Cold Smoker blower

[oxicottin]

First I'm new to the forum so I wanted to say hello.... Now im wanting to start a project and have looked all over the internet and cant seem to find what im looking for at a cheap price or even what I will be needing to do it safely. I want to build a cold smoke generator for smoking food in my smoker. What I need is a box that would house a small (110v Electric) blower fan that I need to be able to adjust the air flow by a dial separate from the fan of course. I have seen these units built using adjustable speed fish air pumps but I wanted a little more air movement for mine. I have a pic of one someone built but I have no info on it plus they built it using a battery which I wanted mine to plug into the wall. Can someone please point me in the right direction?

Thanks,
Chad

 

[CocaCola]

That is just a small squirrel cage fan with a variable speed control... If that is all you want, it's simple enough, just replace the battery with a wall wart that can handle the draw of the fan...

 

[oxicottin]

Thanks for the reply, where do you recommend I get the squirrel fan and what fan and variable controller and which ones would I need?

Thanks,
Chad

 

[duke37]

You can get a small 12V fan out of a computer power supply. A multiway switch to switch in series resistors will vary the speed. Start experimenting with 10 ohm.
More powerful 12V fans are used in car heaters. These probably take more current than a simple all wart can supply.

 

[CocaCola]

Well there are probably 1001 ways to go about this, this is just one of those ways... I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible using easily sourced stuff that can be had cheap... You could of course do this with parts from Radio Shack as well, but I'm too lazy to figure out what parts they actually have in the stores...

You can get a basic speed controller like this, it has the knob and it all setup for a small fan like you show in the picture above...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Desktop-Com...749?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item337a30f46d

On that particular speed controller you would cut off the bigger connectors wires, and attach +12V to the yellow wire and GND to the black wire... Red would just be taped up and not used... The little plug will plug right into the fan...

Like this one...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1x-NMB-DC-1...296?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27bdd54d30

Note this is a blower fan (squirrel) if you want a regular fan they are easily had as well... Like this...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Pin-12V-P...?pt=US_CPU_Fans_Heatsinks&hash=item2a12868d9d

The above is a small one, there are lots of sizes to be hand if you go this route, just Ebay search for "3 pin computer fan"

For the power supply you would need a 12v wall wart rated for at least 1A (1000mA) like this one...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/12V-1A-AC-D...?pt=US_Battery_Converters&hash=item2c67dea132

You would cut the plug off that and attach it to the yellow and black wires as described above, best to use a volt meter to verify what is positive and negative before you hook it up...

 

[oxicottin]

Thanks guys for the replys... I have one last question then my search is on... Why do I need a 3 pin fan and if I were to get a different speed controller would I look for one for a 3 pin fan.

Thanks,
Chad

 

[CocaCola]

The three pin fans are set up for the speed controller I linked you to, if you use a two wire fan that speed controller will not work and you will have to use a different setup... That could be a simple pot in series instead of the speed controller, that is one of the other 1001 ways to do it...

 

[oxicottin]

Ok, Im on the hunt.... Thanks!