Alright, so you wanna know how I made a fan, huh? Lemme tell ya, it wasn’t rocket science, but it was a fun little project. I just kinda decided one afternoon, “Yeah, I’m gonna build a fan.” ‘Cause why not, right? It was gettin’ a bit warm, and I figured, why not try my hand at it instead of just buying one.
So, first things first, I needed some bits and pieces. I didn’t go out and buy a kit or anything fancy like that. Just looked around for what I had cluttering up the place. You know how it is, always got bits of stuff perfect for these little jobs.
- I found a pretty solid piece of cardboard. That was gonna be my base, something to hold the whole contraption.
- Then, I had an old DC motor lying around. Just a small one, probably from some old toy or a project I started and, well, never quite finished.
- Needed something to stick the motor on, like a little stand or a pole. Scrounged up a short bit of plastic pipe. Looked about the right height.
- And of course, good old glue. You always need glue for these things. Strong stuff, preferably.
Okay, so I got my stuff all laid out. The plan was pretty simple in my head: get the motor spinning some blades, and make sure the whole thing could stand up on its own using that cardboard.
Putting it all together
First, I took that piece of cardboard. It needed a hole in it, right in the middle, for the pipe thing to sit in and hold the motor up. So, I just kinda grabbed a pointy tool and carefully made a hole. Wiggled it around a bit ’til the pipe fit snugly. Wasn’t the neatest hole in the world, but it did the trick.
Next up was the DC motor. I took that little bit of plastic pipe I found and got the motor fixed onto one end. Made sure it was on there good and tight. Used a fair bit of glue to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere. You don’t want your motor flying off! Let that sit for a minute to get a bit solid.
Once that motor-on-a-pipe thing was ready, I pushed the other end of the pipe through the hole I’d made in the cardboard base. Tried to get it standing up straight. Then, you guessed it, more glue! I applied a generous amount of glue around where the pipe met the cardboard, both on top and underneath, so it would be stable and not wobble too much. That was the main stand pretty much sorted.
Now, a motor on a stick ain’t much of a fan without blades, is it? This part I had to improvise a bit. I grabbed some more cardboard, something a bit lighter, like from a cereal box. Carefully cut out three or four blade shapes. I just kinda winged it, you know, made ’em look vaguely like propeller blades. Then I glued those suckers straight onto the little spinny bit of the motor. That was probably the trickiest part, getting them to stick properly and be sort of balanced so it wouldn’t shake itself to pieces.
Did it work? You bet!
After letting all the glue dry properly – learned that one the hard way from past projects where things just fell apart ’cause I was too impatient – it was time for the big test. I grabbed a couple of batteries I had, hooked ’em up to the motor wires. And bam! The thing started spinning! The little cardboard blades whirred around, and I could actually feel a bit of a breeze coming off it. Success!
It’s not gonna cool down the whole room, obviously. And it’s a bit wobbly if I’m honest, and the blades are just simple cardboard. But hey, it’s a fan! I made it with my own two hands. And it actually works. Pretty chuffed with that, to be honest. Just goes to show, sometimes you can make some pretty cool and useful stuff with just a bit of junk you have lying around and some glue. It’s all about just getting stuck in and giving it a go.
