses a free app on a phone, with no additional equipment or complexity.
I balanced my fan in a similar way but removed weight from the heavy side. Then, we bought a Quite Cool whole house fan and our box fan is now in the garage collecting dust. The whole house fan is in the attic and draws in cool air from outside and blows out the hot air in the attic to help keep the house cool all day long.
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.
I went as far as cutting blades to even lengths to get faster spin out of it. It shaked a bit but had more air flow, to a point. Had to be close to fan to get full benefit. After three years the motor burned out mostly cause I left it on all summer.
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!
Good call
This is an ingenious solution to a problem almost everyone with a cheap box fan has. Thank you!!!
I would like a full video with the science behind blowing hot air out / cold in / opening windows / closing them when its hot
I agree. The energy savings of this type of modified whole house fan versus running the AC.
@@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.
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!
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.
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
"dad why are you staring at a still chip of wood on the fan?"
" Because I did a good job son."
I like it when I get recommended tips like this that are actually a solution to a problem I have right now.
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.
It's not as powerful as I thought it would be, but it works very well. th-cam.com/users/postUgkxGjG43--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...
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
My old box fan's motor burned out and I bought a new one, which has a terribly out-of-balance blade unit. After watching this video and doing some calculations, I took the good blade out of the dead unit and installed it in the new unit. Worked like a charm. ;)
Smart guy, a lot of people think that fan=cold air, but you're using negative pressure to keep noise out of the bedroom only when it's cool enough outside to cool down the inside. It's nice to know that people like you exist.
We had a house in the south with an attic fan - holy cow sucking the hot air out of the house was AMAZING.
AirKing makes powerful window fans that work the same way. I open all the windows about two inches and it freshens the whole house.
@@harlanbarnhart4656 I have a house fan that vents to the attic, I'd like to see one for a window though!
So would it be SUCKING the hot air out or BLOWING the hot air out? 🙄
@@steveyknoxville both
@@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.
These are the videos I subbed for 🤣😂
Hell yeah your technique for finding the balance is a big help
About time right?
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.
@@Engineer9736 you just don't see the jokes here kid. Just go do something else on yt
@@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.
I use like three of these $20 box fans so this actually helps me a lot thank you.
I think everyone has at least one of these rattle boxes in their home! Let’s get them balanced!
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.
@@Hoaxer51 I dont
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! 🎉🙏
lol, I can hardly believe it… I bought a box fan and immediately thought about balancing that crap. Now a month later, I thought I’d do it today, after work, and you post this.
Well now I’m definitely gonna do that
*Matthias sounds like the kind of guy who if someone annoyed him, he'd just calmly fix them and keep walking lol*
No he fixes things that dont need fixed...
Incredible that knowledge is at the tip of our hands. But can we be ever so grateful for those that take time to pass it on?
Simple, but really essential for making any high precision high rotation rotating things
You got my sub
Mattias it is boiling in Ottawa. My noisy box fan was driving me nuts last night. Thanks for the instructions
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.
I have used that method lots of times myself. wish I thought of this sooner.
A touch of common sense and simple ingenuity goes a long way. Good Job
Excellent! Also never would have thought to shake the fan to have it settle.
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.
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
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
This is good advice! I would love to see Matthias get into RC stuff, wouldn't you?
@@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
I love how a simple fix can turn something from nearly useless to useful again.
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.
I did this with two cheap fans a couple of years ago. I was so proud when they ran smoothly. First thing I tried was taping a coin to the fan to balance it
The benefit to ease ratio of this tip is fantastic!
This technique completely fixed my horribly unbalanced fan. Thank you!
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!
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).
@@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.
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.
@@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.
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!
Good thinking....shake the housing. I would have tried to build some king of balance jig.
Bobbing the fan back and forth to overcome the friction of the motor and allow the heaviest part of the blade to settle to the bottom is brilliant. Thanks! 🤘🏻
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.
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.
I my opinion none of your videos are unawesome... they are just to few! Thanks for keeping making interesting and actually educationally (intended or not) videos!
Great video! I did the same thing, sucking air out of the house when I lived in NM, it was always cool at night. I opened the bedroom windows and put a fan in the window on the other side of the house.
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.
You have taught me something that no one was capable of. Thank you very much.
Just did this to our cheap wobbly Lasko box fan and it worked like a charm! Thanks for the tip. ☮
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.
This guy is great, blade balance, less wear and tear.
This shaking method totally works. Cheap fan now vibrates 10x less.
Presently we're renting a place in the NC mountains and it never has gotten over 74 F yet. Amazing.
We are having warmer weather in southern Ontario. 30 Celsius with a feels like of 37 Celsius which translates to 98 F.
I followed your instructions with the exception of substitute the screw with a bolt and nut as @UCmHWM5i3AbfChco8t2BH_2Q had suggested in the comments. This made the distance from the center less important as you can add washers as needed. Balancing was fast and accurate and now the fan runs like a dream, many thanks Matthias!
My fan was like yours. It was so bad I a rather large screw. Now it works just fine. Thanks.
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.
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
Thank you dear, this trick really helped me to curtail the vibration in my exhaust.
I recently tried to balance a Wind Machine box type fan. I was
able to take the blade off. looked at it closely and found the
blades were out of alignment no way to fix that. Matthias glad
you got yours close to balanced.
glad to see people taking good care of their fans! 👍
man, i love videos like this. thanks!
They sell high velocity fans as well, they have a circular fan blade encased in a plastic housing with a slit for an outlet, you can move an all the air in your house out in a matter of minutes. Terrific fans for pulling air in our out of a room in case you're willing to buy one like that. Also you can set those fans on their low settings and they're much quieter than a box fan while drawing multiple times as much air out. I have one set up in my shed (I live in Florida), when I go out there in the summer to work it'll easily be 110 to 120 in there, but if I turn the fan on half an hour before I go in it'll draw it down to 90 degrees.
Clear, brief explanation. Nice job.
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
Then screw away :P
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.
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!
Did you shake the car to find the balance problem?
I've always been a Fan of self repair and fix.
Ohhhhhh
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.
Thank you! This trick fixed our fan issue perfectly!
That's one hell of a balancing act!
Fantastic work, Matthias! Really well done! 😃
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Clever shoogling technique for overcoming friction
Shoogling is the exact right word.
I had the same problem, I superglued a watch battery slightly off center. Works well for me.
This is a pretty interesting fix, i wasnt expecting that.
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. 😁👌
Thanks for this. I made a frame to fit a sliding window with a panel to block the top half and box fan on the bottom in one of the windows in our master bedroom. I built it in case one of the family caught covid then they could have a slightly negative pressure room and bath. The fan vibrates a bit much so I'll make use of this technique.
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.
That’s a cool fan hanger you got there.. very nice!
It’s these type of videos that make me love Matthias!
Two screws and an automotive clip C-clip and my dads fan no longer walks its self into a wall! Thanks!
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.
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.
Canada.. = less humidity
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"
Now this is what an engineering degree is for
I have a very similar fan with the same problem - thanks for the fix!
you can put tape on the outside of the lighter fanblades
(the way how you find the heavy blade is nice :)
I’m a big fan of this method.
Wow.. balancing make such a difference. Learnt something, thank you 👍
simple engineering, love it
I expected a half hour video. well done!
Shaking a fan that's too balanced, now that's what I want to see.
I like your idea to shake the fan to cancel out the bearing friction. I might use this method myself on a window fan that I have (Air King 9155). But it's only a little out of balance so it might not be worth the effort.
I want to see more of that bracket.
Nice, a long time ago when sleeping and got upset at the fan noise vibration I took some string and fed some into the shaft of the fan and it self balanced
I do the same thing. I use a length of bent wire that saddles over the fan body and hooks on to the inside of the window frame.
Another way to balance is to put tape on the blades. It sits flat enough to not interfere aerodynamically, and is lighter overall but just as effective- being farther from the center. That is the way you balance RC props.
You can also balance much more finely with a vibration sensor app on your cell phone. Gravity balancing is great for making big changes and static balancing, but if you want it super duper smooth, you can make tiny changes and monitor its effect with the vibrations via trial and error.
don't you also need a rotary encoder, so you can match the maximum amplitude of the vibration with the position on the shaft? Otherwise you're just applying tape around randomly to see if it gets better or worse
@@gorak9000 The way I described, you basically are applying tape randomly to see if it improves. It is much faster and easier than it sounds. The appeal is that it uses a free app on a phone, with no additional equipment or complexity.
I balanced my fan in a similar way but removed weight from the heavy side. Then, we bought a Quite Cool whole house fan and our box fan is now in the garage collecting dust. The whole house fan is in the attic and draws in cool air from outside and blows out the hot air in the attic to help keep the house cool all day long.
That chimney effect works great as you say with a consideration to the CFM they move.... but the fire department might advise against that solution
You'd probably want some AC around here because that "cool air from outside" is often 90 degrees with some humidity.
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.
You can also use lead tape. The one that stick on the head of a tennis racket to add weight
Why’d I watch this at 2am? I don’t know, but did I enjoy it…yes yes I did 😌
What a great refresher on basic principles! 👍
this is why i follow seven years ago grating to ya all from syria now im bussy balancing my fans at home 🏡 💙
Matthias, you are awesome
What a great hack every house owner needs!
I went as far as cutting blades to even lengths to get faster spin out of it. It shaked a bit but had more air flow, to a point. Had to be close to fan to get full benefit. After three years the motor burned out mostly cause I left it on all summer.
Coolest fan video I’ve ever seen.. seriously
Drilling a small hole on the heavy side would've worked too 🤔
Might be easier to trial and error by adding weight rather than removing
@@dave5194 and the weight of a drilled plastic piece is much less than the weight of a metal screw or something similar
I would’ve used a piece(s) of tape: easily added, easily removed.
Also you can us epoxy or ca glue. That is how we balance our radio controlled
airplane propellers.
Drilling holes might introduce a whistling noise at certain fan speeds 🤔