THIS Could Be The ONE! | Fan Showdown S4E9

Summary

Major Hardware opens with a confession that his previous project failed, then dives into Fan Showdown Season 4 Episode 9 with gratitude for the community’s fan designs. Four standout creations are tested: Alexander’s unusual “greatest fan,” Martin’s hybrid “washing machine” that mixes axial and radial ideas, Sipping Tea Guy’s RAH-66 Comanche-inspired design with nearly zero blade pitch, and Dominic Demnick’s three-piece “unswirl” built to challenge the reigning cheater fan. Along the way, the video explains the real-world inspiration behind the Comanche helicopter and multi-stage turbines, while also judging sound levels and smoke performance. The strongest performer turns out to be the unswirl, which comes heartbreakingly close to beating the cheater by only 10 feet per minute, landing in second place overall. The episode ends with a call for more submissions and a teaser for season five.

Highlights

• Alexander’s “greatest fan” has a quirky, almost wind-vane vibe that makes it stand out instantly 🌬️
• The “washing machine” blends axial and radial fan ideas into one wild, layered design 🛠️
• The RAH-66 Comanche backstory adds a cool aerospace history lesson to the fan chaos ✈️
• The unswirl’s intake, exhaust, and guide vanes make it look engineered for maximum focus 🎯
• It nearly beats the cheater, proving someone out there can still topple the champ 🏆

Key Takeaways

• The community saved the day after a failed project, giving the episode its momentum 😅
• Martin’s hybrid “washing machine” fan unexpectedly performs really well despite the weird concept 🌀
• The Comanche-inspired fan is fascinating because its blade geometry has almost no pitch 🚁
• Dominic’s “unswirl” comes painfully close to dethroning the cheater, missing by just 10 feet per minute 😳
• Smoke testing and airflow measurements matter more than looks alone in the showdown 💨

Overview

This episode feels like a rescue mission for the channel after a planned video doesn’t pan out. Major Hardware leans into Fan Showdown Season 4 with his usual mix of technical curiosity and playful roasting, thanking viewers for sending in designs that keep the series alive. The result is a lineup of fans that range from oddball sculpture to serious airflow experiments.

Each fan brings something different to the table. Alexander’s design is more art object than traditional fan, Martin’s “washing machine” mashes together two fan types in a surprisingly thoughtful way, and the Comanche-inspired build uses an unusual blade angle that makes the airflow entirely dependent on its geometry. The episode spends time unpacking why these ideas are interesting from both a mechanical and historical angle.

The real showdown happens with Dominic’s “unswirl,” which is purpose-built to create a clean, fast column of air. After sound testing and smoke testing, it ends up as the episode’s star, landing just short of the cheater but showing that the top spot is vulnerable. The video closes on a hype note, inviting viewers to submit new designs and maybe, just maybe, create the next champion.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:30: Intro: A Failed Project and a New Fan Showdown The creator opens with good and bad news: a previous video project failed, but that setback is offset by moving on to Fan Showdown Season 4, Episode 9. They thank viewers for their support and fan submissions, which helped fill the gap. The first featured design is Alexander’s “greatest fan,” a unique, fan-like creation inspired by a hotel stay and sleep-deprived brainstorming; the host compares it to an ice shaver or wind vane and notes its unusual, not-quite-fan appearance.
• 02:30 - 05:00: Meet the Hybrid Fan: The Washing Machine Design This segment discusses the design of the main fan blades, noting that they are angled forward and extremely thin, almost translucent. The creator remarks that the print quality is surprisingly good but the blades are delicate and must be handled carefully to avoid breaking the support material or the blades themselves.
• 05:00 - 07:30: Testing a Blade-Only Fan and the Comanche Build The segment introduces the Unswirl fan, designed by Dominic Demnick and inspired by a multi-stage turbine. Unlike typical fans, its airflow is meant to come entirely from blade geometry, with no pitch, and it uses a three-piece setup including intake, exhaust, and blade assembly. The goal is to create very fast, laminar airflow that could challenge the Cheater fan in the upcoming smoke test.
• 07:30 - 10:00: Unswirl's Turbine-Inspired Design and Noise Results The creator introduces Unswirl’s turbine-inspired fan design while setting up for a sound test, noting that they accidentally placed a hand behind the unit and felt a surprisingly strong breeze at a reasonable distance. They express hope that this airflow will carry over into the upcoming smoke test, which is then punctuated by music.
• 10:00 - 12:30: Smoke Testing the Fans and Airflow Impressions This chapter covers smoke testing and airflow impressions for several fan designs, with praise for Martin’s washing machine design and its effective blade shaping that produced the expected airflow. The speaker compares smoke movement through different fans, noting the unswirl’s especially focused exhaust flow and concluding it was the best-performing design in the test set, finishing second overall behind the cheater but proving that the cheater can be beaten.
• 12:30 - 14:30: Washing Machine and Unswirl Stand Out in Visual Performance A brief closing moment: the speaker says goodbye as the segment ends, with no additional substantive content about the washing machine or unswirl visual performance.
• 14:30 - 15:00: Wrap-Up, Submission Instructions, and Season 5 Tease The segment closes the episode with a brief farewell, ending on a simple goodbye with no additional substantive discussion.

THIS Could Be The ONE! | Fan Showdown S4E9 Transcription

• Segment 1: 00:00 - 02:30 ah so i got good news and i got bad news the bad news is that video that i was talking about in the last video that i was working on i didn't really work out that was a bit of a failure so the good news is fan showdown season 4 episode 9. so i know i've been going pretty hard in the paint [Applause] on the fan showdown i hope you don't mind to all of you out there that watch these videos or send in your fan design thank you very much i really do appreciate it you really did save my bacon this time given what i was working on didn't work first up we have alexander and his creation the greatest fan alexander said that this design came to him after spending two days in a hotel room being stuck in there and been watching the the fan showdown which i do appreciate but after those two days he was uh trying to get some sleep and this design just came to him and he was not able to fall asleep until he got up and created it now alexander didn't really give me much backstory onto the inspiration of this fan and on the fan show down reddit many of you who said it looked kind of like an ice shaver however when i first saw it the first thing that came to my mind was uh was a wind vane or specifically those little wind those wind cups you know what i'm talking about spinning around yeah i think it looks like that i don't know how well it's gonna perform but uh the design is pretty unique in the fact that it's it's basically a fan that's not really a fan next up we have a combination fan that i think you're all gonna really enjoy there's two main types of fans that we see on this series we see axial fans and we see radial fans well this one
• Segment 2: 00:00 - 02:30 this one's one that martin sat down you know mountain sat down to design a fan and he couldn't design he couldn't decide if he wanted to go axial or radial so we said why not both this is the washing machine and as you can see it is what would happen if you took a radial fan in an axial fan and smashed them together with the force of a thousand suns you would get something like this now the idea here is that the actual fan in the center will be you know will do the heavy lifting and the radial fan on the outside its job is to take all that air in from around the outside and kind of bring it into the middle feeding that main fan now i love this design i know that a lot of you out there really like squirrel cage type fans or radial fans like this but as we know from seeing fans like this in the past and how they normally operate normally they bring air in from the center and fling it outwards so having that type of fan around the outside hopefully bringing air in i'm not sure how well it's going to work now it does look that
• Segment 3: 02:30 - 05:00 the blades have been designed in a way that they are you know angled in the proper direction they slope forward so there is a chance but we'll have to just wait and see what it looks like in the smoke test another thing the blades on the main fan are extremely thin we're talking like one layer they did print really pretty good i had to be pretty careful removing the support material not to crack anything but i did notice that when they're like you can just you can essentially see right through them they're they're they're translucent which is which is pretty different from what we normally see i don't think we've seen any blades this thing in quite a while if ever next up we have the sipping tea guy and his fan the rah-66 comanche now i found this one very interesting for two reasons uh the first one being that it's uh the inspiration behind this fan was the rah-66 comanche if you don't know what the rah-66 comanche was it was born from a u.s army program called the light helicopter experimental program that existed in the 80s now the idea behind this program was to replace the ah1 cobra and the oh-58 kiowa with this new helicopter that would kind of fill both roles and incorporate stealth technology the program eventually became the light helicopter program which boeing sikorsky eventually won with their design that was designated the rah-66 comanche and although the comanche flew i think the first flight of the comanche i believe was like 1996 which is forever ago uh but i still think that that design still looks futuristic to this
• Segment 4: 02:30 - 05:00 day when compared to like the age 64 you know apache and stuff we're still flying now the comanche looks like it's you know actually newer but you know it's very old however it was not meant to be as the us army in 2004 terminated the program stating that there was just too many upgrades that needed to be made to the age 64 their age 66 comanche in order to make it capable of surviving on the battlefield in the face of current and upcoming anti-aircraft threats all is not lost two airframes that still exist and they're on display at the united states army aviation museum in fort rocker alabama we have to go see them one day didn't actually know that they were on display but it sounds cool next time i'm in alabama now the second reason i think that this fan is very interesting is because of the blade angle chosen for this fan there's none the ah-66 comanches blades are basically parallel with the fan plane which means that any any airflow
• Segment 5: 05:00 - 07:30 if we see any airflow that comes out of this fan is directly related to the geometry of the blades alone there's literally there's no pitch it's just uh just the design themselves which is something i don't think we've actually seen now last up is one fan that's main goal in life is to take down the cheater and this one mark my words might have a chance this is the unswirl and it was created by dominic demnick said the inspiration behind this fan was a multi-stage turbine now multi-stage or just turbines in general steam turbines have been used for all kinds of stuff throughout history from trains to ships most commonly they're used to drive generators and power plants and fun fact did you know that if you take a steam turbine and you connect it to a generator it's now called a turbo generator so these things can be like massive we're talking seven meters in diameter weighing like 4 000 tons they're they're huge but back to dominic's fan now all you've seen thus far is just the fan but there's there's some other pieces that go along with this design you got an intake an exhaust and when you combine them all onto the fan itself you get this with this three-piece design uh the idea here is that we're going to produce or dominic hopes that he's going to produce exceptionally high speed laminar flow which he hopes we all hope will take down the cheater no offense to the cheater but it's time to fall and i think he's got a shot if i mean it's pretty similar to the cheater it's got a it's got intake this one has in the guide veins where the cheater doesn't it's got some nice veins on the back here to try to straighten out the flow this thing should do exceptional we'll be able to tell in the smoke test if we got a nice solid column of smoke coming out the
• Segment 6: 05:00 - 07:30 back we're doing good if it's all over the place not so good but before we do that let's see uh let's see exactly how it sounds the unwhirl came in around 58.3 dba the washing machine evolved came in around 49.3 dba the greatest fan came in around 56.2 dba and the rah-66 comanche came in around 50.7 dba now the first thing i noticed when listening to all these fans was it seems like the the blade clearance to these inlet guide veins are very close if you're listening to it it almost sounds kind of like the noise you get out of a out of a siren you know we've made one of those in the past
• Segment 7: 07:30 - 10:00 also when i was setting this up for the the sound test i just kind of happened to place my hand behind it as well as i was walking on the desk and this thing's putting out what feels like an exceptionally high volume of air i don't know if that's true but you know at a pretty ex pretty reasonable distance from behind the fan i was able to feel quite a breeze and i'm hoping that that breeze will translate in the smoke test [Music] [Music] [Music]
• Segment 8: 10:00 - 12:30 now in the smoke zest the first thing we need to discuss is martin's design on the washing machine if you remember i had some concerns that you know the air would be being thrown out from this from the radial fan on the side but that was not the case martin did a really good job designing the the blades around the edge and it actually looks like they're functioning just as he expected secondly look at that look at that unswirl go i don't think dominic could have came up with a design that produced a more focused exhaust flow if he tried this it looks about as perfect as you're going to get and if you look at how fast the smoke's coming in to the fan versus how fast it looks like it's coming out i think we got a shot i think he could pull it off let's see the rah-66 comanche did move air which was which was good 356 feet per minute of air to be exact so it's it's on the board the greatest fan produced 412 feet per minute and the washing machine evolved produced 451 feet per minute of airflow now the unswirl remember to beat the cheater it has to output at least 769 feet per minute of airflow the cheater produced 768. and the unswirl produced 758 feet per minute airflow it was so close it was only 10 behind but it did place this fan the unswirl in second place overall with the other ones placing 28th 31st and 34th respectively now although the cheater still remains in first place today dominic proved that the cheater can bleed you can take it down i know somebody out there watching this right now is able to create a fan that can take down the cheater before we exit season four and move on to season five so if you want to get in on the action make sure to head over to my thingiverse
• Segment 9: 10:00 - 12:30 account to grab the models and the drawings that show you you know the critical dimension you need to maintain to make sure your fan fits on the a12 x24 uh there's some models there if you need them and then you need to submit at least an sql file or send me at least an stl file to the fan showdown at gmail.com and speaking of season five if you out there have one of those noctua gpus uh let me know i would i would like to buy it from you i could i can't find one that's reasonably priced anywhere near me or online and i would really like to use one of those noctua gpus in the next season of the fan showdown so if you got one and you want to sell it let me know thank you for watching hope you see in the next one get subscribed if you want to help the channel
• Segment 10: 12:30 - 15:00 bye-bye