Another installment of engineered to fail - Tower fan

[jzmtl]

They are sleek, take up almost no space and pump out lots of air, but if you want something that last years, don't bother with them.

The problem is with the blade design. Since it's a cylinder it require hinges on both end. The lower end is attached to motor shaft, no problem there. The upper hinge however, is just a short steel rod molded into the plastic fan blade. The imprecise molding of plastic, coupled with warping after, means this rod does not spin in the same axis as the motor shaft.  As the fan blade spins, the upper trunnion moves more like an egg beater than an axle. To compensate for this, the upper bearing is simply a flexible rubber piece with a hard plastic center for the steel rod to stick into. If your fan makes any noise, it's probably because of vibration from here.

In time, probably pretty soon, either the plastic center would wear out from the constant rubbing of steel rod, or the rubber would crack and break from the constant oscillation.

So bottom line, stick with decent quality traditional fans unless you don't mind throw them out every few years.

[Grant Lamontagne]

I've never had a tower fan that lasted more than a year or two.

Def