Fan suddenly stopped working

Hello,

My sister has a Zennox 18” Metal Box Fan that suddenly stopped working. It’s one of those floor fans that are quite powerful. She said she’s had it running continuously and one day she woke up and it was off. She tried turning it on, but it would not come back to life.

I’ve tried turning it on myself and it’s completely dead. There was a lot of dirt/debris on the fan and on the circular metal part the fan blades connect to. I thought this was the issue. I cleared it all off and tried to power it again. Still dead.

When I try to turn it on, it makes no sound. It’s not even trying to come on at all. This made me concerned from the get-go.

I researched on Google what might be the problem and it said there’s various culprits. I first checked the capacitor to see what uF reading I get with my multi-meter. I took it out and tested. Multi-meter gave a consistent reading of around 1.5uF. The capacitor is an CBB61 that’s rated for 2uF @ 450V. Could the 1.5uF reading be the culprit, or does this not matter as much? Should the fan still come on even if the 2uF cap is at 1.5uF now?

Another culprit I saw was that it could be the fan switches themselves. Not sure if this is relevant, but if I push any of the 1-3 switches on the fan when it’s disconnected from power, I get an “0L” reading in Ohms mode when I probe both the “L” and “N” prongs on the plug itself.

I have another floor fan that’s similar (not the same brand, but it’s the same type of floor fan). This one is working. When I run the same test with the switches, I get an Ohms reading when probing the N and L prongs on the plug. That tells me I should be seeing readings on the other fan when one of the switches is pushed down? Not sure.

Anyone got any idea of what else I can try? I’m not really fussed about fixing it (probably won’t be worth it), I just want to know what the fault is.

It looks like it was just the thermal fuse that burnt out and blew. It looks a little charred, so must’ve got incredibly hot quite quickly. The cause is strongly likely to be the debris/hair that was on the shaft that the fan blade connected to. It had so much hair wrapped around it I couldn’t believe it. It probably couldn’t cool down because of this.

For now, the fuse has been bypassed. Yes, I know this is not recommended. However, I just wanted to see if the fan came to life with the fuse removed from the circuit. It works on all speeds perfectly fine for now. I will look on eBay to see if there’s a replacement fuse I can buy.