Hi There !
i had some 12v motors, from wheel loader wipers.
they are powerful enough to drive the shredder, but have sometime pain to shred plastic bottles neck. solution is to cut the bottleneck before entering the shredder.
i add a twin switch enabling to drive forward or reverse.
it is driven with a Suaoki T10 battery ensuring about 1 hour autonomy, for € 60 investment.
i also made a hopper, slightly different than PP dawings.
it is riveted, with a clear glass in front,
i will add a hinged door at the top to ensure no material gets out !
btw. there are no 1000 Euro motors, just 1000 E as complete material bill . Motors here in Spain are on a Kg base, for 4KW we usually pay around 70 Euro, new ! The worm drives is the expensive part!. Yesterday I inspected a 3devo crusher: 1480 RPM, 0.75KW single phase motor, 2 capacitors (start & run), a 1:50 reducer and some massive sprocket gearing (not cheap!) to run a grinder simultaneously right below. The motor & reducer in it’s config is about 200 – 300 Euro just. It’s crushing PET bottles though a very tiny hole – effortless (with lots of noise and vibrations)… down to dust, 5 mins per bottle, ready to filter and print. Of course, machine builders buy that stuff new, I can’t see how this is nonsense. We stick to 3 phase and VFDs because of mainly efficiency and long-life as said (well, and additional controlling, metering,…).
Standard house hold plastic on a 2.2 Kw, 1480 RPM and a 1:20 reduction draws about 6 – 8 Amps just, all day long, without getting hot. We chose 1:20 over 1:50 because of shredding speed and gearbox efficiency … things have to make sense though
A regular car wiper motor will draw up to 20 amps when stalled, but you can’t get more than around 100W max. power out of them.
Aren’t these loaders all 24v? Did you measure the current when it’s actually shredding?
Wheelchair / mobilty gearmotors would probably also work for a shredder, but would need additional gearing and shredding speed would be slow, but would be ideal to run off a small solar array.
Wow, 13.5 amps for a windshield(?) wiper motor? I didn’t realize they got that big. Great idea. There are always people asking what you can do without line power. Not that hard to come up with 200-300 watts of solar panel these days.
Guys, thanks for both feedback ! both are relevant i would say.
when starting this PP business it needs to be made with things you can have available quickly!
but when becoming a serious business, you have to get stronger and reliable equipment.
@andyn, we’re doing so to get the max. safety, extend-ability, efficiency, durability and also value out such system (ie: resell). we’re following just best practice recommended from real technicians/mechanics in this field. the 4kw of course can be discussed but if you tried PET bottles shredding with 2.2K on 1:50 … without running the motor hot or break the driveshaft,… ; or what you wanna do with a half-baken / hacked together device in the long, for sure not saving the f*** planet ?! If the difference between crap and good is only 500 – 800 Euro, well … I think it’s pretty much the reason why overall user numbers coming to PP is stuck and also PP doesn’t take off nor becomes serious … crap machines make crap, simple as that Especially if you look at the amount of resources people have to throw at the shredding stage, you can imagine how exhausting this is if someone still has to go through the other stages (forming, product development,…) it’s kinda obvious: the shredder is a bottleneck and being efficient, you more likely pick the plastic from the facility to make sure you’re not stuck with such bottleneck …
Hi Andy!
thanks for your message.
even though the french community was doubting it could work,
i also bought 2 x 400v motors and 1 low speed tree shredder to compensate if these motors were not successfull.
the motor with internal gear runs at 200rpm. it needs 13.5amps.
i used 4 gears (that were within the wiper assembly )to decrease to 50rpm.
it is slow and powerful enough.
2 bearings (the same than the shredder)
1 shaft from the wiper.
i chain from the wiper
L angle profile.
welding
1 twin switch to go forward or reverse
that’s it !
i will try next week with a sieve and punch plate.
i think it will take some more power as well, and maybe this will be the limit of my motors.
i bought 2 used motors with gear for €150each.
so i think the same way you are. i will never buy a €1000 motor and vfd. this is a nonsense to me.
i have a couple of these 12v motors in the shelves, i just miss the gears, but they can easily be found on internet i reckon.
Nicely done! And shows that it can be done with cheap low power motors and without expensive tools or equipment (there are some people on here who will tell you you must spend 1000s of euros on 4+ kW 3phase gearmotors plus a VFD to drive it to get acceptable results – simply not true).
What is the chain reduction ratio? It doesn’t even look all that much, what is the final rpm?
. Motors here in Spain are on a Kg base, for 4KW we usually pay around 70 Euro, new ! The worm drives is the expensive part!. Yesterday I inspected a 3devo crusher: 1480 RPM, 0.75KW single phase motor, 2 capacitors (start & run), a 1:50 reducer and some massive sprocket gearing (not cheap!) to run a grinder simultaneously right below. The motor & reducer in it’s config is about 200 – 300 Euro just. It’s crushing PET bottles though a very tiny hole – effortless (with lots of noise and vibrations)… down to dust, 5 mins per bottle, ready to filter and print. Of course, machine builders buy that stuff new, I can’t see how this is nonsense. We stick to 3 phase and VFDs because of mainly efficiency and long-life as said (well, and additional controlling, metering,…).