Anybody wax their fan blades?

Bean · Post by **Bean** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 11:04 am

I did

I want to know of anyone who tried this and what their results were. Comments are welcome.

I grabbed an unused seven blade high speed fan (panny BX) and cleaned all but one blade with 90 percent alcohol and left to air dry. The one blade was just wiped with soft cotton. I then waxed three blades with non abrasive carnauba paste wax.

After a few days, the blades with the wax had a very light coating consistently covering the entire back of the blade (the front doesn’t collect dust). The alcohol cleaned only blades fared better. The dust did not cover the entire blade - more areas of clean black blade was showing and dust is in a streaked pattern in the direction parallel to the airflow. The one blade not cleaned with alcohol but just wiped down was the cleanest. It had dust, but there was a higher percentage of black clean blade showing.

With such little dust on the fan, I was getting impatient. I sped it up by going around the house looking for the dustiest stuff and blowing off the dust with pressurized air can in front of the fan. Unfortunately, it marred the results as some dust particles/dust bunnies had actually wiped some of the coating of the blades in spots and may have knocked off any thicker coating that was pre-existing. Anyway, the blades with least amount of dust are now the ones wiped clean with alcohol .

Not the best test but so far I feel that waxing is not worth it. It may even attract or certainly not repel dust. I will update if long term results are different.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 11:12 am

i saw a thread once somewhere around here where i guy took very fine sandpaper and sanded the fan blades, the stability bars that connect the fan hub to the casing, and the inside of the casing where the airflow goes across. before and after pictures looked promising. all the usuall edges you usually see in any mass produced case fan were gone and the overall air restrictivness appeared to be much better.

i believe the end results though were negligable as far as noise and airflow were concerned. it was ALOT of work for almost zero gain. but i guess if that sorta thing floats your boat and you have time on your hands to spare for it, then go for it.

Bean · Post by **Bean** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 11:23 am

Thanks for posting that cause I always wondered what if. But yah, that would be a lot of work. If you could seperate the blade portion from the casing it would help alot. But otherwise, it is too tedious. the cleaning and waxing however is somewhat tedious and small fingers would help

but it didn't take long to do.

Mr Evil · Post by **Mr Evil** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 11:34 am

I was thinking about this a while ago too. Dust is definitely a problem for noise: dusty fans become much louder, and with enough dust they become unbalanced and rattle terribly. I considered aluminium-bladed fans, which are probably smoother than plastic, but they were hard to find. The blades of my current (Sharkoon) fans feel smoother than most and don't have such a pronounced mould line along the blade edges, so it will be interesting to see how dusty they get.

Writer · Post by **Writer** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 6:52 pm

I wonder if waxing the blades interferes with the laminar air flow? That could makes dust collection worse - instead of flowing around the tiny layer of air, the dust particles actually manage to come into contact with the surface of the blades?

Or does waxing give plastic a static charge?

Be interesting to know why it had that effect...

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 7:27 pm

you know, having some texture to the blades might even improve things as far as air movement and dust is concerned. think about a golf ball. how it has all the dimples so that it goes further. now think about that technology and how it would work on fan blades. thats along the lines of what i was thinking.

Bean · Post by **Bean** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 7:38 pm

I think you both are on to something. Its either the laminar flow or static charge or a combination of both.

I waxed the blades thinking it would fill in the microscopic scrathes and imperfections. Then the blade would be slick and nothing for the dust to hang onto. Instead it seems I got the opposite effect to a degree.

Or it could be I increased the static charge like you wondered. I dont know of any antistatic protectant otherwise I'd try it cause it's real easy to do.

The whole reason I started looking at this is because I'm enclosing the CPU fan in a duct and unfortunately it will be a pain in the neck to disassemble the duct to blow the dust out of the fan. Looks like a filter will be my best bet.