Building a Hand Cranked Shredder for Recycling Plastics 💪

Let me show you how I built a hand-cranked shredder for recycling plastic waste. I want to use the shredded material to 3D print new parts from it. The shredder was sourced from the Precious Plastics Bazar and delivered as a box of sheet metal parts. Assembly was quiet easy only getting a proper hand crank was a challenge. I ended up with a 80cm long 25x25mm steel tube that is attached to the shaft via a laser-cut adapter. Similar particle size is very important during the process so I designed stackable and 3D-printable sieves that are used to obtain the different particle fractions.

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[CNCKitchen]

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[IcFenix]

You should consider replacing the long lever with a gearbox to make the spinning easier. Good job for the project :D

[santiagoblandon]

You recycle and do indoor exercise at the same time! perfect for this times of quarantine =D

[lordkahtu]

Take the "trash" particles and melt them on a hotplate into a puck then re-shred the puck to proper size particles.

[matthewfeurtado]

It would be interesting to test the strength of a print after being recycled multiple times comparing each one to fresh pla

[JoeMalovich]

a 14 tooth to 72 tooth sprocket chain reduction would help for sure.

[make.anything]

Awesome! I've been wanting to design a shredder like this, but the precious plastics prefabs sure are tempting. I just happened to source a beefy electric motor and gear train, but the handle solution is great

[goldbunny]

Hi Stefan. Have you tried lightly warming the plastic in a microwave before tossing it into the shredder? That should reduce resistance without completely losing structural intgrity. Perhaps a geared link to the crank would increase torque & reduce back strain?

[Mobile_Dom]

i'd love to see a review or at least a more detailed look at that pellet extruder.

[robertcullipher]

Add a powerful magnet in each filter stage to collect the metal shavings.

[Xenu]

I am thinking about doing something similar but for composting trash and garden material

Thanks for sharing

[alangregg]

i don't subscribe to many YouTubers. While watching this video i realized that even tho i have watched dozens of your work, i had not yet committed to a subscription. I have always enjoyed your videos, and today you have earned it.

[mrMacGoover]

A simple reduction gear and built in hand crank would be from a boat winch that usually attach to the front of a boat trailer.

[manuelpadua]

Really late response but a quick fix for the metal shaving would be a magnet to sweep through it.

[wordreet]

Ah, I see you used a spiral flute tap at first. They are the weakest type and not really suitable for manually starting a thread in steel. Normally a hand tapped hole will require 3 stages. A start (first) tap, which has a loooong taper, so that it aligns itself with the hole. Then a second tap to form most of the depth of the thread, and finally a finishing or bottoming tap to get as much depth as necessary. For anyone reading this, if the thread is required all the way through, then the finishing tap is not needed.

[dprintingcave]

I really like this idea of reusing the plastics and wish more people and business would get involved and come up with a solution that works very easy and be very cheap, if we had something very easy and cheap u would have people maybe going out of there way to pick up plastic pieces like bottles and straws whatever, , , I don't know how a mixture of all sorts of different plastics would work in a 3d printer, , but thank you for doing a video on this and I hope u keep going with it and maybe more people like you will jump in

[SefPinney]

For your hand cranked version, I believe a precious shredder with ½ to ⅔ the blade gauge widths and a smaller hook area would suit a lower load human setup. It would still run fine with a smaller motor. “Not biting off more than it can chew.”

[thewulf]

@CNCKitchen it would be really cool to see you do some materials testing on fresh material and then recycle the material once and repeat the test. Then continue to recycle the material and test to see how the properties are lost over time (or maybe they don't)

[jeremyporterfield]

Just watching this - your sieves look and operate very similar to the aggregate measuring sieves used in stone mining / quarrying operations. As a prior materials engineer, one thing to note is that sieve hole sizes only guarantee your pieces are less than the hole size for the 2nd longest side of any particular piece - if you think about it, you could get an infinitely long piece through one of the holes as long as the 2nd and 3rd dimension sizes are smaller than the sieve. Granted, the space between the sieves in your "sieve stack" will limit this somewhat, but it's something to keep in mind while processing. Great video - really enjoy your thorough testing!

[dimitary]

im sorry, but that lever... Oh my lord that lever. The effort. The sheer will.