How to power a little fan up?

Question

OK so i took apart an old electric supply thing from old computer and i have this fan. Is it possible it get it running on batteries? What batteries? How?

http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/ee333/IcetalkeR007/100_5757.jpg

http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/ee333/IcetalkeR007/100_5758.jpg

http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/ee333/IcetalkeR007/100_5754.jpg

Answer 1

I just try ed a 9volt battery and a couple of D's and no luck. But I used a 12 volt power pack and hooked up the black and red. It worked perfectly. A car or motorcycle battery would proly also work

Answer 2

The first thing I would do is clean it with a blast of compressed air, and maybe put a drop of silicone oil or sewing machine oil on the bearings to refresh it if need be (just place a drop or two in the inner bearing).

Since you can vary the speed according to the voltage, there are a myriad of ways it can be done.

A quick and simple way would be to connect a 9v battery to it with one of these type of adapters

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Modu...

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Modu...

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?TabI...

and just connect the red hot leads together and the black grounds together to complete the circuit and it will run.  The run time will be limited since 9v are not meant to draw a load such as a fan for a long time...

To get the max speed with a decent run time you can cascade several batteries in series, such as high capacity D cell type, using a type of bracket such as this

http://www.keyelco.com/products/specs/sp...

and to calculate your 12v configuration, use 1.5v for duracell-type alkaline or 1.2v for rechargeable nicad or nimh e.g. for alkaline 12v / 1.5v = 8 cells for 12v or 12v/1.2v=10 cells using nicad/nimh

for the circuit, think of a big mag-lite where you stack each cell from top to bottom, the total # of cells make the total voltage.  To connect them just connect one ground to one of the flat parts of a battery, then connect that battery + to the next battery - and so on, until you get the total # of cells and connect the final battery + to the hot red fan lead and you are good to go.  Maybe connect a switch to power on/off conveniently (again like the mag lite :)

For example, take a look at this simple battery circuit

http://www.solarsam.com/d-links/battery_...

...and pretend the lamp is your fan.  To get the proper voltage with the D cells, you have to stack the batteries (like the flashlight) to get more power to the fan.

cheers