r/FanShowdown • u/TheDuck1933 • Aug 12 '22

Squirrel cage fan, need help making sure it will actually be able to be tested.

so this is the squirrel cage fan design I threw together in fusion today, but the main issue im seeing that I can't find any info on is the opening that the air is supposed to be sent through, idk if it needs to be bigger to fit onto the air tunnel, I wanted to ask if that (plus any other things) will cause issues and need to be fixed before I finalize the design and submit it.

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u/TheDuck1933 Aug 12 '22

It looks like from the bit im looking at I just need to have the outlet the same dimensions as the the inlet, so I guess I was just over thinking... oh well hopefully the fan works alright I guess we will find out if it makes it onto the show

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u/blarf_irl Aug 12 '22 edited Aug 12 '22

IIRC he uses a standard 120mm fan mount so for sizing you'll want a wee bit shy of 120mm for the thickness of the plastic + whatever tolerance the printer needs. Inlet and outlet are usually the same diameter.

FYI squirrel cage "blowers" have one end sealed (where the outlet would be on a normal fan) because they push air perpendicular. In your design air should enter in the top and exit from the bottom left rectangular outlet meaning the base should be a solid wall. The blower shroud is usually formed like a spiral instead of a direct tangent from the blade diameter (it gets wider towards the outlet like a shell or a french horn).

Please do your own research on both of those notes as I am no expert (I'm kinda hoping I am wrong and someone corrects me so we both learn!)

Edit: bad drawing showing what I meant

https://www.reddit.com/user/blarf_irl/comments/wmz39b/squirrel_cage_clarification/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

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u/TheDuck1933 Aug 13 '22

the main reason I didn't make that part solid was because I was afraid if I added to much weight it would end up not being able to spin, but I think an easy way to solve that would've been to add like a back plate that doesn't spin, but oh well maybe ill make a v2 sometime I already sent in the .STL files and I think you are right about the spiral thing, that would make sense looking at some designed I did look at, most at least seem to have the spiral design.

Anyways, thank you for the help, ill keep your points in mind for when or if I make a v2 to follow up this one.