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. ua-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.
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.
@@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.
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
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.
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.
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. ;)
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.
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
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!
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
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! 🎉🙏
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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. 😁👌
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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 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.
Mathias can from time to time be good at gaining from what others discard. (I refer to it in a positive way.) Maybe the fan started a "new life" with the family. Already with the imbalance. It is unbelievable how many valuable things end up at the landfill. I used to work at a furniture store (in South Africa) and was amazed how many used stuff was given to me, once you delivered the new item...
I've noticed most fans eventually start to wobble, make weird noises, etc. People who sleep with fans on for "white noise" often complain about their fans noise. They want it to just make a gentle "shoooooooooo " noise but when it starts to "whir whir whir whir" it gets annoying. I think the problem might be what Matthias is showing here, where this molded piece of plastic is not balanced correctly, but it could also be the bearings inside. Some tiny fraction of an inch measurement being off inside a fan probably compounds as it moves out to the blades and so they aren't spinning perfectly even.
@@louisfkoorts5590 you wont believe me, but before the Vir... i got a working Honda Fourtrax (ATV) from the garbage and a Brass Trombone at another place.
Cheap fans arnt ballanced they are just made good enough, it doesnt happen when it's on the ground, they could have done lots of things like make it faster lighter or better air thrust they can only choose a few things to focus on to keep it cheap or RND goes up
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.
i've been doing this as well, you've gotta be ready for that room to drag in a lot of dust/hair/debris from the rest of the house though. It's nice if the room is more unused but not if you spend all day in it
Don't tip one of those over on concrete -- especially when running. It will break one or more the blades. I found that out last summer when I was running a couple of them in the garage to get the stink of the winding coating outgas reduced before using inside with a MERV 13 20x20 filter.
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
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
This is an ingenious solution to a problem almost everyone with a cheap box fan has. Thank you!!!
"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. ua-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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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. ;)
Mattias it is boiling in Ottawa. My noisy box fan was driving me nuts last night. Thanks for the instructions
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
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
Simple, but really essential for making any high precision high rotation rotating things
You got my sub
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!
*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...
Excellent! Also never would have thought to shake the fan to have it settle.
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
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! 🎉🙏
The benefit to ease ratio of this tip is fantastic!
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.
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.
This technique completely fixed my horribly unbalanced fan. Thank you!
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
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
You have taught me something that no one was capable of. Thank you very much.
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
Just did this to our cheap wobbly Lasko box fan and it worked like a charm! Thanks for the tip. ☮
A touch of common sense and simple ingenuity goes a long way. Good Job
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!
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.
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!
Thank you dear, this trick really helped me to curtail the vibration in my exhaust.
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.
My fan was like yours. It was so bad I a rather large screw. Now it works just fine. Thanks.
Fantastic work, Matthias! Really well done! 😃
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
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.
This guy is great, blade balance, less wear and tear.
Clear, brief explanation. Nice job.
This is a pretty interesting fix, i wasnt expecting that.
That's one hell of a balancing act!
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.
Thank you! This trick fixed our fan issue perfectly!
glad to see people taking good care of their fans! 👍
That’s a cool fan hanger you got there.. very nice!
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.
I've always been a Fan of self repair and fix.
Ohhhhhh
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
man, i love videos like this. thanks!
It’s these type of videos that make me love Matthias!
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.
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.
Clever shoogling technique for overcoming friction
Shoogling is the exact right word.
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.
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.
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.
Good thinking....shake the housing. I would have tried to build some king of balance jig.
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. 😁👌
you can put tape on the outside of the lighter fanblades
(the way how you find the heavy blade is nice :)
I expected a half hour video. well done!
I had the same problem, I superglued a watch battery slightly off center. Works well for me.
You can also use lead tape. The one that stick on the head of a tennis racket to add weight
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.
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.
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
This shaking method totally works. Cheap fan now vibrates 10x less.
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 want to see more of that bracket.
I have a very similar fan with the same problem - thanks for the fix!
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.
Wow.. balancing make such a difference. Learnt something, thank you 👍
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?
What a great refresher on basic principles! 👍
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 🤔
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’m a big fan of this method.
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.
Nice simple fix. Any idea why it went out of balance in the first place? Or it was like that from the factory?
Probably from factory
Those fans were never balanced.
Mathias can from time to time be good at gaining from what others discard. (I refer to it in a positive way.)
Maybe the fan started a "new life" with the family. Already with the imbalance.
It is unbelievable how many valuable things end up at the landfill.
I used to work at a furniture store (in South Africa) and was amazed how many used stuff was given to me, once you delivered the new item...
I've noticed most fans eventually start to wobble, make weird noises, etc. People who sleep with fans on for "white noise" often complain about their fans noise. They want it to just make a gentle "shoooooooooo " noise but when it starts to "whir whir whir whir" it gets annoying. I think the problem might be what Matthias is showing here, where this molded piece of plastic is not balanced correctly, but it could also be the bearings inside. Some tiny fraction of an inch measurement being off inside a fan probably compounds as it moves out to the blades and so they aren't spinning perfectly even.
@@louisfkoorts5590 you wont believe me, but before the Vir... i got a working Honda Fourtrax (ATV) from the garbage and a Brass Trombone at another place.
I didn't search for this, but watching it made me realized that I have the same problem with my cheap fan.
simple engineering, love it
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
Shaking a fan that's too balanced, now that's what I want to see.
I have a precision 8385 that needs some balancing I'll try your method! 👌
Now this is what an engineering degree is for
These seems like, as crazy as it seems, something the manufacturer shouldve done when they made the stupid fan
Cheap fans arnt ballanced they are just made good enough, it doesnt happen when it's on the ground, they could have done lots of things like make it faster lighter or better air thrust they can only choose a few things to focus on to keep it cheap or RND goes up
he got the cheapest fan he could.
Couldn't agree more 👍🏻
Coolest fan video I’ve ever seen.. seriously
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.
i've been doing this as well, you've gotta be ready for that room to drag in a lot of dust/hair/debris from the rest of the house though.
It's nice if the room is more unused but not if you spend all day in it
Or, you know, vacuum once in a while?
@@gorak9000 wow i never even considered that!
Don't tip one of those over on concrete -- especially when running. It will break one or more the blades. I found that out last summer when I was running a couple of them in the garage to get the stink of the winding coating outgas reduced before using inside with a MERV 13 20x20 filter.
This is really good advice.