Fan Disassembly
Fan Disassembly
I actually wanted to make a video of this, but I didn't have the time to do it properly,
and I'd rather do it not at all than sub-par. It would have been easier to follow along
if somebody else wanted to take their fan apart, but for the time being still pics will
have to do.
Side note: This post is more geared towards those who've never taken a fan apart.
For most other people it will probably be rather boring and trivial.
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First, take the inner frame out of the outer one. I have found it is easiest to do this
by pressing on the inner frame between the two lugs in each corner instead of the
lugs directly.
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Next, take off the sticker on the back. I use some petroleum ether to get rid of the
sticky residue (very annoying stuff).
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Then take out the gasket which covers the bearing's back side. It's not extremely
delicate, but if you're not careful you can damage it nonetheless. Also, you can see
my most important tool for this process: A dental tool.
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And here comes the part which is actually tricky. The rotor is held in place by a small
washer which sits in a groove on the rotor's axis. The washer has a slit in it.
I found the easiest way to get this washer out of that groove to be this:
- Take two of those dental tools from above.
- Press down on the washer with one of them and make sure it doesn't rotate
anymore (remember: this is a bearing made for rotation, so it moves rather
easily and is well lubricated, i.e. slippery).
- Press the tip of the second dental tool into the slit of the washer and twist
one of the ends of the washer upwards (this usually takes me several tries since
I often slip). The washer is very flexible, so don't worry too much about breaking
it. Be careful, but not afraid.
- Once the washer is nicely twisted and one of its ends pointing out of the
bearing, get the second dental tool under the washer and pop it out.
- That's it, you can now slide the rotor out on the other side.
The washer is the white thing inside the red circle.
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The red arrow is pointing towards the washer's slit into which you need to get the
tool.
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And here we have the bearing with the rotor removed. The red ring is actually an O-ring
resting on top of another washer. Both of these are actually loose and are only held in
place because the lubricant makes them a bit sticky (you will have noticed this when
taking out the washer in the above step). There is also one of these O-rings on the
rotor axis itself. You can take them out if you want, but I left them in.
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The disassembled rotor and inner frame:
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And my disassembled army of fans (you know, the
other one
):
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I don't think you necessarily need dental tools to do this, but I had them anyway,
tried them out and found them to work very well for this. If you want to buy some,
you can get them on eBay for a few bucks per set.
I'm currently painting the fans and should have an update on that some time over
the weekend.
That's it for today. Thanks for stopping by,
-aw
