Sunday, February 11, 2024

Dealing with electric fans with ball bearings...

Pretty sure if majority of electric fans (mainly for ceiling fans) do have ball bearings on each of their own motors, right? Well, there are two obvious answers for this, "yes" for ceiling fans and "no" for certain fans besides ceiling fans. The word "yes", it's clearly because almost every single ceiling fans always came equipped with ball bearings on them no matter what. On the other hand though, the word "no" also literally means not all of the portable fans do equip with ball bearings on their own motor though, with some exception of those industrial fans (which they usually equipped with ball bearings on each of them). Unfortunately though, I made a blunder on one of my portable fans that I own recently in my current house, and it was the only one that came equipped with ball bearing inside it's own motor, instead of the run-of-the-mill bushing ones. So, without further ado, let me explain about how come if I made the aforementioned mistake that I did to it.

my KDK box fan

There's not much else that I could particularly say about how come if I made the said blunder itself, it's because I was once cleaned the aforementioned fan itself (for this case, my KDK box fan). Everything about it was silly when it comes to how I cleaned it in general, albeit it was somewhat trickier than my previous fan of the exact same type that I used to own just before. Until I decided to lubricate it with a lubrication oil (instead of grease like what my fellow fan enthusiasts would strongly advise to me, just because), then I decided to test it by rotating the shaft itself with my bare fingers, it eventually made the bearing noise from it's own motor every single time. It also made the matters worse upon I powered it up, the noise from the bearing itself suddenly went louder, even if I put it's own blades on it. Simple as that, after that exact blunder that I made particularly with it, it's still makes it's own bearing noise until today, although it still runs smooth though (unlike my previous fan of the exact same type [except for different brand], which it had damaged bushings and shaft that caused it ran so stiff). Yes, it originally had bit of bearing noise since I newly acquired it from more than a year ago, except it was much less louder compared to how it sounds nowadays.

As for how one of my fellow fan enthusiasts commented on that YouTube Shorts video that I made specifically about it, here's how he briefly explained particularly about the problem itself:

"yep, bearings cannot lubricated with oil, they only can be lubricated with grease. the only way to fix it is replace both bearings to the new ones. because the grease inside must be turned liquid already due to the oil, and therefore a friction occurs to the balls. so they couldn't be fixed anymore (although you trying to add more grease to the bearings)."-immafacts

Well then, pay attention when it comes to how you treat your own electric fans with ball bearings on them, especially when you lubricate them. Lesson learned: never lubricate them with any lubrication matters besides grease, because there is no absolute way to reduce the noise itself apart from the fact you must replace it with the brand new ones for sure (results may vary per each types of the electric fans)... If you have your own experience when it comes to treating your own electric fans with ball bearings equipped on their own motors, let me know particularly about it in the comments section if you're able to. That's it for what I could specifically say to this, and as always, thanks for reading this article.