I have just completed my shredder which seems to work well.
The motor is a three phase 2.2 KW unit with a worm gearbox giving 100 rpm at 50Hz.
I do not have three phase but I sourced a very nice little inverter at the same time which gives me full control forward /rev plus speed which I have set from 30- 80 Hz on the control pot.
Drive shaft alighnement is almost impossible to get 100% accurate especially in your shed. I have a solid drive (no flexible coupling) from the gearbox to the shredder box. This is .25mm out of centre I have “accommodated” this by mounting the shredder box on rubber mounts. They are very cheap! This gives an acceptable (for me) .5mm total wobble as the drive shaft rotates.
I have a 5mm screen / sieve to grade the shredder output.
All stainless parts on the shredder box which were cut by Laser master http://www.lasermaster.co.uk down here in Redruth who offer a great service.
The axel I made myself which was asking allot of my Myford 7 lathe (only little) but it worked well.
I will be comentating the technical part when my knowledge en the matter is good enough,
All i have to say in the first point is WOW, your schredder seems to be doing the work !
I wonder though if your machine is not turning too quick ! (doesn’t it get a bit messy once the sieve is installed?)
Once again, congratz ! i’m so looking forward to build my own (or as part of a group) !
We’re also UK PP team. Whilst we haven’t had much success on the machine building angle we’re directing our efforts towards running outreach workshops and developing products. We’re also looking to build a bit of a UK working group for local collaboration. Drop us a message here or on Insta if you need anything.
Hi Tim
Great to see your Cornish shredder running .
We are a Truro based secondary school, looking to develop a plastics recycling workspace in our DT dept.
We would be really interested in discussing the pros and cons of building the shredder.
Many thanks
Jon DT
Thanks @anne-barbier that’s really helpful.
Can you specify what a service class reducer is? I’m having hard time finding out. Is it something like a worm gearbox? Do you have any links by any chance?
Many thanks
Jean
@jeanbono, you get really good results with a 4kw (5hp) motor (around 100e), a service class reducer for around 500-600 euro, and the inverter for that power is around 210 euro (make sure it’s not the cheapest, take an original Huanyang ! ). So you’re looking at 800-900 euro but you can run 2 shredders and one extruder on this drive at the same time since it’s pretty efficient setup. btw. we also added 5 more blades :-). however, with such setup you can shred also wood, PVC and all other hard plastic. others say here you could use 2-3 kw only but it seems to stall often and is sensitive to the kind of plastics or feedrate of plastic entering the shredder.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for sharing, this looks brilliant.
Do you still have links for the motor parts that you bought?
I’m interested in finding out what sort of cost I’m looking at
motor + gearbox + inverter
Many thanks
Jean
that machine looks very powerful in the video. how did you wire your motor? im connecting power directly to a 220v 1.9 kw motor. seems like a wrong way to do so . would be nice to get some tip from you .
Hi Nick yes as the motor is running at 1.5 times normal speed it would want to throw the plastic out of the hopper. I have added a lid to help with this. This is a common addition people make to stop things getting messy.
Shredding like most things is a compromise for your 2.2 KW you can have speed and get the job done quick with thin material or you can have torque to rip through thick material you can’t have both.
The inverter or VFD gives some addition speed control by varying the freqency of the three phase AC power the motor receives.
