An industrial shredder is a machine used to break down materials for various applications such as recycling, volume reduction, and product destruction. Industrial shredders come in many different sizes and design variations based on what particle size is needed for final shredded product. The main categories of designs used today are as follows: low speed, high torque shear type shredders of single, dual, triple and quad shaft design, single shaft grinders of single or dual shaft design, granulators, knife hogs, raspers, maulers, flails, crackermills, and refining mills. Industrial shredder components include a rotor, counter blades, housing, motor, transmission system, power system and electrical control system. Some examples of materials that are commonly shredded are:

tires A tire (American English) or tyre (British English) is a ring-shaped component that surrounds a wheel's rim to transfer a vehicle's load from the axle through the wheel to the ground and to provide traction on the surface over which t ...

metals A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typical ...

, construction and demolition debris,

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

, plastics, leathers, papers and garbage, such as commercial and mixed waste. The industrial shredder is commonly used to process materials into different sizes for separation or to reduce the cost of transport. Waste materials such as

municipal solid waste Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste ...

radioactive waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons r ...

, medical waste, and hazardous waste are shredded in treatment and disposal systems. Because the hardness of materials differs, the blades on shredders are also slightly different. An industrial shredder is any shredder that can be used in an industrial application (rather than a consumer application). They can be equipped with different types of cutting systems: horizontal shaft design, vertical shaft design, single-shaft, two-shaft, three-shaft and four-shaft cutting systems. These shredders are slow speed or high speed, and are not restricted in being classified as an industrial shredder by their speed or horsepower. Small, low-cost portable shredders have been developed; these are often suitable for personal use as well as for small scale industry. The largest

scrap metal shredder A scrap metal shredder, also sometimes referred to as a metal scrap shredder, is a machine used for reducing the size of scrap metal. Scrap metal shredders come in many different variations and sizes. Applications Some examples of scrap metal m ...

in the world was designed with 10,000 hp by the Schnitzer steel group of

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

in 1980. The Lynxs at the

Sims Metal Management Sims Limited (formerly Sims Metal Management Limited) is a global environmental services conglomerate, operating through a number of divisions, with a focus on: (a) Ferrous and Non-ferrous metal recycling, (b) enterprise data destruction and cl ...

plant at the mouth of the River Usk in

Newport, Wales Newport ( cy, Casnewydd; ) is a city and county borough in Wales, situated on the River Usk close to its confluence with the Severn Estuary, northeast of Cardiff. With a population of 145,700 at the 2011 census, Newport is the third-largest a ...

has access by road, rail and sea. It can process 450 cars per hour.Sims UK opens multi-million pound metals recycling terminal
''LetsRecycle'', 17 November 2004. Retrieved: 3 June 2010.Newport Hosts one of Europe's largest recycling facilities
''Materials Network Wales'', Summer 2006. Retrieved: 3 June 2010.Powering the World’s largest Industrial Shredder
''weg.net'', 30 September 2009. Retrieved: 3 June 2010.

In Popular Culture

Due to the popularity of their products industrial shredder designer and manufacturer SSI Shredding Systems, Inc. based in Wilsonville,

had a dedicated show, Mega Shredders on the Science Channel starting in 2013. The half-hour reality series featured the engineers, manufacturers, and sales people of SSI as they designed and built industrial shredders for the toughest of materials.

References

{{Industry-stub Industrial machinery