My budget manual shredder with a DC motor.

[stdly]

I have a budget manual shredder 1.5mm I bought from WLT a few years ago, still works great.
I also have a 500 RPM DC gear motor and controller lying around so why am I hand cranking?
Well as you can see I was bored, so I married the two into a automatic shredder.
It’s not beautiful but it seems to work pretty well.
I only removed the handle from the original manual shredder to adapt this.
Everything is recycled wood from some old vanity drawers, except the plastic motor bushing block.
The wood block the shredder is clamped on is soft wood and I will replace it then I will glue it all up.
Also I will add an e-stop button to the DC controller. and mount it in an enclosure.

 

[WillQuantrill]

That is a contraption to be proud of! I like the slotted box to prevent foreign objects from lodging. Having the same shredder I have wondered if I could make a threaded adapter to chuck in a cordless drill.

 

[stdly]

Thanks!
I guess you could drive it with a water wheel if you had one. You only need to line up the shaft of the drive to the drive shaft on the shredder. The arm on the motor is slotted for fine adjustment.
Here is a short video I took before I actually screwed down the motor gotta love bungee cords.

Shredder Test.mp4

drive.google.com

 

[deluxestogie]

Maybe you could hook up one of these on a ratchet:

Bob

 

[WillQuantrill]

Water wheel! Going Medieval!

 

[stdly]

Good idea Bob, If it was around 4 feet high you might get enough torque.

 

[stdly]

I finished off the control box. I bought a $25 sealed box and mounted the control inside and the power light, power switch and potentiometer on the front.
The lid light is to let me know the E-Stop is pushed, sometimes the simplest thing can be over looked so this is what I call my dummy light. I have a $2 red one on the way to replace the green one.
So this project cost me the $25 price of the box and $2 for the red light everything else I had sitting around.
I shredded 3 pounds yesterday and it stalled a couple times on the Kentucky Burley Red Tips this stuff is thick and ribbed, but no fuse blown just hit the E-Stop reverse by hand to clear and now I know the capacity of the machine. The Virginia Bright went through no problem and the best part, I have both hands free to feed the shredder more evenly through the slot.