Brushless DC motors (BLDC) are used in PC cooling, running disk drives at high speeds, and for Remote Control (RC) hobby (model sized) aircraft.

Why not use it for the small hand held summer fans. It's cheap, lightweight and highly effective.
-- pashute, Mar 03 2010

Nobody want to annotate?
-- pashute, Mar 07 2010


Yes, I suppose it's doable.

Why hasn't it been done already? I don't know much about this, but I would guess brushed DC motors are used because of: cost (hand held fans cost about $3), low voltage (hand held fans typically run on 2 AA batteries; about 2.5V), and power (brushless motors are better suited to high torque/power applications).

But I admit it would be pretty cool to use a fan with a power/weight ratio which would allow it to fly away.
-- xaviergisz, Mar 07 2010


I don't know enough about electric-motor design to know if there's a big difference (and Google came up with a couple bake-hits as well)
-- FlyingToaster, Mar 07 2010



random, halfbakery