So, this is where things get a little silly.
I looked into options to do away with the Noctua "Napoleon Dynamite" "Tan on Taupe" look.
My first thought was to use automotive vinyl dye, as I have used that on plastics in the past with good results, but some searches revealed less than favorable results. Vinyl dye may be better than paint, but it still - apparently - cakes on the outside and can cause problems.
Then I found
this crazy guy on Youtube who used fabric dye for synthetic fibers to dye his fans purple.
Downside? It involves boiling the item to be dyed
He did it. He said it worked for him. I was fully prepared for this to be some sort of prank, but you know what? If I wreck my fans, I can just replace them, so why the hell not?
So we are doing it.
The key is to get the "Synthetic" version, or it does not work.
Unfortunately they do not make a "black" version of the Synthetic dye, only Graphite, but the instructions also say that to achieve a darker color, you can just add more of the dye, and what is black if not a darker graphite?
The instructions also said that to conceal underlying colors you may want to mix in a counter-balancing color. For brown, they recommended using their "Midnight Navy" color mixed in, but that one was out of sock everywhere locally, so I decided to go ahead with just the Graphite.
The instructions gave me the proper amount of dye to use based on the weight of the fabric, but I was not dying fabric, and I wanted to get it as dark as possible, so I filled a 3 gallon stock pot up about half way with distilled water (I figured that would work better, but that was not in the instructions), put a drop of dish soap in it as per instructions (presumably to act as a surfactant) and then just dumped the entire bottle in there.
This was many times the required amount of dye per the instructions, but I
did want it dark, and I figured I was never going to use the bottle again anyway, so there was no reason to save it for later.
I figured I didn't want the fans to sit on the bottom of the pot or they might melt, so I hung them by the cable from a wire hanger I got from the dry cleaners some time ago...
The instructions say to keep the put with the fabric to be dyed in it at a near boil, stirring occasionally for at least 30 minutes, and to add more time for a darker color. I wanted it dark, and I also presumed that plastic parts might take more time than fabrics, so I left it for an hour.
This second (possibly illegal) kitchen in the finished basement presumably installed by a previous owner of the house as some sort of in-law apartment came in handy.
Then the fans came out and I hung them to dry in front of one of the mini-split heat pump heads blowing cool dry air at them for a couple of days.
Once dry, the fans looked a little bit like there was excess dye stuck to the outside, so I wiped them down thoroughly with isopropyl alcohol, and they turned out looking great!
Hindsight being 20-20, I probably should have rinsed them off with clean water before drying them, and I wouldn't have had to do this cleaning step, but this worked.
I'm pretty impressed with the results. Everything looks black. Even the rubber vibration pads and the label on the back of the fan turned out nice, which is a bit surprising considering they started out looking like this:
They actually look like they could have come that way, which beat
all of my expectations.
The question is, after boiling Noctua fans in black sludgy water for an hour, do they still work?
I've heard that Noctua fans have very good seals around their bearings, which is likely what resulted in this working without gumming up. I wouldn't count on this working with all fans.
Ahh, much better!
So, if you haven't boiled your fans, do you even enthusiast, bro?
