I'm in the process of clearing out the Connecticut house for sale. In one of the murky corners of the cellar, I happened upon an art deco Hunter pedestal fan that, to the best of my recollection, I acquired in the 1970s.
To those of you who are thinking that I'm a fan fetishist, and that I couldn't possibly fit all the fans I've acquired in my dinky Alabama house, you're probably right. I will have to divest. When I do, this will be one of the keepers. By way of explaining the large number of fans, it's a hot sticky climate in Mobile and my preference is decidedly for fans over air conditioning but you need a constant, artificially-produced breeze at all times or you will just wilt.
I'm not sure of its reputation these days but in Hunter's heyday they were pretty good. I have a vague recollection of testing this fan when I first got it, but its disintegrating cord means rewiring before testing or at least reconnecting a fresh wire.
Is there a maintenance regimen for old electric motors? When I do get this fan going, I'd like to be sure it's not consuming itself.
Here also is the motor tag. I did some superficial cleaning, but as you can see there is still oil residue to remove.
if it's never been apart I think you are smart to disassemble the motor for cleaning. wash the parts in WD 40 or a mixture of paint thinner and oil. just dont get anything on the armature like strong solvents that may dissolve the varnish on the wires.
I would avoid engine oils, they contain detergents. the article mentioned some specific greases and oils. Id use a grease that isn't thick and waxy for things like the gearing that isn't in an oil bath and maybe 3 in one oil for the bushings or any light machine oil. likely the ones recommended are good I just wouldn't run out and buy for one fan.. if you have more fans then maybe getting the correct recommended lube is important. most often the problem is really that the bushings have dried out and if you run it without lube it will wear them a lot more quickly. Id say it's more important to make sure the bushings have lube than the formulation you choose. you may observe end play and maybe add some shims if it has too much.
be careful not to distort the fan , the blades should be balanced and run true to each other. if they are obviously bent try to make them better. the better the balance the less vibration. you might look for procedures to balance the blades. if the fan seems well balanced I'd leave the blades alone because things can get worse as easily as better if you start twisting them around. if the thing has been dropped then do the bet you can to fix that.
if I take any electric motor apart I always mark the cases. maybe on a fan if the parts are visible you wont want to mark them and you can use a pen. usually with motors I make two punch marks near each other on either side of the mating case but then I'm not concerned with the cosmetics. you can use whiteout or something similar and easy to get off. often you can rotate the end caps to a different position but if it is assembled in the same orientation it might in some cases help to retain the way the parts align or even make the switch or name plate orient correctly. nothing to gain by changing the orientation of parts. tapping on the cases helps free them to disassemble. when you reassemble then turn the rotor as you tighten the bolts , tighten them evenly. If you feel it gets hard to turn then take a small soft hammer or block of wood and rap on the cases a little allowing them to settle a bit often is enough to relieve the bind. try to avoid tightening the bolts too much without things being properly aligned so the rotor spins freely as this can cause damage or you might have a wire or something out of place.
rubber parts like rubber feet or sometimes the motor is mounted in rubber. rubber only lasts so long it goes hard or turns to mush due to age. so check things like the grommet around the power cord and the power cord itself, change what you need to .
grease dries out over time , the wicks you can change it says, I 'd just wash and reuse if you dont keep wicks handy. most fans probably dont have briushes but if brushes exist then clean them see if they can wear further before they run into issues and you can clean up the commutator if you take it right apart. usually just a bit of about 400 grit wet or dry will remove oxydation. if you want a good switch cleaner the best I know of is called deoxit.
often bushings will wear oval due to weight. in some cases you might make things a tad better by rotating them by 90 degrees and that is assuming they are egg shaped it simply turns the worn part to a side where it is less critical but that's not really fixing much and removing bushings and replacing them may cause damage to them.. rotating the bushings is really a mickey mouse trick but for certain bushings it gets you by for some issues while parts come all it does is moves the slop from one orientation to another. ( turns the egg)
the sintered bronze ones can be a bit fragile the brass ones are stronger. the oil soaks right into the sintered bronze..
if you need to replace bushings you may find they are cheap and standardized or not. You can always call a bearing retailer with the dimensions and ask, you may find they are cheaper than you thought. similar with any ball bearings you find they will have tiny numbers to ID them quite often. look on the bearings with a magnifying glass. if ball bearings feel rough or noisy at all try to replace them.
other than sintered bronze and bronze, you can make bushings on a lathe out of a black plastic material that is partly graphite. these sort of bushings dont' need lube and will run for a long time without any lube but the fan probably predates that material. if you run into a situation where you can't get a certain size they can be made up. A lot of bearings and bushings follow typical dimensions unless the company made them to be different.
older equipment uses more bushings , newer stuff tends to use more bearings and self lubricating parts to reduce maintenance needs.
if you get one of those bushings out try filling the bore with oil then squeeze it between you r fingers. if it is a sintered material you'll see the oil weep through, this charges it with fresh oil. dont over oil electric motors they dont need a lot of lube on motors with grease nipples one squeeze with a grease gun a year is enough if you can apply a drop of oil to a shaft now and then it helps and you may not need to disassemble for that to have an effect. it depends if the bushings are shielded by the case or not. a drop in the right place is enough 10 drops wont do more but you may find some have a wick and some way of retaining some lube like felt pads.. excess oil attracts dust and causes wear.
the most common cause of wear isn't during startup I don't agree with this with respect to fans. it is because people dont oil them that statement is a commonly used description of bearings but really.. now lets be practical .. most fans get worn due to no lube since they see very little or no service, until they start squealing then damage is done. oil helps them never get stuck , when they get all stuck and have no lube this is when the wear really occurs.
I wouldn't use 3-in-1. It contains a ton of impurities and can be corrosive.
I've never used the Royal Purple mentioned in the article, but I was going to try it on the next lower end fan I did. My favorite oil to use with old fans is Zoom Spout turbine oil (I should have specified earlier). Most hardware stores carry it. Cotton wick material is still available from Hudson Machining, but by the late '30s manufacturers were getting away from using it, so I'm not sure if your fan has an oil wick cup.
Thanks for the Zoom Spout recommendation. One thing that is an improvement over old technology is the introduction of synthetic oils with their greater stability. Just not so great for making dinner.
Until I brought the fan up from the cellar and did a little background research, I thought that Century was a model name for Hunter, like Chrysler 'Airflow' or Bass 'Weejuns.' The antique fan collectors bemoan the decline of Hunter's quality after the merger, mentioning the fragile pot metal motor housing as a big liability. Fortunately, this motor appears to be encased in steel.
I refer to the style of this fan as Art Deco (probably erroneously) because of the detailing on the cast-iron base. Art Deco was mad for parallel lines. Cleaned up, I think it'll be a handsome dust catcher.
The antique fan collectors (AFCA) are one group who don't seem to put much stock in the value of original condition or patina. Even the earliest antique fans are routinely disassembled, repaired, rewired, polished and repainted.
Manalto wrote:The antique fan collectors (AFCA) are one group who don't seem to put much stock in the value of original condition or patina. Even the earliest antique fans are routinely disassembled, repaired, rewired, polished and repainted.
It varies. Some people over-restore fans, particularly the brass blade models from the '20s and earlier. Those fans never had the mirror finish that some of those guys strive for. It's getting to the point that finding a nice original brass blade fan in the wild is becoming more of a challenge.
You can get all technical and find a huge amount of data about oils, arguments for or against synthetics, a lot of synthetics are actually petroleum oils. People love fancy trade names. synthetic is a big seller and I've read huge amounts of complete bunk about it particularly in auto forums. Really what matters is that there is oil and that it is about the right viscosity. 30 weight is a bit thick but will work, chainsaw blade oil or that for your differential is too thick. it depends on the clearance and speed and the clearance increases with age. ATF will work fine. or mineral oil, or power sterering fluid. You'll wear the bearings if there is no oil. as long as you do oil them you wont be able to tell what works better as you will never see any noticeable difference. for a fan you aren't dealing with incredibly high tolerances or a lot of heavy loading. It's just a couple of bushings, you need a drop of oil now and then to keep them moving freely. other than that I wouldn't loose sleep over it myself. If you'd put it on a sewing machine you can use it on your fans.
If you want to get technical and get reliable info you can contact the major oil companies. I do that sometimes if a machine calls for a certain lubricant and it is obsolete, then they will recommend alternatives. the oil companies have test labs and technicians that can test the properties of oils and they study it at a scientific level. so if you do want technical info I'd get it from them. In my experience they are easy to get through to and they do help, they have a lot of funding money and they need to keep their products consistent and meeting the technical specs requires pretty high levels of expertise and testing. I can extract hydraulic oil from a machine and send it to the lab and they will study how dirty it is for example, and in a big machine that can be a significant amount of oil. 100 gallons is very common but it could be much more. in some cases this testing saves expense of oil or machine wear. 50gallons is roughly 800 dollars of oil. in most cases we simply do an oil change at a regular basis based upon machine time.
I'm not saying you cant' get all technical about oil, yes you can dig in and find lots and lots of scientific data. I'd avoid info you find in various forums or at least make the realization that you will be filtering many incorrect and opinionated views that aren't at all science based.
You won't see any detectable difference so long as your lubricant is present. If you used 10W 30 that would be a bit thick but even that would work fine. I'd reach for ATF and be OK with that and I think 3 in 1 is fine too. You can micro polish the shafts if you want to reduce wear but I wouldn't bother with that either.
Don't sweat the small stuff. if its a super expensive antique clock, that's a different situation. same with a turbine, what kind of turbine is this referring to anyway? a steam power generation plant turbine? a car turbo? one from a hydro dam? what would that have in common with a household fan bushing?
if you did want to get technical you'd look at the loading, the clearance of the shafts, how well the fan is balanced, its' RPM, the size of the shaft. how well polished is the shaft? are you actually fitting the alignment of the two bushings or merely pressing them into their holes and relying on that to true them up to each other? how often is it lubricated? do the bushings retain the material that wears from the shaft? will oiling flush out that debris or is it intended to be caught and embedded in the bushings?
If you really wanted to fit those bushings accurately they would be made undersized and then fitted after pressing them in and the shaft would be very highly polished. there would be a procedure to align the bushings with a reamer or similar to make their bores parallel after they are installed. part of that may be to put a product that is similar to brasso on the shaft and turn it until it becomes free, this will leave the right gap for the oil and remove bearing material only where needed. Ive got a product for that, it is a very old can , looks like surfer. poisonous ? maybe?
a fan does not need this degree of accuracy. If you want to make it run nice the balance will affect things as that's what will cause vibration and vibration causes wear. the weight balance is part of it, ( static balance) there is another factor called dynamic balance. You can also have a condition where the blades are balanced perfectly for weight, but then if one blade has a different angle than the others it is pushing against the air differently so this can be equalized too. you can get data by running it and measuring the temperature difference of the bushings. you can hook up test equipment and do vibration analysis at various speeds. there will be a critical speed, that speed will produce more vibration. the fan itself has a natural speed that it turns, this relates to it's speed, then the parts of the fan also have their very own natural vibration frequency. every object has its very own natural frequency. as these different frequencies combine they can also amplify and interfere with each other. most machines have speeds they vibrate more at, and speeds where the vibrations dont cause a rhythm. This can be studied at scientifically. engineers in a fan factory may take such into consideration in the original design. I've seen vibrations shake buildings and the buildings as well have their own natural frequencies so you can see weird stuff as a result. It all causes wear. Ive seen machines that twist and react to these frequencies. This causes wear. with printing equipment they often spec 2 feet of concrete under the machine to minimize such vibrations because they damage machinery.
You can take a layman's perspective, wiht the fan and you can just touch the ends of the motor after it has been running a while and note if they are running warm or not. where there is excess friction there will also be warmth. if it shakes too much for your liking then look to improve the balance of the fan. even just loosening the blades and mounting them differently can affect balance because the armature is involved and it wont be perfectly balanced. You can improve the balance by balancing the two together and then it would be important to not loose the relationship between those parts. fans are not intended to be precision balanced but if you were to go all crazy with it all this is technically possible , but impractical. the better the balance the less vibration you will have and the happier you will be.
When you oil a bushing you will see some debris come from the bushing and shaft area. You can look at this as washing out the contaminants so frequent oiling will clean and that helps.
I've changed thousands of worn bushings in various machinery. in some cases they need to be fitted and not just pressed in , but this isn't one of those situations. some bushings do need to be very precision and often the replacement requires taking half the machine apart, even splitting the side frames, Then doing all sorts of subsequent adjustments because of the parts that were disturbed. printing presses have huge heavy cast iron side frames with many bushings. getting those out is not a simple affair. the machinery is very expensive too. you pretty much have to take the machine completely apart to split side frames because all the rotating components go through them. vibration also causes a lot of issues that are hard to trace so there is a whole science around finding causes of marks caused by vibration. even the smallest imperfection can make a job get rejected by a customer. in many cases that represents a huge amount of paper.
I can give a little insight from previous experiences, printing presses require a huge amount of precision. imagine picking up a piece of paper and transferring it through sets of grippers from one cylinder to another, the grippers of one cylinder holding the sheet until the transfer point. about .5 degrees of transfer ( rotation of the two cylinders) then the next set takes hold, and so on.. this all happens at 12,000 revolutions per hour. that sheet of paper after being transferred all the way through the machine and transferred about 30 or 40 times like this, and perhaps 50 feet from its starting point at the feeder. It cannot move more than .001" in any direction nor can it be wrinkled kinked or damaged in any way ! these are amazing expectations from the mechanics. so the machines are very precision and well built to allow that.
all those gripper shafts have bushings, they need to be just right, any play at all and the registration is lost.. so there is an example where precision really counts, because in printing if one color is out of registration from the others , It isn't saleable and the paper is then all garbage. the precision of the adjustments needs to be very exact for this application.
to understand this visualize a two color logo, one color must fit the other any movement between the two may cause a white line due to the misfit between the colors. full color work is at least 4 colors, maybe more then if this paper is printed again on the backside the fit to the first side is also critical. any sheet that does not come out right is sure to get through to a customer , even one that just happened to be mis-fed or had damage can be a huge issue for example after it becomes a carton for a product.
when compared to a fan it needs to turn and blow air. it has no real alignment to anything else. It just isn't a precision machine. The manufacturing tolerances are suited to it's intent.
one thing I will say after actually doing a lot of work like this, Oil your bushings, oil is your friend. without oil they will wear prematurely. I have been in many situations where I had to quote on jobs , then picked up the oil can in their shop. to make this point to the owner:
"Your oil can is empty. that operator is not going to go get in his car and waste his own gas to buy oil to fill your oil can" and then,, "now you have thousands of dollars of expense because you didn't fill it up" . This is so common you wouldn't believe it.. why ? because the big wig plant owners and managers last concern in the world is about whether or not the operator has oil for his oil can. what kind of oil , machine oil , failing that use the same oil that you use for your car. That matters very little, what matters is whether or not you run the bushings dry. I've seen machines run for generations, many years and not develop excessive wear. As long as they aren't run dry , you are golden !
James, I would not be sweating to much about the type of oil, a couple drops of your sewing machine oil onto the wick once and a while will be just fine.
