A Machine to Shred Anything and Everything

By Jake • June 16th, 2011 • 13 Comments

This is pretty fascinating. Back in the late 90s, I worked on a project at a metals reclamation plant in urban Detroit. They bought truckloads of shredded cars, sorted out the recyclable materials (aluminum, copper, etc.), and resold them to the automakers.

The machine in this video must be the guts of that glorious machine that eats cars and spits out pieces no bigger than a hardbound book. I never saw the machine itself, but I saw plenty of trucks full of its handiwork. Pretty mind-boggling to see something as big a car (or more accurately, dozens of cars), reduced into bits.

H/t Kottke.org, the video gets bonus points for its retro stylings and music, which of course weren’t retro at the time this video was made.


Possibly Related Posts

  • http://oracle-base.com oraclebase

    I need one of these. I could just put my whole house in it and start from scratch… :)

    Cheers

    Tim…

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    That might be fun, but you’d have a huge pile of shredded crud. Then what?

  • http://twitter.com/oraclenerd oraclenerd

    Tampons AND maxi-pads? Really?

  • http://twitter.com/oraclenerd oraclenerd

    Music *was* awesome.

    I especially liked the fact that it could “catch” the tennis balls…I thought those would pop right out but it grabbed and shredded them. 

    I want one.

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    Noticed that too, struck me as odd. The only thing I could think of was that they were difficult to shred without gumming up the mechanism, or they had laid off the only women and were converting the restroom.

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    Yeah, eating round objects was impressive. In the wider shots, did you notice how careful all the people adding stuff were being? That thing means business.

  • http://www.garry.to joel garry
  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    True, I’ve seen those in the past, very well insulated.

  • http://twitter.com/oraclenerd oraclenerd

    and none were wearing ties.

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    Not anymore they weren’t.

  • Net

    you need to recycle things, not destroy! 

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    Not really the point, many things are more valuable as a sum of their destroyed parts, e.g. old cars.

  • http://twitter.com/Arleneuc Arlene Murchinson