Hi, I am trying to repair my small portable fan by bypassing the 3-way switch.
Coming in from the plug is the black power cord, which separates into a black and a white bundled copper cord. The white one goes directly into the motor, while the black one goes on to the switch. There are three white metal bundled cords; the brown one goes from the motor to the near side of the switch, (along with the black one) and coming out of the switch are the other two white metal cords, one black, one blue, that go on to the motor.
I’m a little confused about which cords to connect to which other cords to complete the circuit so that when I plug the fan in, it will just be “on” at full power. I have already snipped the four cords away from the switch.
Thanks!
How many connections are there on the switch itself?
It’s not clear what you mean by “along with the black one”. Were the brown and black wire physically touching at the switch (connected to the same post)?
Your best result would probably be to reconnect to the switch, turn it on (unplugged, to be safe), and see which wires are now connected to each other. Those would be the ones to wire together.
The white wire is the neutral, and goes from the neutral side of the plug into the motor. You should not have to mess with this one at all.
The black wire on the power cord is the “hot” side of the circuit, and goes into the switch.
My guess is that the brown, black and blue wires coming out of the switch correspond to the low, medium and high settings on the fan motor, but in order to find out which is which you will need to experiment.
Take a wire nut and connect the black wire from the plug to each of the other three wires, in turn, and plug it in. Whichever one runs at high speed is the correct one. Tape off the other two wires and you should be good.
There are two ways to make a 3-speed motor - both involve the windings (the lacquered wires which make a motor a motor).
One uses the switch to simply select which of 3 winding to energize, the other uses only 2 windings - low, medium. High is accomplished by energizing both.
Assuming you are not inordinately fearful of electricity (keep some kkind of insulation between yourself and all bare wires):
Take the black wire from the power cord and touch the bare end to each wire coming from the motor (that used to go to the switch). Start with the brown one - unless there is some way for it to connect directly to the white from the power cord, it sounds mos likely.
Then try the blue and then the black.
WARNING 1: as with all electrical advise from strangers, double-check. In the case of cyberspace, that means wait 10 minutes. If no one comes along telling yo I’m an idiot and you’ll kill yourselft trying this, give it a shot
WARNING 2: I do not understand what you mean by “metal cords”. If you mean they have metal inside a plastin insulator, that is how power cords which might touch something they’re not to supposed to are made.
to clarify: I said “white metal cord” to differentiate it from the cord whose wires were copper. Shoulda put a hyphen in there, sorry.
I was kind of surprised to see white-metal wires inside some of the cord – I’m guessing their increased resistance is desired in this case?
Anyway, the black/copper wire and brown/silver wire are going into the switch. The black/silver wire and blue/silver wire are coming out of the switch. (Except I snipped them all, leaving the white one alone since it wasn’t involved.)
I think I have enough information here to proceed; got my electrical tape and wire nuts.
Thanks so much, my ever-handy colleagues!
What speed were you wanting to run the fan at? A lot of small motors need to start on high, then go to low.
Why not just replace the switch?