Controlling Blower Motor Speed Remotely

[ShutterDown]

I've got a couple of fans (catalog calls them
blowers) that are essentially large versions
of the box style fans that cool the innards of
PCs and many other devices. They are rated
at 340 CFM, 0.85 AMPs, 120 VAC.<p>These units are compact and incredibly powerful.
I'd like to control the speed of these blowers
because I don't need to operate them at full
power most of the time. Keeping the decibel
level down is another reason to regulate their
speed.<p>When I was younger I collected a small mountain
of Triacs, SCRs, Diacs, etc. Every motor, lamp,
or heating device I could get my hands on was
hooked up to some kind of controller.<p>At this point in my life, I don't want to bread-
board circuits, etch copper clad boards, or order
parts from a dozen different catalogs. I need
something in kit form or fully assembled.<p>I checked out a few sites that sell X-10 modules.
Some say you can use their cheap lamp dimmer
module to control fan motors. I'm very skeptical.
Inductive loads are very different from resistive.
I guess if the motor was very small it might work.<p>Infrared is out because I won't be in the same
room with the blowers. I really don't want to
use repeaters just to relay an IR signal with
an RF signal!<p>I did read something about an X-10 module made
to control fan motors, but the description wasn't
very clear. <p>Maybe someone can point me in the right direction.<p>Thanks guys!<p>ShutterDown<p>[ July 18, 2005: Message edited by: ShutterDown ]</p>

[philba]

have you tried this site? I see some links that will probably do it.<p>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ac ... gle+Search

[Robert Reed]

[email protected] amps =102 watts, factor in efficiency and you probably have a 1/10 H. P. motor.
340 cfm with a 1/10 hp motor ? I dont think thats any where close to possible. I think someone in marketing is really stretching the truth here. Are relying on these specs or just by trial that whatever cfm is, its doing the job. For starters, do you know what type motor it is ? Could be a simple solution or an expensive one depending on this.

[jimandy]

Maybe I missed something, but what do you plan to use these fans (blowers) for? You want to slow them down *and* control them remotely so that doesn't sound like you're putting them in a PC box, else you would use an internal thermo control.

[Engineer1138]

If it's not too late to change, there are versions of those large blowers that are controllable by a DC PWM voltage input.