Shredding Machine Mark 2

Yesterday and today, we built a second generation shredding machine. Our first one had a motor failure because we overdid it. The motor wasn’t rated for continuous use and it got too hot and burnt out some of its motor windings. Oops!!So, this time we decided to make use of our heavy duty stair-lift motor with a speed controller to drive a homemade axle loaded up with blunt old circular saw blades. We bought some 20mm threaded rod, got a piece of aluminium tube that just about slides over the rod and the saw blades then fitted on the aluminium tube very tightly. We made 18mm spacers from pieces of OSB board, stacked them together with 2 large nuts, to form a six bladed cylindrical object that spans about 200mm in both directions. We also bent over some of the teeth (by heating them up with a blow torch and bending it while it was very hot) so that it would chop into the foam rubbish pieces and break it up even more.

We bought two pillow bearing blocks (yes that is what they are called!) that holds the axle nice and tight and we put a cog wheel on the back on the end of the axle which then has a chain wrapped around it and going off to the larger cog wheel on the motor, as you can see in the photo above.
Also, you can see to how naked .. and dangerous it is currently looking!!

So we then proceeded to build barriers and shielding to protect us from the spinning teeth and whirling chain ..

And we also realised that we could connect up our vacuum dust extractor that we already use for when we are slicing up the foam boards and put the resultant rubbish into large bin bags. It would reduce the cloud of dust and pieces flying in all directions.

We put the whole thing on sturdy legs and put a large lid on top to deliberately force us further away from the “chute” which is also a foot deep clear of the sharp claws too. We will always be careful with these sort of machines and made it much more difficult to be able to reach in accidentally or on purpose.

So next week, we can start tidying up the large rubbish pile, plus also two large ton bags of stuff too.

And when we got that done, we can move our slicing table out from that section of the First Floor so we can continue filling in our roof rafters along the J, K and L and the M section.