*Blows 4 years worth of dust out of this thread with a shop air hose as I would rather not make a new thread for this*
It may be 4 years late but thanks dan.
The latest project out of Shelley Fan Labs (TM) came from a need to reaplace this fan that I made for my church
while it is nice it has started to get a bad hum, the brackets don't stay tight on the flywheel and the low and medium speeds are not ideal and these particular blade arms bend easy so while I like it I need to replace it with one that can handle being in a commercial setting with out failing or needing lots of tweaking. So I started to search for a decent lighted housing fan that was not too expensive. But I could nto find one so that left one option, make one out of a 3 piece housing fan like say a Casablanca Panama.
Such as this one I got off ebay for $50 new in box but with out blades, it seems as though my parents' cat wants to guard it, as I could not keep him off the box long enough to take a picture.
Here is the, victim, err fan before I started working on it
nothing fancy just a plain white panama with IT
However it needs to be 3 speed in this install so I have a fair amount of work to do to be able to use it, starting with taking the housing off
Now the IT board can be seen easily, it seems a bit ashame that this control system that costs more than I paid for them fan wont get used
I cut the wires leaving about an inch and a half on the connector to make retrofitting it in another fan relatively easily
With the IT board removed the XLP looks like any other stack motor.
Now that the IT was removed it was time to rewire the fan, starting with fitting a running capacitor and a speed capacitor as well as a 3speed pull chain, not pictured as it goes out the center hole of the switch cap.
Then the motor lead wires had to be tired together and a plug added for the sting of lights that will be used in the housing.
With the wring done I wrapped the sting of 70 cool white led lights holding them in place with small black wire ties.
Lights in the housing aren't much good with out a translucent or transparent side band so I cut a strip out of light diffuser (thanks for the idea DAN) the same with as the original side band (1-7/8 in)
Then I cute it to the right length (measured done by running around in the 'groove' in the bottom plate that the side band slips into) as seen here its a little over 3 feet long (36-11/16 in to be exact)
It fits nicely using a faceted clear diffuser rather than a frosted one would look nice on a brass fan I think but I'm not going to try it right now as I don't have an 'extra' 3 piece brass housing laying around
With the new sideband finished I put the housing back on the motor the new sideband blends well enough that you would not guess it has lights untill they come on
now all it needed was blades in this case a set of white all weather blades from lows that I drilled 2 extra holes in these were the only blades readily available that were wide enough to work well home depot blades might have also but the double set of holes in them were aligned in a way that would have made adapting them a pita
and the brackets fit perfectly, since these blades are littler shorter than Casablanca blades the fan will be 48in rather than the 49 like rounded point blade or the 50 of a true pointed tip blade with these arms
at this point all that was left was the fun part, testing it, I would have used my test frame but that is in my un headed garage it its been cold lately so I temporarily took this stained glass fan in my parents' basement
and I hung the fan off of it's bracket and found out 2 things 1 it fit that bracket perfectly and also that unlike fasco Casablanca uses red for forwards, so down it came and I swapped 2 wires in the switch housing to get it running forwards and that also gave me a chance to take a picture of how the pull chain is hooked up
With that done I tested the fan first with 5 blades
then just for fun 2 blades, which moved less air then 5 blades did
and finally 4 blades which seems to be the best air moving option and is how it will be installed in the church
right now I'm planning on putting it up on Friday, and Dan once again, thanks for the idea of doing a DIY lighted housing fan.