Revisit Casablanca 1928C 16" Oscillating Table Fan

Here is a Casablanca branded oscillating desktop fan, and I say Casablanca branded because I don't know if Casablanca actually made this or if there was a different OEM that was used and the overpriced name was just slapped on the front of it. This is a, I believe it's classified as a 16 inch model. The guard is 16 inches across, but the blade itself is only about 14 1⁄2 to 15 inches. Here's the informations. It is a model number 1928C, and the serial number looks to be NN000463. I'm not sure if there's a date code encrypted into there or not. It's allowed 0.65 amps of current, does not list the wattage, and it looks like it's not actually UL certified, it's Canadian certified. I came across this a couple weeks ago and I was doing some major cleaning and organizing down here, and I wanted to revisit it because if I recall correctly, this is not a very good fan from a performance perspective, and I find that a lot of these replica or so-called retro style fans generally aren't. They're very much a form over function product. Now this one at least looks pretty good. I'm not really into early century stuff, and we've been through this a million times. I collect for nostalgia, so I go after the stuff I remember seeing when I was growing up. I didn't see for the 1920s in the 90s and 2000s. It was long gone by then, so as much as I appreciate the mechanics, the quality, and the engineering of stuff from that time period, I don't go out of my way for it. So I don't know all the details of something like this, but generally speaking, this looks pretty good. You have the old school lever switch on the bottom of the base, you got the felt on the bottom, we have a cloth cord, a plug that looks like it could be pretty old. It actually says Casablanca right on it. It's a grounded three-pin cord, a little bit of fraying going on. The oscillation knob does not turn in and out like the old ones did. It's a basic up and down module. And the motor, you can't really tell. Is this the screw to hold the back of it on? I think that might not be functional. I think that these have just like a basic El Cheapo oscillating fan motor in them. These usually do, and that's kind of what bothers me about them, is you've got this premium price tag on this all-metal build powered by the same motor that's in the $15 fan at the grocery store and the, you know, the pharmacy store and the big box store. And the performance usually reflects that, because you have this very thin, shallow pitched blade that runs very fast, makes a lot of noise, and just doesn't move a whole lot of air. Now this one, to its credit, does have a reasonable amount of pitch. And also in the appearance department, this actually looks pretty similar to the way the blades used to be many, many years ago. Unlike a lot of these other tag-and-retro style fans that have, you know, like the stupid rectangular blades and the little crease on the edge, and it's just a horrible, horrible design. It also has the the old style guard in front of the probably OSHA-approved safety guard, which is kind of interesting. So there are definitely some very good attempts made here to replicate the styling of the early century units. I don't know how easily this is serviced. It looks like, you know, a bunch of nuts here to remove the front section of the guard. And I don't see, maybe there's a seam right here. I'm not sure. I feel like this is going to be a servicing nightmare. I've never actually serviced one of these. And if I recall correctly, something about this was busted. And I think it was a common failure, because I remember getting a bunch of comments on the original video I did of this, and some people were reporting the same issue. I actually think I have two of these. They're both situations where you just got lucky at the thrift store. Somebody had donated this, probably not knowing what it's worth, and whoever was doing the pricing at the store that day just slapped a couple dollar price tag on it, not knowing what it's worth. And then I go by and pick it up, knowing what it's worth, and I got a really good deal. I personally wouldn't pay more than a couple bucks for one of these, but they are relatively sought after, and there are people that will pay a decent amount of money for one. Why? I don't really know. If you're going to throw money around, why not just buy the actual thing? But people like what they like. So I suppose if you find yourself in a financial bind, and you have one of these, you can go ahead and put it on stupid eBay, and you can start the auction at about $437.48. And then when it sells for the starting price, you can just cancel the auction and relist it for a higher price like $2,498.26. And then after four or five years when it doesn't sell at that price, you can just take a total loss and throw it away, because that's how the stupid site works. Gosh, I hate that site. All right, let's plug this thing in and see if it works. And if it works, how well does it work? We are going to be testing at 120 volts on the nose. That's kind of unusual. And we don't have the watts on the nameplate, so we'll measure the amps. And this starts on one. It's probably the slowest speed. I'll turn the oscillation off. It's got a decent range to it. There we go. It just sounds like a piece of junk. I recall this being very noisy and not moving much air. It's not moving much air, but this is certainly not noisy. I mean, aside from all this rattling, which is not supposed to be there, the actual air noise is very limited. Obviously, it's not supposed to make all that rattling noise. It's just probably the bearings are dry, or maybe it needs new thrust washers. I'm not sure. That almost sounds like mechanical, like gears. Maybe it's coming out of the oscillation box. I don't want any sheep in here. That stinks. If I go across the room here, I can barely detect some air movement. It's not very powerful, but it's also not very loud. This is pretty reasonable so far. Let's see what kind of power we're consuming here. That's 0.34 of the amps, which is about the same as a Galaxy 2150 at full power, which moves way more air than this. It's horrifically inefficient. The watts is 10.7. What the heck? The watts is 10.7, which gives us a power factor of 25. That's horrible. I wonder if this has a bad capacitor. I'm assuming it's a PSC motor, and that's a pretty horrible power factor. It's pretty hard to get that bad of a power factor, even out of a shaded ball motor. The blade's totally out of clock. Interestingly enough, it doesn't feel like it's too badly out of balance. Slightly, but nothing crazy. Let's try the medium, and the oscillation is busted. Now that feels like metal. Metal on metal gears. So case in point, this is very poorly built. The oscillation is already busted. That's really kind of unacceptable. Now it feels like plastic to me. I'll try to fix it, but I have no idea if we're going to be successful in that or not. That's 0.41 the amps, 20.5 the watts, power factor 41, so that's a little better, but it's still horrible. And the noise level is still reasonable. It's not moving a ton of air, but for the air output, I mean for the noise output, the airflow is reasonable. That's not bad. I mean, the performance is low. It's below average, especially for the power consumption, but relative to the noise, it's not bad. Let's try the highest power, quarter power factor speed. That really got going pretty good. I don't think that the capacitor has drifted, unless it's multi-capacitor speed control. Only one of the capacitors is bad. So that's 0.55 the amps, 65.7 the watts, power factor 99. So we'll have to investigate the control. I'm not sure what kind of control this uses. All right, it's a little bit out of balance, but not egregious. I wonder if fixing a clock on a blade would improve it something. The airflow is... I still don't think it even outperforms a Galaxy 2150. I think the Galaxy 2150 is stronger than this and uses less power and makes less noise, but this is an okay amount of air. It's not impressive. It's still below average, but it's okay. It's not useless. Some fans are useless. Not powerful either. It's a lot quieter than I remember it. While the table is shaking, maybe it is out of balance pretty good. It's okay. It's better than I remember it. It's very disappointing from a performance perspective. It just doesn't push a lot of air, but it's not as loud as I thought, and it is broken like I thought. It's the oscillation that's broken. I don't know if something's stripped out or... There we go. If I hold it, yeah, I feel like something just worn out there. I might be able to replace it here. I don't know. It's okay. It's not great, but it's not terrible either like I remember it. The bearings are in quite good condition. It's pretty patently out of balance. Is that ball bearing? Huh. I think it might be ball bearing. It doesn't have any linear play. Well, if this is ball bearing, that does kind of sound like bad ball bearings. Well, if this is actually ball bearing, then I guess I'm going to have to take back my commentary about it being a cheesy basic fan motor in there. Hmm. I think this might be ball bearing. Very interesting. Well, now I'm intrigued by this, and a teardown is most certainly in order.