1980's NEMC 60" Industrial Ceiling Fan

Here is what's probably the first full video of an NEMC SCF60 ceiling fan on YouTube!

That sentence is both a plus and a minus. A plus because now you know NEMC made something other than their NO60 model across several iterations & how this other model operates. A minus because I can't benchmark the performance characterisrics of my fan to any other, let alone gather information about how to repair it, and this fan brought me boatloads of stress during the restoration process.

For one, this fan was an insect graveyard. It literally rained dead brown small insects when I took the motor apart, enough that I could fill a small shotglass with the critters. B, the bearings were damn near immovable. The lower bearing needed hammer action to let go of its home, but the upper bearing won't budge AT ALL, even after hours of hammering. I ended up grinding a slot through the upper motor shell & into the inner race of the upper bearing so that I could remove the bearing by individually pulling every single one of the steel balls out. Then I ended up with the inner race stuck on the shaft & outer race stuck on the upper motor shell. I think it took me more grinding & pulling to remove both.

The construction of the motor itself is pretty interesting. That silver band on the motor is actually a plastic ring sandwiched between the lower & upper motor shell, which houses nuts where the blade screws can thread in. At first I thought the motor was some sort of cast metal due to how heavy it is, but it turned out to be really thick sheet steel. The stator isn't any more normal either. It has 2 separate windings like many regular ceiling fans, but both winding sets are placed in a single row, unlike many other ceiling fans that have double row windings. I'm not sure if it has something to do with the 10uf 220V capacitor which has DEMC branding on it, but it sure is strange, and it makes my National F-EY149 speed control hum very loudly on any speed settings other than full.

In terms of performance, it's really a mixed bag. The downrod this fan came with from the factory is unusually short, the motor hasn't got much torque, unlike early iteration NO60's, and the blade pitch is rather shallow for a fan its age. I suppose this fan does a brilliant job spreading the air at lower speeds if the occupant of the room only wants gentle air circulation, but an air cavitation party starts right when you set this fan on high. Let me remind you that everything on this fan that's not plastic is thick gage steel, including the fan blades & downrod, but even so, you can see this fan swinging slightly on full speed in the final clip. That doesn't happen on ceiling fans unless it's featherlight & has ridiculous power like my ArtinAir UT50, or that ceiling fan is in need of a longer downrod. I can definitely feel that the airflow doesn't increase as much as the noise & RPM when I switch this fan from speed 4 to 5.

Even so, this still is a very interesting fan! I think this is far less common than the aforementioned NO60 variant, which makes it a real unicorn...that's cobbled together from DEMC's secret 2nd marriage in Malaysia.

#Malaysian #CeilingFan