Ancient 120mm Panaflo (Picture):

[Demonghast]

Jst had to share this. I bought an old server tower from a second hand shop for $5cnd. Only model number I could find listed was IBM 8560. Anyways after opening it up to see what was inside there was a PSU the size of a small country and a huge fan that I knew I'd have to dig out:

It goes beyond cool when you think how that PSU is sitting beside the 120mm fan that was in it. Says it has a 207W power rating. If I had been able to get the casing apart I would have maybe turned it into a radiator or something. However they used proprietary screws for the whole thing.

The tower had a manufacturing sticker from 1987 so this fan has to be at least that old. Writing on it is as follows:

141-222
Panaflo
DC Brushless
7H26CD
Model FBH-12G12LB
DC12V 0.2A
Matsu****a Electric
Japan
Patents Pending

I think I would have gone with the Matsu****a brand name rather than panaflo but that's just me.
Once I had blown most of the dust off of it I came to find the blades are almost razor sharp. Not sure if that was the way they were made, or if just that much time spinning wore them down that way. I'm going to try powering it up in a bit to see if it's still usable (actually I'm pretty sure it will turn, just how loud will it be). I'll have to take a look at panaflos' website and see if I can find the dba and cfm rating for it.

There was some other neat stuff in the case too though no more fans. But the HDD was about the size of a WWII Submarine and only has a capacity of 44.5GB. Good ole Seagate really knew how to build armored HDD's back in the day

PS: Just preveiwing my post and noticed it cuts out the "naughty" part of the brand name. Maybe that's why they changed it to Panaflo

 

[JKeefe]

I replaced a fan at work the other day. The new fan was a 120mmx38mm Papst. A normal high-flow fan.

When I opened the instrument I was doing the repair on (I maintain and repair high pressure liquid chromatography systems), I was amazed to find that the old fan was all metal, both the housing and the blades. It weighed about two pounds.

And, I assume that's a 44.5MB HDD, not 44.5GB...

 

[Demonghast]

Yes you are right a 44.5mb "Scuzzy" HDD

Just finished hooking up the fan to one of my 12V rails and man does this thing push a lot of air! And it is nearly silent doing it. My guess would be about 32dBa and the airflow must be up there in the 100cfm range.

This one probably weighs at least 1lb though maybe a bit over that. It's a 120mmX38mm. The housing is made of maybe aluminum though it could be something else that is galvanized. The blades though are certainly a very very rigid plastic.

Kind of funny but this thing actually feels like it is pushing more air than my 12" house fan. Next custom case I build I'll have to put it at the front with about 4 X 80mm fans exhausting lol. Wish this thing would fit on my SLK-900-U but the largest that will take is a 92mmX25mm. Though the dead zone on this thing is the size of Texas.

Used my wind speed meter just to see how bad the dead zone is. At 2inches from the fan the dead zone reads 1.9m/s and the fully exposed area reads 3.9m/s. Not sure how you'd work out any solid figures from that. But as a reference the 80mm Vantec stealth I have at 1800rpm reads 6.1m/s directly over its dead zone. Although it is really a hardly appreciable amount of air being pushed by it. Maybe this means the Vantec has a higher amount of pressure?

 

[a c i d.f l y]

...*amused by the reference to Texas*

I wanna see a picture of that harddrive!

-Frank

 

[Demonghast]

Put a regular sized 3.5" hdd beside for comparison
It would actually completely fill two 5.25" bays.

 

[a c i d.f l y]

Oohh yeah! That's old skul!

-Frank

 

[archilochus]

Dang that thing must have 16 platters in it..Looks like an aircraft carrier..

Once I had blown most of the dust off of it I came to find the blades are almost razor sharp. Not sure if that was the way they were made, or if just that much time spinning wore them down that way.

The blades on my new Panaflo 92mm U1A are sharp...

Used my wind speed meter just to see how bad the dead zone is. At 2inches from the fan the dead zone reads 1.9m/s and the fully exposed area reads 3.9m/s. Not sure how you'd work out any solid figures from that. But as a reference the 80mm Vantec stealth I have at 1800rpm reads 6.1m/s directly over its dead zone. Although it is really a hardly appreciable amount of air being pushed by it. Maybe this means the Vantec has a higher amount of pressure?

80mm fans generaly have more pressure..Especialy the 38mm thick ones..
Nice find..Good buy..

 

[klath]

Did you take a crowbar to the server case? It looks very beat up.

Also, it's a quite a deal just for the fan alone if the fan sounds that good.

 

[Vio1]

Hey Demonghast.. what store did you get it from? city?

 

[Demonghast]

klath: no that's just the PSU. The screws that were holding the PSU together were some kind of proprietary thing. Couldn't undo them properly so I took some tin snips to it The case though was very easy to open and is made out of only two peices of molded fiberglass. I think the fan guard alone would cost me just a bit more than I paid for this case, so yeah, pretty good deal.

archilochus: Good guess, but it's actually 15 platters. Or at least so it says. I'm going to open it up and count them tommorow. On the fan though, when I say razor sharp, I mean that I could use the fan blades to shave the hair on my arms. Wouldn't want to get my fingers anywheres near it.

Vio1: Picked it up here in Calgary. Got it at one of those charity second hand stores. You know the ones where they sell donated items to help the womens shelters and what not. The case was listed as having come from the City Of Calgary. Probably something they were updating.

I was thinking it would be funny to take the HDD to a store and ask them if they have any cooling solutions for it. Tell them it's a bit on the loud side too and I'll need a kit to dampen the vibration since it's making my desk shake lol

 

[Sean Lindstrom]

I have two of these old Panaflos, among others. Shameless scavenging. One can de-solder some components off old PSU boards too (one does ).

 

[archilochus]

Save that hdd to show your kids..or grand kids...By then we'll have hdd's with no moving parts.. 1/2 a gig almost..Man that thing is big..

 

[Sjaak]

that harddisk looks like an armoured motion detector. also remembers me of some alien spaceship i saw on tv a long time ago