How to hookup a 120V fan?

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Warriorprophet

[H]ard|Gawd
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May 22, 2001
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Ok, I have this badass 120mm 120V 60hz (A/C = main voltage) fan I wanna hook up. in my next case, thing pushes like 460CFM silently.

I need a way to wire it up, preferrably with a dimmer switch. I'm putting this in a complete custom case I'm building so I'm not too worried about wiring up a PCB or whatever I hafta do space wise to make it fit.

Thanks in advance guys.
 
How comfortable are you with working on mains?

Be CAREFUL. Dont poke at things you dont know what they do. Make sure anything you do is unplugged.

Try to limit the number of cables coming into your machine.

Get a 12VDC/120VAC relay wire it into a molex so that poweringup the molex flicks the switch.

Get an input feed to the relay from your PSU. Easy enough to id the wires you will need coming in.

On the outbound feed, wire a dimmer in betweent he fan and the relay.

Not difficult to envision.

BEFORE you turn anything on, make sure that ALL bare wires are insulated - either via shrink tubing, electrical tape, or silicon. If your fan can be earthed, earth it back to the PSU. Wiring 120V AC anywhere near your case turns it into a potential point to deliver one helluva jolt from.

What you are asking is not difficult, and wont require a PCB, just be damn careful
 
120mm fans pushing 460cfm, ya right. sure it isnt a 120cm fan or something. a detla only pushes 192 or something at 56 db or something like that. i want a picture
 
it is a 12CM/120mm fan, all you hear is air, magnetic bearings, came off of some industrial controller box where my dad works. To give you an idea of how strong it is this is a 2 amp load fan. Compare to the 120mm delta I have that is like 70cfm at 0.8amp 12 volt. I'm guestimating well over 400CFM, and it will blow itself over if you don't have something holding it up, wheras my normal case fans just sit there.

I'm fine with mains voltage, I rewire stuff up to the switches in my room all the time, hang fans and lights for people, etc.

Thats what I was thinking I just couldn't get the dimmer to work on its own, I'll hafta get on radioshack.com and find the right relays and see how this will look...maybe that dimmer was just bad too.

cool, thx...now to dig all this stuff up.

edit:
12cfm 2amp 115VAC Boxer Fan imc magnetics corp model no: WS2107F

I just shot off an email to imc-megnetics.com to get more info on these fans and availability.
 
Got it next to my Delta WFB1212HHE (120x38mm, 1a 12V, 178CFM 48.3db) and its the same depth, 38mm, though the blade are only about the same depth as a 25mm would be, its a 5 blade design, and the motor is support by much thicker and ablongish supports. It is about 3 times as heavy as the delta.

And there is no earth on it that I can see, just two wires coming from one of the corners where the support connects. I'll try to get pics later, no digicam here.
 
Holy fuck that fan draws over 200 watts!? That'll just about pull as much power as what you are going to be cooling with it.
 
jesus christ 2a @ 120v?!
 
Wow--2A @115VAC is nothing to sniff at. My guess it that 1) it's not brushless, so if you try to keep the blades from spinning, you'll get a lot of torque, and 2) that kind of current is the MAX current--i.e. on startup.

Wow, though. That's one heck of a fan. That's cool. I'm still a bit skeptical about it being silent, though. Anything that small that pushes that much air physically cannot be silent--there's way too much turbulence around the fan blades.

Of course, for me, that's a moot point--my computer's basically silent, but I can't enoy it, since I have this window A/C unit six feet from the box. Ah, I can't wait for winter.
 
Warriorprophet said:
all you hear is air
Click to expand...

Yeah, you're right. ALL YOUR HEAR IS AIR. WHOOOOOOOOOOOSHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
No way in hell is that silent. You big liar. :p

Also, dimmers won't work. You can't control A/C motors with a dimmer, they will just squeal, groan, and buzz. If you want varible speed with an A/C motor (fan hub), the motor needs to have different sets of windings that you switch between for different rotational speeds.
 
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