DEVELOPMENT OF HEAVY DUTY SHREDDER
Nordin Othman1 & Ng Cheah Choon2
1
Faculty of Information Science & Engineering, Management and Science University,
University Drive, Off Persiaran Olahraga, Seksyen 13, 40100 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
2
School of Engineering and Information Technology
University Malaysia Sabah, Locked Bag No. 2073, 88999 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
Abstract
This paper presented the development of heavy duty
shredder, which is designed as low speed, high torque
rotary shredder; used to shred waste material and
producing small particle size materials in a single pass.
The shredder has a high horse power electrical motor with
the sharp edge cutting blades on the rotating shaft to
perform the shredding operation.
Keywords:
Rotary shear cutting, shredder, cutting blades, rotating
shaft, low speed high torque rotary.
Introduction
Shredders are terms that are commonly used for
machines for recycling purposes, waste reduction and
creating packing materials. This project is related to the
development of heavy duty shredder capable as a low
speed, high torque rotary shredder; used to shred waste
materials into small particle sizes in a single pass. The
shredder is able to shred 1.0cm to 3.5cm thickness papers
or brittle materials.
The shredder is powered with high horse power
electrical motor and with sharp edge cutting blades on the
rotating shaft to perform the shredding operation. The
method of readily replacement of individual cutters and
tooth modules, reconfiguration of cutter, and tooth
assemblies in intermeshing manner are key factors that has
to be considered in the design. In the process, alternative
ideas or concepts about the material feed system and type
of driven gear, the material to be shredded, and the volume
of materials to be shredded are also key factors relating to
shredder selection including factors that affect power
requirement are the production rate and size of feedstock.
Design of Device
The heavy duty shredder machine is coupled to an electrical
driven motor to produce rotary shear cut.
The 1420 rpm electrical driven motor is coupled to
a speed reducer box with ratio 1:50. The output rotating
speed from the speed reducer then coupled to a pair of
counter-rotating shaft. The speed reducer box’s output is
linked to the one of the shafts by gear chain. The spur gear
secured in a keyed to a shaft which will rotate with another
shaft will rotate in counter direction.
The pair of counter-rotating shaft was supported
by pillow blocks. When the pair of rotating shaft rotates, the
cutting blades that are secured in keyed manner on the
shafts will intermesh. This intermeshing configuration is
known as grabbing, which means the ability of the shredder
to resize the material and pull it down into the cutters. The
gap between intermeshing cutting blades is the variable that
affects the capability of grabbing or in-feed material
effectively.
Figure 1 – Counter-rotating shaft was turned to desired
dimension by using Lathe Machine.
To develop the shredder machine, the material for
the pair of counter-rotating shaft was firstly determined.
Mild steel AISI 1020 chosen to machined as the pair of
counter-rotating shaft.
In this project, the developing shredder machine is
suitable for shredding waste materials namely old
newspaper, books, plastics, hardcover files, and plywood
or chipboard. A brittle materials like glass, ceramics are
easily fractured into small particles.
Cutter geometry is an important variable in
determining how much the material can be grabbed.
Generally, the size and hooks of the cutting blades are the
factors, which mean that the higher the hooks, then more
materials can be grabbed and more materials can be
shredded.
Generally, there are two types of cutting blade,
there is the teeth attached and arrayed around the rotatable
shaft; or it is comprised of heavy steel plates stacked on a
rotating shaft. For this project, the cutting blades were
secured in a keyed manner and arrayed around the rotating
shaft. The material of cutting blades was cast-hardened
alloy steel, but during prototype stage, Medium-density
fiberboard (MDF or MDFB) was used as material for the
cutting blades. Medium-density fiberboard (MDF or
MDFB) is an engineered wood product formed by breaking
down softwood into wood fibers, often in a deliberator,
combining it with wax and resin, and forming panels by
applying high temperature and pressure. It had a building
material similar in application to plywood but made up of
sawdust, which was denser than normal particleboard.

Figure 2 – Cutting blades secured in a keyed manner on Figure 3 – Prototype for Shredder Machine
one shaft.

The shafts had a keyway, machined by milling.

The purpose of the keyway was to secure the cutting blades
on the shafts. Besides the cutting blades, a spur gear was
secured in a keyed manner on each shaft so that a counter-
rotating mechanism can be achieved. A sprocket also
secured in a keyed manner on one shaft. The sprocket had
been designed to connect and transmit power through a gear
chain. The shaft extension was made short in order to cope
with the vibration and misalignment that may lead to power
transmission failure.

Figure 4 – Engineering Drawing for Shredder Machine

Prototype

Shear Cutting Operation

Dual shaft rotary shredders may be reconfigured as

high efficient, with the intermeshing cutting blades (and
spacers) installed on the dual shafts. The solid waste firstly
feed into the hopper. The intermeshing counter-rotating
shaft will ensure the solid waste self-fed.

Figure 3 – Bill of Materials
After the system was assembled, the system would
resemble as shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4.
Slow speed shredders require spacer disk between
the cutter disk and a series of cleaning fingers to dislodge
material build-up between the cutting blades. Cleaning
fingers was mounted on the side frame of the shredder.
These fingers keep shredded material away from clogging
the cutting table. The machine will then function and
perform as a high performance shear shredder in this
configuration.

The shredded materials then will be collected in a

dump under the shredder.
Dimension and Line Drawing Specification Data

Figure 5 – Top View - Engineering Drawing for Shredder

Machine Prototype
Figure 8 – Specification Data for Shredder Machine

COSMOSWork Analysis

Rotating Shaft
The analysis on the rotating shaft profile under a
certain load had been conducted. The shaft model was
analyzed by using COSMOSWork computation. A
downward force will applied onto the shaft. Two types of
analysis were conducted: static study and fatigue study. For
static study, there were 2 analysis performed (static
displacement analysis and static nodal stress analysis); the
results obtained were shown in figures 9 and 10
respectively.
Table 1 – Static Study for Rotating Shaft

Static Study for Rotating Shaft

Part analyzed Rotating shaft
Figure 6 – Side View - Engineering Drawing for Shredder Material Mild Steel 1020
Machine Prototype Downward Force applied to 600 N
the shaft

Figure 9 – Rotating Shaft Static Displacement Analyses

Figure 7 – Front View - Engineering Drawing for Shredder

Machine Prototype Figure 10 – Rotating Shaft Static Nodal Stress Analyses
 Figure 11 – Rotating Shaft Damage Study

Figure 15 – Cutting Blade Damage study

Figure 12 – Total Life (cycle) Study

Table 2 – Static Study for Cutting Blade

Figure 16 – Cutting Blade Total Life (cycle) Study
Static Study for Cutting Blade
Part analyzed Cutting Blade
Material Stainless Steel
Function Test for Prototype
Force applied to the hook 892.2322 N
To conduct a functional test some brittle materials such as
glass, polystyrenes, CDs, plastic file, extension cable socket
were fed to the shredder machine for shredding. Figures 17
below were the selected input materials to be used to test
the shredder machine’s performance.

Figure 13 – Cutting Blade Static Nodal Stress Study

Figure 14 – Cutting Blade Static Displacement Study

Figure 17 – Amount of pirate CD, ceiling, plastic file,

glass,
 polystyrenes, and a broken cable extension.
Figure 18 – The Output from the Shredder Machine after
an amount of waste material mentioned in Figure 17 has
been fed into.
Results and Discussion
During the operation, the cutter's blades were subjected to
abrasion and wear from the shearing of waste materials.
The shear's teeth or hooks will tend to round off along the
cutting edges due to abrasion and wear. When this happens,
the gap between intermeshing disks begins to open wider
until the hooks or teeth were no longer capable of grabbing
the in-feed materials effectively. The cutters begin to rip
and tear instead of shearing and it often becomes necessary
to replace the entire set of cutters in order to restore the
performance of the shear machine. Excessive wear and
damage to the cutters was a constant problem.
This heavy duty shredding machines faced another
problem such as overloading. According to German
Industrial Standard DIN-A-4, heavy duty shredding
machines defined as such machines can shred a paper stack
of size of 3.5 centimeter thickness of about 350 sheets in
one run. In this case, only 1.5cm thickness (9 CD) was
achieved before the overloaded problem occurs.
Consequently, a higher horsepower motor (from 10 HP to
100 HP) should be installed to obtain a high torque shear
cutting. This is necessary for it to perform as heavy duty
class to process a wide variety of materials for recycling
and size reduction. From the results, during functional
testing, the entire machine is only able to shred certain
brittle material and the volume of shredding are very
limited. With higher a horsepower motor, overloading
problem can be solved by achieving a higher torque. Thus
the entire machine can be upgraded for heavy duty purposes
and for size reduction and waste disposal such as plastics,
paper, cardboard, woods, fibers and other solid waste
materials.
Besides upgrading the motor horsepower, the
shredder may still encounter overload problem which can
be improved with overload protection via automatic
reversal. The entire machine may equip automatic reversal
(include an electronic protection system) to automatically
stop and reverse the shredding action in the event of a
system overload. The system allows the shredder to clear
itself and then continues the shredding process,
automatically. This system helps to protect the shredder
from damage. If the shredder shuts down, the feeder can be
reversed and foreign material can be dumped out the back
of the feeder. It should also be noted that when the
shredder is reverses, the feeder will stop till the shredder
current has dropped to a normal level, then starts forward
again.
Shock protection is necessary to cushion against
excessive shock loads. Otherwise, instantaneous stops
could damage the shredder’s drive components such as
shafts, gears, and couplings. The electrical drive is selected
because it is more energy efficient and mechanically less
complicated, but it is not efficiency in the amount of
uncontrolled feed load that it can process. In comparison to
the hydraulic drive system shock load protection is less
effective.
Solid materials sometimes resist being self-fed into
a rotary shredder. In such cases, optional feeding systems
are known to provide a positive flow of material into the
rotor. However, in most cases, such systems are restricted to
conveyers or to metering type feeders. The instant
technology provides two embodiment of a hydraulic ram
feed system attachable to a rotary shear for pushing
a"slug"of material into the shear. Firstly a horizontal
hydraulic ram feed is disclosed, for attachment to the
shredder to feed items such as municipal waste. Secondly,
an inclined hydraulic ram is also disclosed for feeding
larger items such as whole drums of material into the
shredder. In both cases, the torque delivered to the shredder
via the hydraulic system would be monitored and used to
control the hydraulic ram. As the torque increases, the
hydraulic ram reduces its applied force to avoid
overfeeding the shredder.
Conclusion and Future work
A prototype shredding machine which is able to function
and shred brittle solid waste has been completed. The
maximum thickness of the waste paper to be shredded is
achieved at around 1.5cm. The horse power for this
machine is 0.5 HP. The rotating shaft rotates at a speed 18
rpm. The pulley belt for belting system is estimated for
around 27238 hours before fatigue. This machine can be
used to improve the waste management by reducing the
waste materials to small particle, thus reduce the waste
capacity to about 30%. As a conclusion, the shredder
machine was able to function and to perform shredding
operation on solid waste. This project has achieved all the
specifications and calculations of the mechanical designs
with very minor difference.

However , there are limitations in this shredder
machine. Due to this limitation, the shredder machine is
less efficient to perform real heavy duty shredding
operation. The development of heavy duty shredder can be
improved or evaluated to increase the volume of production
and rigidity.
Cushioning Assembly , United States Patent
4346850: Journal of Free Patent Online.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4346850.html
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