cleaning a fan motor
14 Sep 2011 4:57:33 UTC
Topic 195967
(moderation:
I have a smaller nvidia card which I noticed recently was running at about 125c. That's a tad hot. I took the card out and discovered that the fan will hardly turn. I've disassembled the heat sink and fan and now have the fan free of everything. I'm wondering if there is a way to soak out the dust and gunk that must inhibiting rotation. I don't want to pull it completely apart as I might break a small wire or something. Anybody got any ideas?
cleaning a fan motor
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id love to know the same, as usually when my fans "dry up" i just peal back the label on the back, pop out the "cork" and put a few drops of oil in, that usually gets me 6 months before i need to do it again, and i can usually do this 2 - 3 times before they finally "die". tho im probably using the wrong oil for this (3 in 1 machine oil). i discovered with my last set of fans how ever,, no plug, it was sealed plastic.
so if some one happens to know a way to take the buggers appart with out breaking them id love to hear it as well :)
seeing without seeing is something the blind learn to do, and seeing beyond vision can be a gift.
RE: .... i discovered with
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I do the same (light machine oil) for both the sealed fans and those with a removable plug. With the sealed ones, I use a very small pencil drill (rotate the whole thing by hand) with a fine wire drill bit that is just larger than the diameter of a diabetes syringe (quite fine). I drill the plastic centrally (where the fan shaft will be) and use a diabetes syringe to inject a few drops of oil. Works a treat. I seal the hole with a small piece of duct tape. As you've already discovered, this lasts about six months before it needs doing again.
Cheers,
Gary.
The usual fans have phosphor
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The usual fans have phosphor bronze sleeve bearings on a steel shaft.
When you take the label off (use a hairdrier) and remove the rubber plug, theres a plastic circlip. If youre clever you can take it off without breaking it, then the shaft with fan will slide out (it needs a tug because the magnet is surprisingly strong) and you can see the bearings both sides.
Clean the inside of the bearings with some kind of solvent (lighter fluid on a pipe-cleaner is fine) and the steel shaft. You can then add a drop of oil into each bearing, or if you're particularly clever remove them from the housing, theyre only pushed in. Then you can heat them up and plunge them into oil so they'll soak up oil as they cool. A blast with a hairdrier or balance them on the tip of a soldering iron is good, then a tin lid with some oil to drop them in.
Push the bearings back into the housing if you took them out and replace the shaft. Give the shaft a swift lateral tap or two and the bearings will line up, give the fan a good spin to see if its free.
If the circlip is damaged all is not lost, you can get plastic or steel ones from a model-makers store if you happen to live near a city.
Best to start with a discarded case-fan first and see if you can bring it back to life!
I learned to do this in the 1960s overhauling motors (much larger!) in record players and tape recorders but with some good tools and a magnifier its quite easy to do these fiddly little ones too.
Nowadays it is not neccssary
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Nowadays it is not neccssary to repair fans. It is easier to buy a new one. They are chip enough. But you're right. It's a fun to repair a fan. And I too prefer to repair them as far as it is possible, even those ones with broken impellers and bearings. It is often happend for me to find small cooler from died video card or something else. I always try to find a way to return it back to life. Thus most of my motherboards have now small coolers on north bridges or even on south bridges too :)
RE: Nowadays it is not
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that all depends on your definition of cheap, i just shelled out $21.45 for 3 80mm ($4.49 each) and one 70mm ($4.99 heat sink fan) the rest was the cheapest shipping i could get.. for me personally thats not cheap. considering what there made of and how long they tend to last (about a year) youd think oh $2 each...
what i need is some nice "commercial grade" (lifetime warranty) fans :D
seeing without seeing is something the blind learn to do, and seeing beyond vision can be a gift.
RE: Thus most of my
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I fit a lot of those PCI Slot exhaust fans, they're good for hot spots round the northbridge and non-cooled graphic cards.
They're not very popular items and stockists seem to have them on shelf for a long time and the bearings are already pretty gummy and only last 6 months or so, so I extract the phosphor bronze sleeves and give them a good soaking in machine oil before using them.
The fan I have doesn't seem
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The fan I have doesn't seem to want to come apart at all. There appears to be 3 screws holding the base plate to the interior guts, but the slots are so small I don't have a blade that will work.
A friend mentioned just soaking it in whatever solution I could find and then blowing it out with compressed air. This all sounds like fun, but a lot of work when I can probably just rig a fan from Fry's. I may have to mess with mounting holes, but I have tools for that. What I don't know is if I can get the shroud back in place.