Development of an automated ceiling fan balancing system

• Main Author: Ren, Dexian
• Other Authors: Heng Kok Hui, John Gerard
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Engineering; Physics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/177131
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Electrically driven ceiling fans were invented in 1889. As they have yet to have cheaper alternatives, they are still one of the commonly used electrical appliances that circulates airflow. Despite Ceiling fans being cost-effective, if they were not dynamically balanced, they would experience vibrations, which could shorten their lifespan. As there is currently no smart solution to perform ceiling fan balancing, an automated ceiling fan balancing system was decided to be made. The purpose of this project is to design a theory-proven workflow and develop an automated real-time measuring device to dynamically balance ceiling fans efficiently and reliably without altering the original ceiling fan design. The measuring device measures its distance to the fan blade while recognizing which blade is detected. Moreover, a Python program was made to calculate the amount of balancing weights required to balance a ceiling fan dynamically. The experiment was done on a scaled-down ceiling fan model, and its result suggests that standard deviations of the collected distances are good representations of the severity of the imbalance in ceiling fans. In addition, future studies should focus on developing a cost-effective speed-measuring solution and possibly integrating all the functions into a single device, such as wheel balancing machines.