Things, sometimes [work equipment]

[rebeccmeister]

The lab here has two nice-looking Percival incubators. Unfortunately, at some point early in their usage, they were filled too full with crickets, and this started to cause a buildup of material on the unit cooler fan motors. The buildup, in turn, wore out the fans to the point where they started making horrible fan-dying noises. Before I arrived, at least some of the fans were replaced, but of course I don't know which out of the four fans (two fans per unit). About a week ago, I turned on the second incubator, and left it running without any crickets in it whatsoever. Over the weekend, one of its fans started to make the terrible dying noises.

It sounds like we're probably out of the warranty period for the units, and in any case, the person I tried to contact at the original vendor hasn't replied to my query, so I'm strongly inclined to figure out how to fix/replace the damn things myself.

But ugh, I don't know a whole lot about fan motor specs, so it's taking some head-scratching to try and figure out what to order/stockpile as a replacement. One of the fans helpfully declares, on its side, "120 VAC 60 Hz S1 0.45 A" and it has a 1/8" shaft diameter with a 1.5" shaft. From this I gather that it's for a 120-voltage system (US standard), operates at 60 Hertz (i.e. 3600 rpm) with a current of 0.45 amps (specs from the wiring diagram indicate the cooling unit has a total current of 1.3 amps).

So, does that mean that this will work? Or will it draw too much current? The last time I thought about most of this was high school physics, argdarnit.

Another diagram describes the whole cooler unit as "RCO-001 UNIT COOLER BOHN #TA-17SF; w/TWO(2) 115 VAC/1-PHASE/60 Hz, 1.6 TOTAL FLA, 210 TOTAL CFM FANS; 1/2 SAE FLARE NUT INLET, 3/8 ODF SOLDER SUCTION-LINE CONNECTION, 1/2 ODF SOLDER DRAIN-LINE CONNECTION"

More information needed?

Comments

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

There's also this one, possibly:

https://www.grainger.com/product/DAYTON-1-200-HP-C-Frame-Motor-4M249?functionCode=P2IDP2PCP

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Nothing particularly useful (I am sleep deprived at the moment) except for the idle comment that the last two times I was replacing failing fans in non computer things, it turned out that standard 10cm (I think?) computer case fans were pretty much just the thing. (After the first one - which was in our chillers - I got a stack of them, so the second time I just grabbed one to see if it might work, and sure enough.) Are you fairly certain you need to replace just the motor, and not the whole fan?

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Could you take a picture of what you currently have?
Muffin fans like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA27C3GZ4662
are ubiquitous in electronics.
Yours is a monster: that's a 50 watt fan.
Probably the most relevant item in the latter chunk of info is 210 total cfm -- that's the cubic feet per minute it flows. I presume that's several fans, some of which are burnt out or failing?
Two of these: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009OWRMZ6 would exceed the flow capacity of the originals. They should also last for something like five years of continuous usage.
The Packard frame motor would probably work. Generally you'd rather the replacement have the same or slightly lower max amperage, because that way the power supply/control system wouldn't be straining to run it.