Fan Motor Repair
by Dennis L Feucht

Electromechanical components are notorious for shorter life expectancy than electronic parts. Mechanical failure modes are harder to overcome in design. Because of inherent mechanical wear mechanisms, reliable design requires that electromechanical components be specified to account for this fact. However, in an era of cost-driven and time-to-market-driven design, failure-prone electromechanical components appear in products.

In particular, such consumer products as battery chargers, inverters, or even DVD players have cooling fans. These fans must last for the total operating life of the product, which can be thousands of hours. However, low-cost, low-quality fans often fail before the rest of the equipment and must be replaced. Most owners either seek a repair shop for help or exercise the throw-away option (or the store-for-later option; ever notice what fraction of American houses are storage for broken products?) Electronics engineers and technicians, however, need not resort to these options but can repair, or in more serious cases, redesign or modify the fan according to existing designs.

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