repair fan

Does the fan blade turn easily ? I have had lots of trouble with fans that use a bushing as a bearing rather than use ball bearings. The lubercant dries out and the fan stops workings. You have to re-oil the bushing again and again. I have yet to find a lubercant that will last. John

the blades turn fine as before. have you tried a graphite-based lubricant?

I've had good luck with automotive wheel bearing grease, you do need to wash out the old oil first though. BB fans are much better.

....... I would

the mystery of "Sudden Fan Death" (SFD) was solved when I was browsing through the All Electronics

Short of a better answer from somebody else, that would be my guess. It would not surprise me if the manufacturers set the trip point *very close* to the temp the motor reaches when running continously on a hot day .

If it is SFD, does it mean that I have to throw away the fan or is there any hope of repairing it? Consiering that it cost only ~15 bucks, maybe I should just get rid of it.

I have repaired these. In my case it was the thermal breaker but I had another identical motor with a frozen armature. I swapped the breaker out of it and the fan works fine. There is this one at All Electronics:

"aguy" bravely wrote to "All" (04 Sep 05 17:03:47) --- on the heady topic of "repair fan"

The ports 1,2,3,4 wires go to different taps on the motor winding. Here is an analogy, consider this type of motor being similar to a transformer with taps to select the voltage.

As to what your problem may be, it is either a bad switch, an open main winding, or the thermal cutout fuse. The thermal cutout is a very common failure because the motor winding may have become very hot.

The thermal cutout is supposed to protect your home from burning down. It is usually buried in the winding and often difficult to replace. Fans are terribly inexpensive though, why bother fixing it?

A*s*i*m*o*v

ag> From: aguy ag> Xref: core-easynews sci.electronics.repair:341349

ag> I have a floor fan which stopped working a few days back. My first ag> thought was that the speed regulator had gone bad. The regulator is ag> made by Tower Switches and there is no part number on it. It has four ag> ports: 1, 2, 3, and 4. From the wall outlet, one wire goes straight to ag> the fan, while the other one goes to one of the ports in the switch. ag> Three wires come out of there and go to different parts of the fan (I ag> have not opened the fan far enough to see where they connect to). Since ag> I thought the speed controller was bad, I disconnected the wires from ag> the switch and took each of them individually and connected them ag> straight to the second line from the wall outlet. The fan did not run. ag> I would appreciate if anyone can suggest if there any hope of my ag> repairing the fan? ag> Thanks.

... Integrated Circuit (n): a device used to protect fuses.