Hi I am trying to make a magnetic stir plate, basically what it does is it spins a strong magnet in circles, and you place a magnetic stir bar in a container filled with liquid and you put the container just above the spinning magnet. What happens is the stir bar spins in circles, which causes the liquid to be stirred nicely (over time).
So I took a DC powered CPU fan and mounted a strong magnet on the top middle area, and wired it to an old AC cell phone charger. The fan specs are 12 volts, 0.15 amps. I tested it with a charger that puts out 5 volts and 0.7 amps but the spinning motion is too fast, it causes the stir bar to get tossed around rather than spinning in circles as it should. Also I have several different sized stir bars, so the speed needs to be adjusted based on how big the containers size, the ammount of fluid, and the size of the stir bar. So I went in my scrap pile and looked for an old potentiometer, and found one mounted to a circuit board so I removed it, and hooked the positive end of the power supply to the potentiometer, and another lead from the other end of the potentiometer to the positive terminal on the fan. Then I hooked up the negative lead from the power supply directly to the fan.
I plug the power supply into the wall and spin the potentiometer dial, and nothing happens. I turn it to the right and get 0 rpms on the fan, then turn it to the left and get 0 rpms on the fan. What am I doing wrong? Or maybe the potentiometer is out of range for this project, But I thought any potentiometer would work, according to my research.