Powered bottle dryer with 5015 fan

Last crawled date: 4 years, 3 months ago

Fan powered bottle dryer that uses a single 5015 fan to speed drying times. Sized for a minimum ID of 16mm for the bottle mouth.
Design info
We reuse bottles from a particular Italian soda and that means washing them out. They have a small mouth, only a little over 16mm ID - so I found alexthurlow's powered bottle dryer and was all set to print it until I realized the OD of the nozzle was 25mm - too large to fit inside the bottle. I enjoy designing parts in Fusion 360, so I used his design as an inspiration for my from-scratch design. I noticed that with the smooth outside of the nozzle, if it matched the ID of the bottle, the air wouldn't have a route to escape, so I changed my design to have a path for air to leave. I also realized that having the fan farther out resulted in a longer area that would require either bridging or support material, so redesigned it with the fan tucked in closer to minimize this area. I also made the transition from the blower exit to the round nozzle as a loft to hopefully decrease flow losses. As it is, with an 8.5V power supply on the fan (thought I had grabbed a 12V) the air jet is surprisingly strong. In a test with a larger mouth bottle (around 40mm ID) the bottle was nice and dry in maybe 15-20 minutes.
Small warning
The bottles we use with a 16mm ID are quite tall, nearly 300mm (12") tall - standing them up on the mouth isn't exactly the most stable setup. In my testing they don't tend to fall over, but it would be good to make sure the bottle and blower are on a flat, stable surface before letting it sit to try.
Possible improvements
With a larger diameter bottle, it's possible to put the bottle off-center so it isn't partially covering the fan inlet. I could make the support fin opposite the fan longer so a larger bottle could be handled off-center. I'm also curious if blowing in air from the side might help circulation which would result in even faster drying times. The current design works for most of our applications which range up to standard bicycle water bottles.