Wood-Turning A Bladeless Fan

It’s a simple enough premise: to make a Dyson-style bladeless fan out of wood. The execution of the finished fan, done and filmed by [Neil] from Pask Makes on YouTube, is however spectacular. Using nothing but scrap wood from a chopping board business local to him, he’s made the entire body of the fan using some interesting fabrication methods.

To plan the circular design of the body, [Neil] used an online calculator to measure the specific cuts of wood he needed in order to form cylinders out of trapezoidal sections glued together. Once the rough shape is made, he then used a profile template to turn the air channel with precision out of the two main parts of the fan body. Then, he uses SketchUp in order to figure out what shape needs to be cut from the base in order for the top to fit on it. From there, it’s just a matter of drilling out slots for the air intake, which he does so with an ingenious custom jig, and fitting the internals of a standard fan into the new wooden body.

The video, which you should definitely watch after the break if you have a spare half hour, might not be detailed enough to be used as a tutorial, but it certainly outlines his methods and the tools used well enough to impress us. And the finished build is beautiful to look at, too! If you’re looking for more impressive woodworking, we’ve covered this gorgeous recreation of a Commodore 64 case in wood. But if the hand-built nature of that doesn’t satisfy you, here’s a professional-looking custom caliper case made with CNC and laser engraving.

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It Has Blades: Dyson’s Little White Lie

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‘There’s a sucker born every minute” -P.T. Barnum

This morning we’ve been having a heated discussion at the Hack a Day offices (read: legion of doom) over Dyson’s new offering, a “bladeless fan”. At first this seemed extremely exciting, but how is the air being moved? We were hoping for a device operating via ionic wind but that’s simply not the case. Some of us think the bladeless claim is an outright lie, others understand it from a marketing stance, but we all agree: a fan with blades is still moving the air.

Dyson’s own information page states that “an energy efficient brushless motor” draws the air in with similar technology used in “superchargers and jet engines”, both of which use blades! The fan blades are in the base of this unit, they take in air and blow it out the ring. Just because you can’t see a fan, can we call our computers bladeless, or an air conditioner bladeless?

Enter the P.T. Barnum reference. Known as a man who could sell anything, his legacy lives on in the Dyson corporation. At 200 british pounds (~$320) for a ten inch desk fan, what are you getting that’s better than a traditional fan?  The design supposedly amplifies the air movement fifteen times, but we’re skeptical about that figure as there’s no energy-saving claim to go along with such an incredible power boost. One thing is certain, you will NOT get a fan without blades for your sterling… just one with hidden blades plus a huge marketing campaign.

[Thanks Gareth]