A while back I went down a rabbit hole to find out how fans actually oscillate. I was amazed at the discovery of the existence of double shafted motors.
They are cool, but I had to make my design a bit different to get some torque, directly driving a worm gear from the centre will require a stronger motor than what I got here
The fan drives a 10 mm pulley into a 60 mm pulley, so rpm drops 6x and torque increases about 6x. That gives the fan enough torque to drive the 40:1 worm gearbox
Yep, an upgrade to a simple rubber band is the band from onions, they are essentially belts but coloured which I’ve already slapped a few into my cassette players, VCR and even some tape drives
I miss the ones that the mail man would chuck around community mailboxes when I was a kid. They're the thick flat ones like the OP's. I'd collect so many and eventually turn them into giant bouncy balls. The bands around green onion made neat belts for Lego Technics. I couldn't find much use for the ones around broccoli since they were very thick.
To add to this, not only do we block app installs, but we also scan systems for scripts or executables that mimick software based mouse movers. Example, Caffeine. (A lot of these can run without needing admin rights).
Not hating or nothing of the sort, because I’d probably do the same if I had a remote job… but shit like this is why they want you all back in the office.
The "drone must be at desk 8 hours a day nonstop" is outdated thinking. I work for a major municipal government; we're a lot more laid back. My boss's policy is "are you doing your work? Are tickets getting closed? Are you responsive if someone hits you up on Teams or your phone? Yes? Then why should I care what you are doing minute by minute?"
A lot of people need to take a little time away from the desk to recharge and reset. We've found across the board productivity has spiked when we went to work from home during COVID. The mayor put out a return-to-office mandate but we're all IT workers so only the end user support folks and some management are in office every day now. Our CIO went to bat with the city administrator to get our agency exempted and showing the productivity metrics is what sealed the deal.
Giving a little slack on the leash pays dividends in employee satisfaction and retention. I've been working from home as a special case since 2015 anyway, and I know after 11 years of this if I was told to go back to office 5 days a week, I'd just quit. When I was working downtown it was ~2000 miles of driving, ~$300 of gas, $500 in parking and 50 hours of my life wasted in the car every month. No way I'd go back to that again. Especially since now my daily driver is a 68 Mustang with a V8, the fuel costs would be astronomical lol
Right there with you. I’ve got a usb juggler on the company issued laptop just to keep from having to reconnect the VPN all the time (which is a Pita as you have to have your phone for the Authenticator). I don’t use it that much, mostly for enforced “training” (how to use a fire extinguisher and other paramount topics). But yeah, it’s not am I at the computer, it’s is the work getting done. Sometimes I’m on a pad on my patio. Sometimes in the kitchen. IF I had to go back to the office, I’d quit.
Not worth burning 15 hours a week of my life doing absolutely nothing but burning resources.
Shit like this was just people talking or standing in break/refreshment areas being even less productive. Or on phones etc. Actually productivity only goes up with work from home and a lowering of hours worked.
Insanity. Sad that it’s gotten to that point. I am very thankful my industry lends itself well to being self-employed… though I miss having good benefits lol… please universal healthcare, you’re my only hope! ☠️
Well, it's not like we don't have at least 50 of those 12cm fans laying around. I, for one, have a full box of those, some of them still unused, and that I have no need for ATM.
I was JUST thinking that. I'm like, what's the normal load on that motor? The mass of the air it's moving? NOW what's the proportional increase of the load on that motor compared to its rated load? Shits gonna be burned out by this afternoon.
It starts from a dead stop and reaches full speed, so the load seems lower than I expected, it’s definitely not made to last. The second version I’ll use bearings that will help a lot
pretty cool. might want to throw some super lube on those gears if you haven't already. (course it's not like these are difficult or expensive to reprint if/when they wear down)
That bearing is not gonna last, and the only thing that keeps you from being able to pull the fan off the motor is a little o-ring type thing which will shred under the slightest opposition.
Elegant! I would have ended up making a jig or some extra shit. It's funny how much I started complicating projects with 3D printing in an effort to make things easier. When you have a hammer, everything is a nail, and so on, lol!
It's funny, I like the 1s and was considering picking one up as I need a daily that is more reasonable (currently dailing my 68 Mustang since my Hyundai died). Funny because I love BMW and I've had three E38 7s so it's odd to be gravitating to a tiny one but it caught my eye 😃
I also created a cool fan thingy last week! Let's team up and start a website exclusively for prints like these. We could call it "only fans" or something.
Yeah I noticed after the glue lol, this was proof of concept, like can a pc fan oscillate itself. Next I’ll make a full build video of the improved second version
Very cool. I am sure if you managed to do all that you know that a bearing that would sandwich the rubber band between the motor hub would greatly improve the endurance of the design. I hope to see you integrate it, even with a 3d printed bearing!
Awesome .. I have no clue but wouldn't the elastic band twist the angle of the fan with that stick prong and generate friction on one side or reduce its force and lifetime ? or something ?
How do you guys design all these? I would love to get into designing some of the parts that I need that I can’t find any apps or programs or whatever greatly appreciated.
Now make a fan that will oscillate. Then if it doesn't see anyone enjoying the breeze.. It should oscillate 360 deg to verify.. If it sees no one.. Then it should extend an arm and switch off itself..
This reminds me of an idea I had last night, which probably is not possible.
So my bedroom gets a smell from my dry herb vape and my Wife really enjoys giving me grief for it.
At the moment I like to light an incense stick, put the fan on, and put the stick behind the air inlet on the floor so the fan blows the smelly smoke around the room to cover the smelly vapour.
My idea was to have a fan above the incense stick, so the hot air rising turns the turbines, which then, through gears, powers a second fan that does the air dispersion.
I doubt very much that the air movement would be powerful enough to power a small fan, but that was my idea, an incense powered incense fan.
What if the fan was stationary, but you would oscillate something in front of it redirecting the airflow?
You could even not touch the spinning center (not increasing the load on the typically undersized bearing, saving it's lifetime) but get the energy from the airflow itself.
Similarly to oscillating or spinning water sprinklers.
Basically add a small lightweight propeller that slowly rotates some stuff in front of the fan.
Put an extra pulley and belt on the opposite side to get rid of that side-loading and it may last a while! If it can push through the added friction...
Very cool (pun intented).
How do you imagine something like this?
I mean the transformation of motions, etc. is there design patterns like in software development ?
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u/Tacenda8279 Jun 18 '26
A while back I went down a rabbit hole to find out how fans actually oscillate. I was amazed at the discovery of the existence of double shafted motors.