Generic Fan Blade Assembly Question

[engineer137]

Question: 

Why are case fan blade assemblies not available for purchase online?

 

Background: 

I have three 200mm Thermaltake TT-2030 fans each with at least one broken fan blade.  I'm an engineer, I love fixing things, and I like saving money.  I have been successful in extending the life of these broken fans by using a Dremmel tool to sand down opposing blades.  Another thing that works well are strips of Aluminum HVAC tape added to specific fan blades (very much like how car tires are balanced).  But balancing these properly is a time consuming process.  It would be great if I could just buy a replacement

 

Basic concepts:

• I would expect the stator to be more expensive to manufacture than the blades.
• The fan blade assemblies are not difficult to remove.
• The fan blade assemblies are already being mass produced (millions of PCs, each with one or more fans = this is not a rare part)
• There are tons of plastic fan blades for sale online for other products (RC planes, quad copters, small appliances, auto, ect.)

So when I started searching online for this part, I was shocked that I couldn’t find ANY for sale.  My starting expectations were low, I didn’t think I would have a lot of choice in style or color, but I thought I could at least find something.  If not for 200mm, maybe something for more common size like 80 or 120mm.  I thought, surely there is someone online selling these – maybe not as a replacement for broken blades, but at least for customization (fancy colors, styles, better efficiencies).  But I cannot figure out why such a common mass produced item would not be for sale anywhere.  I thought maybe the magnetic material inside is magnetized so dramatically different between vendors that a universal assembly is impossible.  But then why don’t the big vendors at least sell replacement blade assemblies for their own most popular lines?

 

My best guesses so far:

• Maybe the blades are more expensive to make than I assume?
• Shipping costs for blade assemblies might be way higher than preassembled case fans?
• Market demand is practically non-existent?
• Fan assemblies are super cheap to replace, but the Evil Fan Cartel doesn’t want consumers to know this because it would cut into their profits. 

 

I know these are not strong guesses because I can come up with counter arguments for each one.  I was hoping someone here would know a lot more about the manufacturing process and could provide a more definitive answer.

 

P.S.   If your response is, “don’t worry about it, just buy a brand new one” then I will assume you either work for Big Fan or they got to you somehow. 

 

 

[AndrewZScorpion]

Probably most companies figure people would be willing to buy a new fan. Could also be because it would cost to much to ship because the fan blades are fragile. Either way, we must rise up against big fan.

[Moonzy]

It makes no logistic sense to store fan spare parts for the small amount of people who would fix it than just replacing it

 

So they don't sell spare parts, because it's a niche market

 

Fan blades aren't universal because there's different hub size and bearings used etc, there's no standard spec

We can't even agree on what size 200mm fans are if you went to search up about it

Different blade size different mounting holes etc

[Senzelian]

"How did you manage to break off a fan blade?" is my way of saying, that the market for replacement fan-blades is way too small.

 

And when it comes to customization, people tend to paint their fan blades, instead of replacing them.

Or I guess used to paint them. There's not even a need for that anymore with all the RGB fans that are available now.

[engineer137]

So I agree with almost all of the comments above.  Not having any standard sizes definitely precludes any sort of universal drop in replacement. 

 

And I really liked the comment about RBG.  Inifite color options, easy, relatively cheep > Storing and swapping blades.  Removing that group from potential buyes would shrink the target audience.

 

Having a small target audience would explain having very few sellers and low selection, but it can't explain the absolute lack of ANY sellers online.  If I wanted to buy a replacement plastic handle for an electric unicycle that went out of production 6 years ago, I could find it on dhgate, aliexpress, and ebay.  Having a tiny target audience doesn't seem to stop people from selling the weirdest crap online.

 

There are lots of sites selling refurbished case fans.  Where are these sellers getting parts for the fans?  Or does refurbished simply mean "pulled out of the trash and cleaned with compressed air"?

 

[LogicalDrm]

10 hours ago, engineer137 said:

There are lots of sites selling refurbished case fans.  Where are these sellers getting parts for the fans?  Or does refurbished simply mean "pulled out of the trash and cleaned with compressed air"?

Refurbished means they are pulled out of dead OEM PCs. I could imagine that besides @Moonzy's logic, the blades and bracket design go together, more so with higher end fans like Noctua, EK, Fractal, Corsair, be Quiet! and so on.

 

You could make one yourself. Though, looking at this video:

Even that could turn out to be more work than what might be worth it. The balancing part is problematic for the question about having generic fan blades. If each fan model has its own balancing, there's no way blades can work across whole bunch of brackets and motor hubs.