12v fan control

[Paddy Davison]

Hi
i'm planning on making a extractor fan for my solder station with a carbon filter. And im just starting out so this will be one of my first projects. I have these two dc brushless 12v 1.6 amp fans and i was wondering how i would control the fan speed. Some help would go along way.
thank you

 

[Mr Kagouris]

You control the fan speed by stepping down the voltage, although I don't recommend going lower than 50% using only voltage control.

 

[Eximo]

Well, if you want to control fan speed, the most basic way is a potentiometer to reduce the voltage going to the fan. A bit wasteful in terms of energy. Resistors could be used for fixed speeds.

Another way would be to actually control the input voltage with a PWM controller or any other variable power supply technique.

If you just want a constant speed, but lower then fully on, just run the fans at a lower voltage.

 

[Paddy Davison]

You control the fan speed by stepping down the voltage, although I don't recommend going lower than 50% using only voltage control.

Would I just use a potentiometer

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Potentiometer would work, but it would need to be rated for a high enough power. Also, needs to be pretty low resistance. Most pots are in the kohm range.

If you're using two fans, swapping between series and parallel is an option. Though not very granular.

PWM is best.

 

[Paddy Davison]

Potentiometer would work, but it would need to be rated for a high enough power. Also, needs to be pretty low resistance. Most pots are in the kohm range.

If you're using two fans, swapping between series and parallel is an option. Though not very granular.

PWM is best.

What components would I need ?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Are your fans 3-pin or 4-pin?

 

[Paddy Davison]

Are your fans 3-pin or 4-pin?

They are non standard connectors that I salvaged from a old dell PC but they are 4 pin but I snipped the connectors off. And they are 12v at 1.6amp