My wife found this Hello Kitty fan that someone threw out. It was rusty and would not spin freely due to sitting in the rain. She asked me if I could fix an oscillating fan. I told her that I’d give it my best shot! The following steps are how I was able to fix the fan.
How to fix an oscillating fan:
The fan starts out as an ugly rusty mess.
I took off the blade housing with a Phillips screwdriver. This allowed me to get a good look inside to see why the fan quit working. Once the motor was within view, it was necessary to give everything a good brushing. There was a lot of dust buildup inside the fan.
Then to find out why the shaft quit spinning, I unscrewed the halves from each other. Afterwards, the pieces came apart fairly easily. If you run in to trouble getting the motor apart, try tapping it lightly with a hammer.
The shaft was not spinning due to a buildup of dust and a light accumulation of rust. This was easy to fix by adding a few drops of machine oil and spinning the shaft a few times. As the oil became dirty from the rust, I wiped it clean with a cloth. The process needs to be done over and over until the oil remains clean.
Now that the motor spins freely, I could turn my attention to the blade housings. The paint was coming off and it was full of rust. The easiest method I found to remove the rust was to use a wire brush drill attachment. I chose to cover the plastic rim with masking tape in order to protect it from the wire brush.
Now that everything was shiny and clean, I chose a pink metal paint to match the Hello Kitty color scheme. Coating both sides of the mesh housing twice gave me the best result.
Reassembly was easy. I just put everything back together in the order it was taken off. Finally, the fan turned out wonderful and my wife was very pleased!
Conclusion
So that is how you fix an oscillating fan. It was an easy project that wasn’t my typical woodworking. Be sure to check out my YouTube channel if you are enjoy woodworking.