For clarification, I’m referring to those fans with a radial controller in its base.
In: Engineering
The type of motor that they use in the fans have a hard time getting started but when they are first rotating they are easily able to get up to speed. You may have seen issues with older fans where they have stalled and just makes a whirring noise without rotating the blades (until they catch fire shortly afterwards). If you manually start the fan by pushing on the fan blades it will work perfectly fine. To avoid this situation it is recommended to start the motor on the highest setting so that it have enough power to overcome friction and get started. The switch is therefore configured in this way so that you always turn the fan to the highest setting first before turning it down.
Technology connections actually has a really good video on this on YouTube. Essentially, the motor in a fan takes a lot of power to start up properly, but it only needs that power for a short amount of time. the amount of time that it takes for someone to move the switch from off to one is enough time for the fan to do its startup.
oh! i know this one!
the fan starts off giving more power to the blades in order to overcome inertia.
If it were to go OFF-1-2-3, you would run the risk of 1 not turning the blades and causing the motor to burn out.
its a quirk on electrical motors that no smaller scale(like a fan) its easier ans safer for itself to start at full power than to attempt to started at the lowest possible speed.
a small electrical motor usually has issues if they were to start in a off-1-2-3 setup where it would be very likely the “1” setting wouldn’t work some of the times. however once a motor is allowed to start at full power its much easier to scale its speed down.
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