Braun was once a mighty pillar of industrial design; a true titan of the mid-century era. Many of the company’s finest works have been forgotten outside of coffee table books and vintage shops. [Distracted by Design] wanted to bring one of the classics back to life—the Braun HL70 desk fan.
The original was quite a neat little device. It made the most of simple round shapes and was able to direct a small but refreshing stream of air across one’s desk on a warm day. In reality, it was probably bought as much for its sleek aesthetics as for its actual cooling ability.
Obviously, you can’t just buy one anymore, so [Distracted by Design] turned to 3D printing to make their own. The core of the build was a mains-powered motor yanked out of a relatively conventional desk fan. However, it was assembled into a far more attractive enclosure that was inspired by the Braun HL70, rather than being a direct copy. We get a look at both the design process and the final assembly, and the results are quite nice. It feels like a 2025 take on the original in a very positive sense.
Files are available on Printables for the curious. It’s not the first time we’ve contemplated fancy fans and their designs. Video after the break.
jep Dieter rahm really set a standard with brAun. i also really dig his portable radios. very simple and clean. Apple is trying to emulate this in mac os, but gloriously misses the point completely on usability.
Yeah I get it, “Apple must be hated on”.
But I like the fact that Jony Ive outright admires Dieter Rams and his work. They even met a few times and discussed design Ideas.
Lastly, they share a similar career. Rams was as close to Braun, as Ive was to Jobs, both discussed design Ideas on the same level…
Jonny Ive left Apple in 2019
Design nerds can never resist The Cantilever.
cannot be more true
Looks neat and no design should be forgotten.
However it seems like a design just asking for problems. Can’t imagine (what appears to be) an exposed squirrelcage fan is particularly good to have around for people with long hair, pets, or fingers that might accidentally find their way into it.
When my fingers touch it, it’s never by accident.
Not much will happen. The shaded pole motor is quite weak and slow, and the fan blades simply slap your fingers away from it.
Really cool design and cool idea for the project but holy hell that’s a whole new breed of extremely insufferable pretentious guy I haven’t seen much in the 3D printing weekend project community yet
Really takes balls to cram your disdain for what other people design and sell, some hilariously basic beginner 3D printing design tips presented as some grand discovery, and then one’s own struggle with shame and body filler all in span of 11 minute video. All that’s missing is sponsor by bambulab but I guess that still has a few thousand subscribers to go.
I wholly agree! Congrats, this guy is complaining about very basic 3D printing design considerations in TYOOL 2025 as if it’s 2011 again. “3D printing is bad because people can sell cheap crap” is an argument I thought died with makerbot’s market segment a decade ago. He then goes to poorly design something for printing, doesn’t take into consideration the specific material requirements like you have to do on ANY project, and then shamefully bondo’s something into brittle submission so he can fart out a video that is nothing but negging for 11 minutes.
Shameful.
“Obviously, you can’t just buy one anymore, so…”
eBay begs to differ. There are like 20+ of them available right now.
As a fan, it looks cargo-cult-ish.
It’s got the squirrel-cage impeller and it spins ’round, but the whole point of a centrifugal fan like this is the air enters the middle axially through one (or both) ends, and gets accelerated as it passes through the vanes.
With the end blocked like that, there’s no axial flow. You’ll get some air that gets persuaded to move along by viscous interaction at the tips of the vanes, but it must be horribly inefficient.
Did the original Braun design maybe draw air in through the motor?
That’s how the original is. It’s not a centrifugal fan, it’s more of a paddle wheel fan.
The difference is that the original has the shroud wider on one side and narrower on the other, creating a slight compression which speeds up the air and throws it out. That is essential for how it works.
The 3D model rendering of the re-make doesn’t appear to have this feature: the inlet and the outlet are exactly the same size – this wouldn’t work – but then in some parts of the film you see the motor and fan are offset from the center of the shroud to achieve the proper function. The video appears to switch between showing the real end product and the 3D rendering of the product all the way through, so it’s hard to tell which one is actually real. The “hero shot” at the end where the fan stops spinning appears to be the 3D rendering, so we’re never getting a full look of the actual end product.
Common error when designing, he didn’t subdivide the curves enough, so the facets of the 3d model were visible in the final print.
Inefficient design gets hyped as “mid-century” marketing garbage.
Braun did make cool stuff