Window Fan
First Generation
This was a fun little project that adds a very subtle touch of animation. It was also quite simple, requiring only a low-RPM motor and some bits of brass and plastic.
I bonded some thin slices of styrene rod directly to the end of the motor shaft to make the fan blades. The fan body was made from strip styrene, and the grille was a tiny bit of etched brass roofwalk.
The completed mechanism looks like this:
And in situ:
The apartment building with the window fan now resides on Rick Spano's Sceniced and Undecided.
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Second Generation
For the Mountain Vista Railroad, I decided to go one better and build two fans, which I placed in the window of a hardware store as if they were on sale.
I figured the hardest part would be the mechanism, but this turned out to be the easiest, thanks to a "sacrificial" toy insect, which had the perfect gears to make a gear train (above). The last gear of the gear train pops up through the floor (first image below) to engage two tiny gears behind the window display (second image below).
Those two tiny gears, incidentally, I had to make by slicing them off of a larger originally compound gear. Also, I made the washers from tube styrene. And the shafts are cut from #72 drill bits. The fans themselves—at least the boxes—were relatively easy to make. They're just thin slices of square brass tube; the grilles are bits of Plano stainless steel freight car roof walk.
It was the fan blades that monopolized my time. I tried a great many things before I finally settled on soldering three wheel hubs from an etched brass cart kit together. I hadn't done such fine soldering since my days working in T Gauge. It took many, many tries—it's a good thing I had a few spare kits.
I may yet re-make the fan blades, as I'm not especially thrilled with how they turned out. Meanwhile, enjoy a brief video of their maiden run.
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When I decommissioned the layout, I recycled the mechanism for a pair of hefty exhaust fans.