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FEATURED Building PWM Controller for 4 wires PWM fan

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You could do the vertical arrangement, solder a wire to each end of the fuse and attach one to the board, the other end stands upright and the wire comes around and back down. The majority of PSUs do it that way.
Replacing the fuse is sort of annoying, but you shouldn't have to in theory.

I like the planes, it looks good to me.
 
@ Zryder.......what type of fans and pumps are you intending to control......3 pin DC controllable type......or 4 pins classic PWM?
 
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macforth said:
@ Zryder.......what type of fans and pumps are you intending to control......3 pin DC controllable type......or 4 pins classic PWM?
Click to expand...

4 pin PWM. The 12V supplied to the fan's is constant from the PSU, and the arduino will provide PWM output to throttle the fan's.
 
bing said:
@Railgun, woaahh .... :eek: , that is big multi channels controller you got there ! :D

Ok, few modifications and suggestions ...



That led will going to be toasted if you connected like that, and I assumed the reason you put the led there is to show the light intensity that is correlated with the pwm signal right ? Like really dim at low duty cycle and max brightness at max speed.

You need to change that connection and add few components like this here :

View attachment 103185

Note : For the connection at "FROM 555 OUT PIN", just get one from any 555 outputs that going to be connected to the pwm fan line and share it with the fan.
Click to expand...

bing, can I change the 2N2222 with another common "N" type transistor?
such as BC847 that I'm currently using on the kick-start circuit?
 
Got the 1K and connected everything up....and Shock! Horror!!

It worked first time.......

The surprising thing is that turned right down to what should be 0% duty, the fan spins at about 25 revs, I was quite amused...never thought a PWM fan could revolve so slowly... it's an NF-F12.
 
macforth said:
Got the 1K and connected everything up....and Shock! Horror!!

It worked first time.......

The surprising thing is that turned right down to what should be 0% duty, the fan spins at about 25 revs, I was quite amused...never thought a PWM fan could revolve so slowly... it's an NF-F12.
Click to expand...


great to see u made it :thup:

indeed, after having few of these PWM fans I never bother to look for that "ancient" 3 wire fans anymore :rofl:
except for those with unique blade design, or something I can get for free :chair:

and I was curious, can you measure the current withdraw by that fan between various duty cycles?
 
inVain said:
bing, can I change the 2N2222 with another common "N" type transistor?
such as BC847 that I'm currently using on the kick-start circuit?
Click to expand...

Yes, that should not be a problem.


macforth said:
Got the 1K and connected everything up....and Shock! Horror!!

It worked first time.......

The surprising thing is that turned right down to what should be 0% duty, the fan spins at about 25 revs, I was quite amused...never thought a PWM fan could revolve so slowly... it's an NF-F12.
Click to expand...

Congrats !! :clap:

With your scope there, it must be really easy to watch if this circuit really capable of putting out pure 0% or 100%.

Btw, just for fun, you could hook the fan's rpm line to a 1K to 10K resistor, then to the pos 12 volt, and use your scope's 2nd channel at that connection to monitor it's rpm. Though I don't have that scope, but it should have the capability to check the frequency generated and multiply it manually by 30 to get the rpm.

If you're going to measure the current draw precisely, you need a low ohm resistor say like 0.1 Ohm, and connect it in series with the + 12 volt power that is powering the fan, and use the scope probe's ground clip and the hook at the two resistor's leg. And look for the RMS value captured and do the basic electronic I=VR to get the real power consumption.

Precaution, in this technique, you MUST use "only one" channel and disconnect the other probe from the scope, cause if the other probe is still connected with it's ground clip at the psu's ground at other test point, it will short out the power supply that is powering the fan. Again, becareful.


Edit : Any chance you could share a short video here ? ;)
 
My scope grounds the ground clip to chassis ground, which the computer shares and connects to the black ground PSU wires.
That scope may not, I have a rather old analog scope.

I'd use two probes, one on each side, in A-B mode to show the difference in voltage between them.
 
All mains powered scopes have their ground clip connected to the chassis's ground and mains earth, only portable & battery powered scope has the isolated ground clip,

Yep, the technique using two channels difference with both ground clips connected each other is fine too.
 
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Sheesh... ya gotta remember that for an ROF*, who last played round with electronics many years ago, I had a little learning curve to go through to try to do that which InVain and Bing suggested.

Firstly, I soldered a 1K resister and placed it inline as Bing had suggested...with the aim to see the tacho frequency. Well that opened a can of worms, and I had to go back to oscilloscope kindergarden in order to learn how to put two visuals of both the PWM and the fan tacho on the Oscilloscope screen. The crux was "alternate" in the trigger mode menu. But Viola...I made it!

Next I had to figure how to see a measurement.......so back to class until I learnt about the "measure" button.

So at this stage I could see the upper wave showing PWM output, while the lower showed the fan tacho frequency. When I hit measure for the fan tacho wave (input 2 in my case), then figured out how to see just frquency, instead of a whole page of suff that covered the bottom half of the screen.

Next I thought about the power the fan was using and opted to use an old multimeter that could handle up to 10 maps. So I see everything that you both asked me about......I didn't need the 10 amp input..the 200mA was more than sufficient.

The next thing to figure is how to video this type of experiment such that I can put a link in here to enable all and sundry to see. Until then here are some results:

Min PWM via the pot... AMPS 9.9mA Frequency tacho 5.176 - 5.208 (155-156 rpm).

50% duty cycle (guaged by simply looking at the square wave of the output PWM)
Amps 11.5 mA FreQ tacho 25.77-26.04 (773 - 781 rpm)
Pot turned to full PWM setting
Amps 13.5 mA FreQ tacho 50 Hz steady(1500 rpm)

Until I figure the video bit, a couple of photos:

* Retired Old Fart
 
a little update...

Well, I made some progress. Everything has arrived except for the programmer that I need to put the code on my chip. I have to pick it up next week from the shipping depot.

Not the prettiest prototype, but it's going together well despite my shaky hands.

photo1_zps9fc90a5e.jpg


photo2_zps8e5d28e7.jpg
 
Bobnova said:
Look good to me!
Thanks for the update.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

Total side note. I found when I was testing my pin header connections it was easiest to tie a resistor to one lead of my voltmeter and check for resistance through each hole on the ribbon cable all the way down to a point further on in the circuit.
 
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zryder said:
My original intention was to put a fuse inline on the power cable leading to the molex connector. Fuse holders take a lot of room on a PCB.
Click to expand...

That's what I did when I Installed my sanyo denki 4 amp monster. Toasted two bench power supplies i had laying around before I made that decision. It works great.
 
macforth said:
Next I thought about the power the fan was using and opted to use an old multimeter that could handle up to 10 maps. So I see everything that you both asked me about......I didn't need the 10 amp input..the 200mA was more than sufficient.

The next thing to figure is how to video this type of experiment such that I can put a link in here to enable all and sundry to see. Until then here are some results:

Min PWM via the pot... AMPS 9.9mA Frequency tacho 5.176 - 5.208 (155-156 rpm).

50% duty cycle (guaged by simply looking at the square wave of the output PWM)
Amps 11.5 mA FreQ tacho 25.77-26.04 (773 - 781 rpm)
Pot turned to full PWM setting
Amps 13.5 mA FreQ tacho 50 Hz steady(1500 rpm)

Until I figure the video bit, a couple of photos:
Click to expand...

there's still some saving between various duty cycles :D

and finally a friend has made a power consumption video of an Delta TFC1212DE 3.9A.



~56watt during start up
~10watt during idle
~42watt on max speed

The Delta seems to print out their max. power on their label :D


Jasonaaronfox said:
Well, I made some progress. Everything has arrived except for the programmer that I need to put the code on my chip. I have to pick it up next week from the shipping depot.
Click to expand...

beautiful :thup:
did you etch your own PCB on that?

I got my first rev. full of bridges :bang head
just received my second rev. yesterday, and had its pads masked by tin manually (thanks to your solder wick tips :D)
 
yup, made that board using cupric chloride and tinned it myself. made a design error and had to fix it with a wire bridge, but other than that it was nice. it's crazy how easy it is to solder to a tinned trace.
 
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