Industrial Shredders

About Industrial Shredders and Industrial Shredder Manufacturers Including: Chipper Shredders, Industrial Grinders, Metal Shredders, Paper Shredders, Shredders & Tire Shredders.

Industrial shredders and wood shredders process and reduce firm, dense matter, including solid chemicals. They are most often used for waste materials that need to be disposed of or recycled. Industrial shredder manufacturers equip their products with a protected feed area with blades or gears for crushing or slicing inserted materials. After the feed area, material moves through the shredder chute into a receptacle or sometimes a conveyor for further handling. Shredders can be used for the processing or disposal of tires, wood, organic materials, automobiles, scrap metals, plastics, concrete, paper, coal, limestone, minerals or cardboard, as well as many other materials. Industrial shredder manufacturers have customers in a wide variety of industries, from medical to paper production for reasons of recycling, waste removal and storage.

Many industrial shredders are used in tandem with other equipment as part of a larger recycling process. The paper shredded in a paper mill often is further broken down in order to reduce the paper to a raw pulp. This pulp is then used in the creation of new paper that contains the recycled fibers. Often material is shredded simply to make the disposal and storage of the material easier and less bulky. Automation plays a huge role for industrial shredder manufacturers. Most of the material is put on a conveyer and fed into the shredding elements themselves. This is referred to as meter feeding. Batch feeding is the process of loading a shredder via a forklift or related grapple loader. Rarely is the loading done directly by hand because of safety concerns. This is only done in low power, low torque machines.

As recycling becomes more commonplace in industrial settings, shredding of materials will also become more widely practiced. Alongside industrial balers, which make the transportation of post-consumer and manufacturing waste easier, shredders are constantly becoming more efficient in design and affordable in cost. The heavy duty metals, which make up the shears, blades and gears of industrial shredders, are the most critical part of the shredder and often need replacing. Innovations with metal compounds for these parts will make shredders more material specific in the future as well.

When choosing an industrial shredder, consider feed size, material size, material make-up, location, frequency of use, blade material and hardness. Plus, think safety when purchasing and adding a shredder to a work site. Good ventilation and explosion proof chambers are crucial in shredders that deal with the breakdown of hazardous materials. Proper maintenance and training are also essential for safe operation. Another safety feature for many newer shredders is a sensor and/or auto reverse capability in case materials too large or dense are introduced. Industrial shredders differ from the smaller, office models because of the variety of materials they encompass and the amount of material that can be processed. Wood shredders, or chipper shredders, are used specifically to reduce large pieces of wood into chips for applications such as landscaping and gardening. Other shredders designed for the reduction of particular materials include paper shredders, metal shredders and tire shredders.

Industrial Shredders and Industrial Shredder Manufacturers Image Provided by Vecoplan, LLC

Industrial Shredders and Industrial Shredder Manufacturers Image Provided by WEIMA America, Inc.

Industrial Shredders and Industrial Shredder Manufacturers Images Provided by ARTECH Reduction Technologies

Types of Industrial Shredders

• Automobile shredders are hammermill-type shredders that are big enough to shred entire cars and compact them into small squares for recycling.
  
• Cardboard shredders are another common type of industrial shredder. Because cardboard is such a widely used packaging material, the efficient minimizing, removal and recycling of cardboard is a industry necessity.
  
• Chipper shredders cut wood or other materials in small chips.
• Granulators are machines used for shredding small materials such as plastic bottles.
  
• Hammermills are high-speed rotor equipped machines with large hammers for crushing material into reduced sizes with up to 6,000 horsepower of force. Hammermills come in various sizes and material reducing capabilities.
  
• Hydraulic drive shredders have a pump, which powers the motor and is connected to an electric motor or diesel engine. These shredders can reverse away from the load and resume forward rotation in less than three seconds. (http://www.hydraulic-lifts.net).
  
• Industrial grinders use attrition and compression to crush material into small pieces.
• Medium-speed shredders are round and drum-like with multiple cutter inserts that work against a fixed bed knife. They are commonly used for reducing materials like plastics, electronic scrap, wood waste and nonferrous metals.
  
• Metal shredders are heavy-duty shredders that shred metal scrap for recycling purposes.
• Paper shredders are one of the most common types of material shredders known. They can vary greatly in size and capacity and are standard fixtures in environments such as offices and paper mills.
  
• Shredders are machines that cut various materials into small pieces.
• Slow speed, shear type shredders are high torque, low speed shredders with two or more counter rotating shafts. The shafts have hooked knives capable of reducing a wide variety of materials such as tires, paper and baled metals such as aluminum.
  
• Tire shredders are used both in junkyards and other rubber recycling centers. They are slow speed, high torque machines, capable of handling the dense rubber used in tires and tubing.
  
• Tub grinders are used primarily for wood and organic material. They have a hammermill that rips and tears large pieces of material into smaller pieces, pulling them below the tub floor and forcing them through openings in grates below the mill.

Common Terms Related to Industrial Shredders

Automotive Shredder Residue (ASR) - Material left from an automobile that has been sent through an industrial shredder and all the ferrous metal has been taken out. Sometimes referred to as fluff.
 
Balers - Compress materials that have been shredded by industrial shredders into dense rectangular bales.
(http://www.iqsdirectory.com/industrial-balers/)
 
Bales - Compressed material that have been shredded by industrial shredders, which is bound, usually by wire.
 
Banding - The material, usually wire or nylon, wrapped around bales to secure them.
 
Burden Depth - The depth of the material is spread on a conveyor belt.
 
Cross-Cut - Cut in two directions by industrial shredders, resulting in smaller particles.
 
Destruction Chamber - The place in industrial shredders where material is torn, sliced, crushed or reduced.
 
Downstream Separation - The separation of material after it has gone through industrial shreddeders, usually from a conveyor belt.  Magnets, eddy current separators, trommels and other downstream separation equipment is often used.
 
Eddy Current Separator - A device for separating nonferrous metals from nonmetallic material that uses a mechanically driven alternating magnetic field and a non-magnetic metallic particle.  An eddy current is created and the particle is taken from the fixed field generator.  
 
Feed Width - The width of the opening where material is inserted into the industrial shredder shredder.
 
Ferrous - Iron-based metals like steel.
 
Granulator - Shredding machinery for shredding small materials such as plastics.
 
Hydraulic - Involving, moved by or operated by a fluid under pressure.
 
Material Burden - Material on a conveyor belt that needs to be sorted.
 
Non-ferrous - Non-iron based metals such as aluminum and copper.
 
Shredder Drive - The motor of the industrial shredder, often configured a number of different
ways including electric or hydraulic.
 
Slurry - A liquid based mixture or suspension of solids.
 
Speed - Denoted in "feet per minute." Determined by shredding continuous forms and materials and by calculating the length of paper shredded over a given time.
 
Strip-Cut - Shredded into thin strips. Generally the cut is the length of the material.
 
Throat - The opening where the paper or other materials are fed into the shredder. It needs to be large enough to accommodate the size of material.
 
Unshreddables - Materials that industrial shredders are unable to handle because they are too large or too thick to be shredded.
 
Waste Capacity - Measured in gallons, the volume of paper or other products being shredded by industrial shredders that the waste bag or waste bin can hold.