Diy EcoFan

new_owner

Has anyone made one?

I have been looking at these with interest.. Then looking at how they work seems to be a nice diy project.

I have costed it up at about £30 for parts.

I have watched a couple of youtube vids and it looks simple enough and the principle is not rocket science.

Greenfires

A lot depends on the fan you use. The whole point of the original Ecofan is that it moves a lot of air very gently - and most of the home made ones I've seen use pc fans - which do pretty much the opposite so may not be anywhere near as effective.

new_owner

Thats true.

I have seen replacement ecofan blades on ebay but I was intending to make one out of some sheet aluminum.

sierrakilo

Did you make a DIY ecofan ?

Have just ordered parts ( motor, peltier unit and CPU heatsink ) and will cobble together on a piece of scrap aluminium ...£30 in total

Always intrigued by the ecofans , but can't quite get over the price.... ( I feel same about the Ipad !:eek: )

new_owner

Sorry just spotted this..

Yes, i built several models and wired them into a 12v Transformer so I could test without the risk of burning out anything and allow me to see the draw and heat and test different versions.

The problem I had was pushing to much air out. Anyone sitting in the direction of the fan just had a constant blast of hot air on them all night.

I tried running fans up the back, fans on top, fans underneath, fans from one side, both sides

One of the setups I had a heat sensor wired in to push the fan speed up with the heat. Good idea in principle but the fan just turned into a heat blaster.

I then broke down and bought a knock off on ebay for £60 ...

To be honest the eco fan is OK. it does not push out any where near the volume of air I was, but it does not feel like sitting in front of a heat gun.

Even when I put a version together with a Peltier the air flow was still much higher.

I think its better to push out the air with a home build than an ecofan. but you will need time to play.

It was fun to try and I would recommend and I will go back to this with a less powerful peltier and a better bigger, fan blade.

peltier a sheet of aluminum and a 80 + 120mm computer fan is what I started with then added a couple of different motors.

sierrakilo

Thanks for the info....... My DIY Ecofan is being assembled......will be using a homemade fan after testing with a RC model aircraft one.