Rodney said:
You could try removing the label and putting a drop of oil into the
bearing. Sometimes they last for years afterwards and sometimes it
makes no difference.
Not all sleeve bearings are made alike.
Panaflo fans use a sealed sleeve bearing. Regular computer
fans, the bearing may not be sealed. In the worst case I've seen
here, a cheap $1 40mm fan in a disk enclosure, proceeded to
drop all of its bearing oil, into the bottom of the enclosure
when it was new. There was a puddle in there. The fan started
to make noise, only a day after it was turned on, and had to
be replaced.
http://products.ncix.com/detail/nmb...ached-pin-w-sensor-92x92x25-rohs-8e-20619.htm
The hydrowave idea is similar to FDB motors, in that not
only is the bearing sealed, but the oil moves around
in the bearing such that the bearing is frictionless.
And this lasts, for as long as the bearing seal lasts.
Another kind of sleeve bearing, uses ceramic as a
bearing material. And the manufacturer claims such
a bearing lasts longer than conventional sleeves. And
that would also be an unsealed design.
And I'm not going to guess at how long all of these types
are going to last. All I can tell you is, at work,
the guy who selected fans for cooling the things
we used to build, he would tell us the maintenance
interval on fans was three years. In other words,
using the good quality fans we were buying, he
would tell customers, via the user manual, to
change the fans every three years of 24/7 operation.
3*24*365 = roughly 25000 hours. I expect the fan
manufacturer would be quoting a number a bit higher
than that, as our figure was a "preventative maintenance"
figure intended to avoid inconveniencing the customer.
It would look bad, if the product ran for five years,
and all the fans wore out on the same day causing
down-time. You were supposed to replace them, before
their predicted failure time.
Paul