How to build your own box-fan-powered drone

In a recent video, YouTuber FliteTest demonstrates how to transform four box fans into a functional drone.

Box fans don’t last very long in my house. The pattern is always the same. After a few weeks or months, these poor fans succumb to one tragedy or another, from chewed cords and broken knobs to tragic falls and spray-painting accidents. I’m always purchasing new box fans, and accumulating a graveyard of injured and deceased fans in my garage. But what can be done to rehabilitate these box fans and give them new life? In a recent video, YouTuber FliteTest demonstrates how to transform four box fans into a functional drone.

About the Author

Alexis Gajewski

Alexis Gajewski

Senior Content Strategist

Alexis Gajewski is a manufacturing writer and editor with nearly 20 years of experience covering the people, practices, and technologies that keep industrial facilities running. For more than a decade, she served as Senior Content Strategist for Plant Services, creating content for plant managers, engineers, and maintenance professionals on a variety of industrial topics.

During her tenure, Alexis worked to develop the brand’s digital strategy and helped launch and produce Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast. She also created The Lighter Side of Manufacturing, a weekly blog that explored the inventive and sometimes humorous side of the industry. 

Alexis co-founded Influential Women in Manufacturing, a recognition program that honored 49 women in its first two years, earned an industry award for Best Product Launch, and received a proclamation from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and a commendation from U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth.

She also led newsroom operations and development at a large media company where she set editorial standards, developed training curriculum, and helped support AI adoption for more than 150 editors across 80+ brands spanning manufacturing, industrial processing, automation, and more.

Additionally, Alexis works as a freelance writer and editor, and her areas of interest include continuous improvement, the skilled workforce, and the role of emerging technology on the plant floor.

Connect with Alexis on LinkedIn

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