Customizable Laptop Fan Blade Replacement

prusaprinters

<p>Customizable blade replacement for repairing centrifugal fans with broken blades on laptops, 3D printers, and anything else.</p><p>How to determine sizing:</p><ul><li>Cut all the blades off of the damaged fan leaving short (~1mm) and evenly sized stubs. Using flush cutters to do this will ensure that all the stubs are the same length.</li><li>Measure the diameter of the rotor with blade stubs included.</li><li>Change the hub inner diameter in the customizer to match the measured diameter in order to achieve a tight press fit. You will need to increase this slightly if your printer typically prints holes too small.</li></ul><p>Tips:</p><ul><li>For best results, try to match the blade length and blade count of the original fan.</li><li>Use the most rigid material you can (PLA is a very good choice, followed by glass fiber or carbon fiber filled materials).</li><li>The blades should be as thin as possible while still being rigid for the highest efficiency. 0.8mm thick blades work well with PLA. I tested a 54mm diameter PLA impeller with 0.8mm thick blades and it exploded at around 19000 RPM. The vast majority of standard centrifugal fans run well below this speed.</li><li>Balancing should not be an issue for general-purpose use based on my experience.</li></ul><h3>How I Designed This</h3><p>I originally designed this in Fusion 360 for fixing a dropped laptop with broken fan blades, and created a simpler version in OpenSCAD to publish on Thingiverse. The Fusion 360 file is included for further customization including angle and curvature of the blades.</p>