Making a food dehydrator and I decided on using a hot plate and a pc fan for heating and air movement. My problem is that I cannot just wire in the PC fan to the hot plate and plug it all in. Any ideas to get the pc fan to work with the hot plate with one plug?Was at radioshack and the guy suggested an adapter. But then I use two plugs instead of one, and the plug woud be another $20-30.

PC fan not 120vac? :shrug:ok, re read your post, and I think I see what you want to try.... tap into the heat's own circuit to power up your fan..

PC fan is 12V. Look for one of the big wall wart plugs like your phone or something uses that says 12V DC output. It's a transformer/rectifier to get it down to 12V then to get it to DC. Thats the only way to make it work. You will blow it up with 120V. The amperage needs to be adequate too. Like 0.2 ampsish (200 mA)

PC fan is 12V. Look for one of the big wall wart plugs like your phone or something uses that says 12V DC output. It's a transformer/rectifier to get it down to 12V then to get it to DC. Thats the only way to make it work. You will blow it up with 120V. The amperage needs to be adequate too. Like 0.2 ampsish (200 mA)

The guy at radioshack recommended this route.. Conferring with my pops, I might just return the fan and then take the money and buy a small fan from wal-mart. Like an 8" fan or something and then rheostat it to fine tune the speed. Then I could use a small 3-way to plug them both in and from there go to one plug. Or maybe instead of a 3-way, use a powerbar.

Ummm... Wouldn't it be easy just to buy the appliance? At least this is what we got. http://www.nesco.com/products/Dehydrators/ Look around there is 120V muffin fan out too. I'm sure some where like Grainer or something would have a fan that is 120V and allow you to keep it simple.

i use the oven, prop the door open with a wooden spoon, set temp at 175. At least, that's how I do jerky.

Ummm... Wouldn't it be easy just to buy the appliance? At least this is what we got. http://www.nesco.com/products/Dehydrators/ Look around there is 120V muffin fan out too. I'm sure some where like Grainer or something would have a fan that is 120V and allow you to keep it simple.

No, because those are too small. I didn't think about grainger. I ended up picking up a small 4" metal wire desktop fan. It was like $9 and the only place that even had a single stinking fan small enough in this town! I pretty much have it finished. Got 2 more trays to build and it will be done! I'll post up some pics when I can.