Ceiling Fan Blade Dust Collector That Can Save Lungs From Room Dust

Intro: Ceiling Fan Blade Dust Collector That Can Save Lungs From Room Dust

Hi Readers, In this instructable I will show you how I made this Ceiling fan blade dust collector which is a very useful tool that every home must have.

To begin with, let me go through in detail about this device

Did you know that dust is everywhere? Yes, I don’t know if you are aware or not, but The room in which you live always has dust particles flying around in the air.

Don’t agree with me? Ok! you can check yourself by conducting this simple experiment.

Before you go to bed just switch your room lights off, take your mobile phone switch on the flashlight, and point the light towards the ceiling.

Now when you observe near the flashlight(light rays) you can see very fast-moving particles, These are dust that is in your room, no matter how tidy we try to keep our room dust is always there.

From the last image of this step, you can see the dust collected using this device after it was installed on a fan blade and later checked after a week, Imagine our lungs!

What sparked me to come up with this project?

This happened to me a while ago, I personally clean my room every 10 days, Every time I clean my room I needed a separate cleaning cloth to clean my fan blades the reason is it was always filled up with dust.

Wondering why all the dust accumulates here, After thinking a bit I got to know when I go to bed I always keep the fan on, this might be the reason it carries dust on its blades.

As we know a fan is an appliance that has to deal with air every time when it is powered on!

I wanted a device that can collect the dust not just blow the dust! thereby minimizing the circulation of dust

Anyways there is a lot of difference between cleaning the dust and blowing the dust. Cleaning the dust removes particles from the air/room so you can breathe the air freely!

Blowing the dust just transfers its place from position x to position Y

As you might be aware there are many respiratory-associated diseases, Pollution, and dust are one of the reasons.

How Does This work?

• This device sits on the blade of your ceiling fan via the clips.
• Note that this design works perfectly fine with my fan, as we are in different locations the design of your fan may vary but the principle of working does not differ.
• As the fan spins these spins with the blades
• The cloth material used in these cleaners allows air to pass through it, so when the particles of dust pass through this cloth particles other than air will be trapped in this cloth
• The blades of the fan spin several times a second this encourages more dust particles to be captured by the cloth
• You can remove this device after a week to check how much dust you are inhaling!

The project is very useful I recommend you people to consider building this project whenever you find time, any doubts about any steps you can ask in the comments, and also you can watch the video tutorial given at end of this instructable.

STEP 1: Designing

I designed this tool/device on my own, I used tinkercad software for the design

It took me quite a while to finalize the design because there were many factors that would pitch in

The main factor is air resistance, Since we are installing this device over a fan blade this device/tool must be aerodynamic in design

Aerodynamic means to have a shape that reduces the drag from air moving past, the more the drag more the issues!

I have designed this to have very minimal air drag by curving the clippers

Clippers are the ones here that will be clipped to the fab blade, This device undergoes centrifugal force as well.

As you might know because of centrifugal force this device may move away from the center, to reduce this effect to a great extent I have placed this tool/device near to center rather than the end(outer edges) of the fan blade

The device design by default fits very well to the shape of the fan blade that I'm using so that I didn't find any need to use extra adhesives If you are willing you can use double-sided adhesives for extra gripping.

Use the below designs on your slicer, only the frame need supports the other part can be printed directly.

STEP 2: 3D Printing

You can use the position of printing that I followed to print the parts which I found most effective.

The Frame/Clipper needs support and you need 6 of those, I printed in a batch of 2, you can print 6 at once too

The cloth holder clip takes less than 30mins to print whereas the batch of 2 clippers took me an hour, I printed all of these on Red and white PLA filaments

I used an ender 3 printer, printing time may vary as per the printer you are using

End of this Step I had 6 clippers and 3 cloth holder clip

STEP 3: Cleaning

When we use supports we have the task of removing them.

This is a very easy task, all you need to do is pluck the additional supports using a filament cutter.

If you don't have a filament cutter you can use the tip portion of the wire stripper as i did.

Repeat the same procedure for all 6 clippers

STEP 4: Making Cloth Holder Clip

To be more specific about the cloth that I will be using, I have cut a strip of it.

In the second image, I have taken a closeup image so that you can see the spacing on the fabric.

We need this space to trap the dust particles.

The third image shows the orange background with cloth in between again to show the semi-transparent cloth material

After the cloth is cut into strips apply glue to the frame and just place the cloth over it

Allow some time for drying and finally trim off the excess cloth material using a cutter/scissors

STEP 5: Putting Together

Once we have the finished cloth holder, it is ready to be installed on the blade clippers part.

To make this reusable after the dust collection I have created a minor excess gap between a space that holds both parts.

To this part we need to add a paper lock, paper works well and comes with very less complications at the time of disassembly.

I found that a strip of paper with dimensions 1.5cm*10cms works well.

Fold the strip 3 times and add it to the L-shaped space, and insert it into the clipper slot, here you might need to add a drop of paper glue for additional strength.

You might need to add a little extra push, now we have the device ready for use

STEP 6: Installing

Installing this is very easy, I will be showing you how to add it to the fan blade.

Note that I found it difficult to show you adding these clippers on the ceiling fan that was fit to the roof (no sufficient gears/helpers to shoot video in the ceiling!) so showing a demo using a spare fan blade

Make sure to check the direction of rotation of the fan blade, in my case counter-clockwise direction.

As per that factor, I am installing this as shown in the first image of this step, Just open the clipper and make it sit on the blade, do it for the other one

After you have both the clips on the blade, gently push the clippers in as I said earlier my blade design fitted perfectly with the clipper and there was no need for me to use any additional adhesives

After you add this to all the 3 blades, you can use the ceiling fan as usual.

STEP 7: Removing

After a week I checked the fan blades, not much dust was accumulated in the blades but to my surprise, the dust holders/ cloth holder collected a surprising amount of dust.

I unclipped them from the blades slowly.

As you can see from the images on this step the dust particles.

Suggestion: If your place is dusty you might need to check this every 2 days because if the cloth is completely blocked with dust the air won't flow through the cloth.

The reason for using paper on the cloth holder was to easily unclip when we want to add a new cloth.

You can reuse these clippers and cloth holders after you add a new cloth as I think washing would enlarge the pores of existing cloth attached to the holder

This was all about building this project, if you have any questions ask me in the comments section.

STEP 8: Working Video

Does the browser have any issues auto-playing the video? Worry less you can just use this link to watch the video(just paste it on your search URL bar) https://youtu.be/DD5YCQP_sjg

Hope you will enjoy the video, Until next time take care :)

Thank you and happy making.

Comments

[MissionCritical]

dude this is so awesome, you should get a patent on it and sell it as a product!

[CrazyScience]

Thank you soo much! I have to go through those too :)

[Entropy]

I love this, but am not sure I could handle the technology/programming for the printer. Also, if you have more blades, would you make one for each blade?

[CrazyScience]

You mean different designs for other blade types? I am working on those since a few days.

[twit7503]

I'm just wondering if you think there may may ba way to adapt for different shaped fan blades? I bought fans with leaf-shaped blades years ago... love the fans, hate the dust they collect.

[CrazyScience]

yeah, iam working on a design that could fit any blad shapes. I will publish a detailed instructable later. Thanks

[Hmcbart1]

Awesome idea. Only question I have, does the weight of the dust collectors cause the blades to wobble?

[moose80]

I have the same question. Since one needs to balance the fan upon installation, I would think an addition like this would cause balance problems. Nice idea! Just have that question.

[CrazyScience]

No, this won't cause any balances issues this is because all the 3 dust trappers weigh equally and secondly they are placed towards the center of motor.

[CrazyScience]

Thanks! No the blades won't wobble the reason is the weight of all 3 dust collectors is less than 30gms and they are centered towards the ceiling fan's motor, so there is a perfect balance and fan works normal...

[shalnachywyt]

Interesting idea, but are you aware that this type of item exists (see pic) and I have been using something like this for 15 years? For us older folk, it's a lot easier to use.

[Tweetysvoice]

Not OP, but I just wanted to comment that these are two separate dust trappers that do completely different things. The one you posted a photo of is an active dust collector (used when you want to clean dust from fan blades only) and the one in this instructive is a passive dust collector (it stays on the blade and collects dust in the air when it's turned on - not just dust on a blade).

[shalnachywyt]

Good point but still, getting up a ladder to clean the thing is problematic for me and other folks who either have disabilities, are elderly, or just don't want to climb up and down ladders. The dust trapper works for me. Furthermore, making something like this, as well as having to go up and down a ladder to install it would be difficult. I swapped out blades a number of years ago and doing that almost caused me to fall and take a trip to the ER by ambulance. I'm not getting any younger (unfortunately!) ::smile::

[CrazyScience]

Yes, everything has its own advantages :)

[CrazyScience]

yes you are right :)

[ironman0104]

I purchased that for my mom to use on her ceiling fans. They work very well and it was inherited by my sister when mom got sick.

[CrazyScience]

But the ones that I designed here work totally differently! Yes, I am aware what you are showing exists
Anyway, the essence of science will be more interesting if it always undergoes some upgrade..

[MichelleL168]

I was just killing time looking at diy projects when I came across this. You have no idea how grateful I am that you thought of this. I have 5 dogs and even with the air purifier running 24/7 the dust is insane! The ceiling fans get so gross so fast and I am going to try this asap. I just got my son a 3D printer for Christmas and I’m going to try and convince him to make some for me! Seriously thank you so much and I hope you win this contest!!!

[CrazyScience]

Feeling Great to hear these from you, I hope you print them and try it, Thank you and Good luck :)

[Penolopy Bulnick]

That is an interesting idea!