Simple electronics question.

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Steel Chicken

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jan 29, 2001
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not sure if this belongs in this forum or not, maybe Case electronics? Didn't the [H] use to have a dedicated electronics sub forum?

Anyways, I bought this cheap and janky desktop fan (for person use, not PC)
its got two problems.

1) even from 5 feet away this thing makes my monitor look like a morrocan belly dancer
2) its WAY too loud, even on slow speed

for problem #2, I figured get some sort of heavy duty 110VAC rheostat (like they use for lightswitches) and crank down the voltage. maybe splice it in the power cord? this might also help with #1

for #1, can I maybe take some copper wire and wrap it around the body of the outside plastic shell of the motor? What else can I do to try and cut back on some EMI

yes, I could go buy a nice expensive fan, but I like tinkering and customizing.
any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.
 
If it throws off that much EMI, Is it really worth having around sensitive electronics?



I have a 12 deskfan by Lakewood, and sitting right next to my monitor it you can't even notice any disturbance.
 
yeah i would just buy a new fan instead of going to the trouble of splicing wires.
 
Steel...I have a little experiment for you, if its possible to do. I've had the lucky misfortune of having a faulty power supply in a PC that caused my monitor to dance around. An easy way to test this is to electrically isolate the PC from the monitor. If you're familiar with the wiring of your house/apt/whatever try plugging the PC into an outlet thats on a separate circuit from the monitor. See if the dancing still happens. Also, it could be your surge protector too causing the issue, so temporarily take that out of the picture. If the problem is still there, maybe you should try another video card.
 
joecool234 said:
Steel...I have a little experiment for you, if its possible to do. I've had the lucky misfortune of having a faulty power supply in a PC that caused my monitor to dance around. An easy way to test this is to electrically isolate the PC from the monitor. If you're familiar with the wiring of your house/apt/whatever try plugging the PC into an outlet thats on a separate circuit from the monitor. See if the dancing still happens. Also, it could be your surge protector too causing the issue, so temporarily take that out of the picture. If the problem is still there, maybe you should try another video card.
Click to expand...

The monitor only dances when the fan is on, its direct EMI interference from an electric motor with little to no shielding. I doubt its a bad PSU. BUT I can try putting the fan on a different circuit if I can. This isn't at home, this is at work, i think the entire cubie is going to be on the same circuit.
 
Steel Chicken said:
The monitor only dances when the fan is on, its direct EMI interference from an electric motor with little to no shielding. I doubt its a bad PSU. BUT I can try putting the fan on a different circuit if I can. This isn't at home, this is at work, i think the entire cubie is going to be on the same circuit.
Click to expand...

My bad bro, I misread your original post. I thought the "desktop fan" meant "fan for your desktop PC." You have three solutions here. 1) Get a giant faraday cage for the fan. It'll restrict airflow, but it should work. 2) Get a better surge protector for your PC, one with AVR. There's a good chance the fan is actually causing fluctuations in the voltage supplied to the PC/Monitor as opposed to actual EMI. The AVR should limit that. 3) Get an extension cord and plug it into a coworker's cubie. Its then his/her problem.
 
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