I feel your pain about the Spider Farmer clipfan… I’ve always used cheapo ones and always expect the swing to stop at some point. I have 4 in my tent, and 3 don’t swing anymore.
I’m tempted to take one apart to see why they fail, and perhaps find a fix, but I’m a stoner, so… you know…
Now I’m seeing AC Infinity and Vivosun selling really pricey clipfans with all kinds of strange and wonderful settings… are they any better???
The Vivosun 6" clipfan is AU$98 and the AC Infinity 6" fan is an eye watering AU$120 while a ‘cheapo’ is only $46.
I’d want a lot more than 5 months of no problems for that kind of cash, and I’d like to hear from (m)any happy users of these fans before even thinking about buying any of these!
Thx for sharing your expirience! It’s the same with hop, once in the wild, near impossible to not have it coming back. I removed most of it out of the soil/ground/, free up branchesbranches from other plants- as I thought. Still coming back. Far away new little shoots…
hardcore stuff. I will never ever put a cutted part on a compost bin…it really looks lovely in bloom though.
I don’t know about the other brands’ quality regarding the swing. What I found in one of my other , cheaper fans: there’s a gearwheel made from cheap plastic. That constant motion 24/7 , no wonder there’s a problem at one point. I don’t expect these fans to last forever, but they should last at least a 5-6month grow, and they all market their china dirt towards us growers. Why don’t they use metal for durability? It’s a few cent difference in manufacturing cost. As a brand my costumers would be worth to feel happy with the product. But they play the " no quality, no support, no refund game" instead.
I won’t disassembe my fan also. It gets another repurpose now. But I think about moving away from this kind of fans - for years those cheap 12-15 € ones from the home depot did a fine job for longer time period. Not saying they don’t break on you, but it’s 2-3 for the price of that sf-fan.
2 of my 3 sf fans still swinging though. 1 of them always needs time and stuck at the endswing a second. So death near there too.
I’ve tried a couple of the newer fans and the quality is the same. Once they run for a couple months and get hot and stay hot, they just tend to burn out when you shut them down. I’ve been using cheap fans. The plants don’t care what’s on the label, air is air. And yes a lot of cool functions! But it doesn’t matter when they don’t last a year. I got about six months out of those new fans they got.
Yep , regarding smart features, most fans run at same speed and swing anyways. I don’t even see a need to adjust that once dialed in. So that number represented in an app not worth the extra money.
Another more or less cheap and good option/diy alternative that might last years( but doesn’t swing) : computerfans.
I guess growing in a tent requires fans that oscillate. I’ve been using 6" Hurricane clip-on fans that don’t move. The oldest one has been running 24/7 for 5 years. But I don’t have a tent, just a small room.
That oldest fan in my pc lasts since 2011! That 20€ fan on the rtc pic above, it’s having issues but it’s around 10+ years old, still spins, occasionally stops swinging until the next intact tooth grabs again…it’sfine in a room. But it takes away an entire plantspace in the tent and would blasts the tent into nothingness. That thing is easy to take apart and clean. But you are right, occilation brings some advantages, which is missing in pc- fans.
One of the worst products in the canna-industry in general, a good friend of mine had a growshops for years and the most returned/broken product was always the oscillating fans, fcking sheit, a tip, buy normal ones and hang in a few extra to cover all the spots in the grow room, some run for years! Even the 5w-12w ones work great, from garden highpro for example. take 3-4 for a 1x1m tent, one below the canopy (fresh air there), 2 above for some wind on the flowers, aiming from one side of the room to the other (preferably wind into the direction where the filter/extraction is placed so you get a more natural draft).
We are also testing the AC infinity ones btw, but not long enough to really share a proper verdict, so far so good, but they are quite expensive…
B-eau-ti-ful!! Doing a proper job mate, really lovely pictures/plants, proper trichome stacking, nice frost on the leaves, the way it should be with my SMC
Keep the canna porn incoming, what do you think time wise, maybe 1,5 week more on them?
Thx for your feedback on plants and ideas on fans.
With those 12/5v fan ones, it’s maybe even possible - if there are enough and there’s a controller - to bring in some dynamic by random speeds within a threshold rather than trust in a swing mechanism.
The SMCs do absolutly great. Pheno1 will get another week extra. She puts out same layers of frosty goodness as her sisters. Pheno 2 and 4 maybe week or 2 , depending on that trichomes, but definetly what I will do so, is keeping a small percentage going , just to have an idea of the full spectrum of possibilities in ripeness as well as spotting the peak. I want to learn about that plants as much as possible, so future runs can benefit from these insights. Since we are limited here in the amounts we can harvest and keep, that also makes the most sense.
This run i’ll skip on t.a. final part ripen, i don’t see a need for that (buds are rockhard already and ripen can easily screw up taste and bring rot on sense buds.) and it probably would hurt more than benefitting the final product.
Missed to take an smc image today as the light was out already, but here’s another one showing the rtc auto of my wife. Extremly bushy plant, better spacing than the first one, some buds on that broken stem got visually more trichomes. Should be day 86 from seed, but don’t exactly nail me on that. She has some orange speckles but doesn’t even think about a serious fade yet. Definetly also different expressions than her sister a run ago.
Next 2 days I’m a bit scared about. i’m on a festival job and only can check on them once in the morning. I hate that feeling leaving the ladies - plants, wife and dog - at home alone…
To get ‘dynamic’ air movement, here random turbulence (vs. constant breeze), throughout the tent from one or more stationary fans, consider having the fan(s) blow at one or more pieces of cardboard, fabric or equivalent hanging from one or more strings. That is, blow air at something that will flap or twirl around and distribute the air more randomly.
Aiming fans at or to cross each other can also add turbulence throughout the tent.
I stopped using oscillating fans yrs ago. They just break too often. I actually prefer stationary fans now. They are a bit smaller , so even with a couple extra in the tent, you can get more space for the plants when you spread them out evenly.
Ladies had a supershort check last morning,…and their daily juice - just in one go because of lack of time. 6 hours til next feed. Sunday i’ll continue to upload the latest images. Maybe some macroshots or whatever I’m in the mood for , since there’s not much to do other than watching bud porn 12/7 during lights on and thinking about bud porn the other 12/7 when lights out .
Doing a proper job mate, really lovely pictures/plants, proper trichome stacking, nice frost on the leaves, the way it should be with my SMC 
.
I hear ya bro! Porn addict? Yess sir!!! Thinking all day every day, only about BUD-porn