Um...is this safe?

Illum

Flashaholic
Joined
Apr 29, 2006
Messages
13,053
Location
Central Florida, USA
I bought from a friend whose hobby is to repair and mod computers half a dozen stock 12V 130-800 ma fans...sizes between 80 mm to 120mm.
As an effort to prepare for this year's hurricane season...I tested the plan using a 8 people tent [greatland] as the air circulation restriction and 4 of these dinky fans ran at 12v 1 amp using a voltage regulator, the air venting works...:whistle:

Before mating the couplers to the battery...[6 fans in parallel to a fuse box, which is soldered onto washers and bolted through the hole on the terminal, using surplus speaker wire as a DC low resistance extension cord]
:huh:
I have a Exide 12V AGM Gell cell [18AH] and I was wondering:
if I connected the fans directly onto the cell, would it fry the fan and :poof: the cell?
or
would the fan draw only what it needs and thats that?


I plan to run a switch in the circuit, but not sure what type to use.
Input on this plz, ty.:candle:
 

winny

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Apr 14, 2005
Messages
1,067
Location
Gothenburg, Sweden
You don't need any kind of circutry at all for this. You can probably run the fans up to 20 V without any problems execpt for shorter lifespan...
The fans have integrated circuits although they do run faster at higher voltages...
So to answer your questions:
No.
Yes.
 

yuandrew

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Apr 12, 2003
Messages
1,323
Location
Chino Hills, CA
As long as it's 12 volt battery to a 12 volt fan, you're fine.

I did once fry Panaflo fans by putting an overvoltage through them. I guess 16 volts is the max they can for 2 seconds take before they suddenly slow down then run very slow and die with a loud PoP! and magic smoke. This happened twice before I figured out I turned my train transformer up too much.

I see you have a fuse box in the circuit; shouldn't need more than a 7.5amp main fuse. Fuses are important; my friend had an electrical fire in his truck when the wireing for his off road lights grounded out under the dash before the switch. Lots of smoke, crackeling sound, sparks, then flames. We disconnected the battery and got it out but it melted the insulation off a good length of wire from where it shorted all back to where it connected to the battery.
 
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