There’s always something fascinating about watching something get destroyed in spectacular fashion, especially if it’s crushed or shredded. It’s wild to watch a crusher reduce a broken car to a cube, but here’s something even more satisfying. There are giant shredders out there capable of eating the biggest home appliances and entire cars all in one piece.
Yesterday, Matt wrote about how our $800, 375,000-mile NYC taxi is so broken it would require $14,406.62 in repairs if we took it to a dealership Weston offers a hilarious fix:
I visit a customer with a large shredder. A 5000HP motor that spins a hammer mill weighing about 110,000 lbs that will obliterate anything fed into it. This little NV200 would go in one end and come out the other in about five seconds looking like exploded confetti. Engine, transmission, wheels, tires, axles – everything. No prep necessary, just set it on the belt.
Would you like me to hook you up?
There are a couple of different types of machines designed to reduce material size. A common machine is the hammermill. Recycling industry publication Recycling Today explains more:
Hammermills – often called automobile shredders but used to shred other materials as well – break up material using huge hammers attached to a rotor. Hammermills range in diameter from laboratory size – as small as nine inches – up to 120 inches in diameter. Capacities generally range from 5 horsepower to 6,000 horsepower.
How does it work? The hammermill is generally four-armed, with heavy-duty swing hammers that can be reversed for wear. The units are generally furnished with outboard flywheels for pulling them through any surge load periods. These machines can be diesel driven or electrically powered, and can have alternating current (AC) motors or direct current (DC) motors.
Hammermills (without motor or associated systems) generally range in price from $7,500 to $1.25 million depending upon the capacities, the material to be processed and the product size required.
There’s also the shredder, which uses gigantic metal blades to achieve a similar result.
In short, hammermills and shredders are gigantic machines that use hammers or blades to pulverize refrigerators, cars, or really whatever else you feed them. Don’t worry, of course, I have videos for you to watch. Just beware, because while the first video is a decent demonstration about how this machine works, a poor VW is needlessly killed in the process:
Anyway, back to the COTD nominations!
Today, Mark gave us a Shitbox Showdown between two entirely forgettable sedans. Your responses were hilarious. The Stig’s Misanthropic Cousin:
I don’t want either so I flipped a coin. Heads was the Lincoln; tails was the Lexus. Tails won 2 out of 3, so I voted for the Lexus.
Gubbin:
I have a similar process that goes:
Me: “I don’t care either way, just flip a coin.”
Coin: “Lincoln.”
Me: “OK, best 2 out of 3 then.”
Coin: “Lincoln.”
Me: “Damn.”
Coin: “Lexus.”
Me: “Finally, the right answer. Lexus it is.”
Have a great evening, everyone!
(Update: We added a clarification that there’s a difference between a shredder and a hammermill. Thank you, readers!)
(Topshot: Screenshot/SSI Shredders)
How long do you have to wait before Jason starts talking to you again after posting this video?
I think I’m grounded for a month for not featuring a video of an actual junker getting shredded.
That sounds on brand for Torch.
See you on the other side. 🙂
Seeing just the still of the poor Bug like that makes me equal parts irrationally angry and sad at the same time. I can’t watch the video unless I want my day intentionally ruined 🙁
What surprised me is how long it took to complete the shredding. That machine had a hard time finding a grip on anything substantial enough to drag the rest through.
Interesting that the operator has independent control of each roller/shredder. It does take some intutive and experience to complete the shred by the operator.
I want to love these things, but I have an irrational (probably rational?) fear of things like wood chippers. I don’t even like seeing them in the distance. There’s just something extra super duper horrifying about slowly being dragged into such a machine after getting caught on something, or whatever. Makes me nauseous just considering it.
Should I upon viewing a woodchipper/shredder/hammermill immediately envision myself or someone else being sucked into it? No. But that’s the way this brain works I’m afraid.
I spent 5-6 years building plastic granulator systems, and for some of the really big systems, we would incorporate SSI shredders as sort of a pre-granulator step to reduce the size of big bulky parts. I worked with these things every day, and I was always a little bit scared of them. I was hyper aware of where my hands were at all times, made sure that I didn’t have any clothing or anything else that could get snagged, etc. So, I’d say that being a bit scared of this kind of equipment is perfectly rational.
I too would be hyper aware around the equipment you were around.
There’s just certain industrial equipment I’m not a fan of. This includes walk in pressure cookers like they use for making canned tuna. That a guy accidentally got cooked in once. You couldn’t pay me a CEO salary to walk in and out of one of those all day.
I guess you need a trigger warning for the movie Fargo
LOL
I was gonna go there, but you beat me to it. Nice job!
There are super shredders that can shred a bus in seconds.
The full tilt systems separate all the parts as they go through involuntary conversion in real time.
Bodies do go through these machines at times.
I’m told everyone in the area pretends not to notice.
Oof, no thanks to that.
I actually STOPPED the shredding video when I saw what was about to happen. That was a perfectly fine, apparently driving/running Super Beetle. Even if the graphics were a bit much, it was a nice, usable car.
Seems an awful shame to shred it just for clicks (or whatever promotional purpose was intended).
🙁
They definitely added all of those graphics themselves after buying the car to shred it. I’ll bet they had someone else actually buy the graphics so that their fragile masculinity wouldn’t be offended by getting them themselves.
I should have suspected as much! 😀
Reminds me of the nightmare fuel that was the Brave Little Toaster junkyard scene (among other parts).
Yeah that’s one of our generation’s shared trauma points. As a kid, the scene was scary because there was a big menacing magnet crane killing sentient cars.
As an adult, that scene is even scarier because the cars are all singing about how they never amounted to as much as they dreamed.
Scarred 70s-80s kids, unite!
That and the A/C unit killing itself did a number on child me.
Yeah that was horrifying. Jack Nicholson-esque A/C unit screaming in rage as he burns himself out still makes me shudder.
I’m having flashbacks now and I feel anxious. It was a cute and harmless movie until they decided we all needed to watch Saw but with anthropomorphic appliances.
Ah, that’s probably one of the many reasons I don’t like these things, lol.
Whenever I toss out a household object I think of that movie. I have a desk lamp I still can’t bring myself to part with.
And then you’re in the man from Mars
You go out at night eatin’ cars
You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too
Mercurys and Subaru
And you don’t stop, you keep on eatin’ cars
Then, when there’s no more cars you go out at night
And eat up bars where the people meet
Such is the potential fate of a selection of recent ‘race’ cars…so I’m told.
That was snuff porn. Next up, a kitten being swallowed by a python.
Man, could we not please and thank you
Ran when parked.
Those SSI units in the videos are not hammermills, they are indeed shredders – it’s right there in the name – Shredding Systems Inc. I used to work with their equipment back when I worked in the plastics business. They’re really cool machines, but also a little bit terrifying.
My daughter had a phase where she loved watching videos of things like cars getting fed through crushers or hammermills. Some of them discharge their output onto magnetized conveyor belts to quickly separate ferrous metals from the rest of the car clippings. Neat stuff.
Well the Abbie Hoffman wanna be was entertaining…
I am glad they crushed his stupid hippie VW, that turd had it coming. /s
I think I can hear Torch weeping softly after watching that Beetle get shredded.
The fact that they showed it running and driving prior to is pretty messed up. I get it if it’s an idle rust heap, but that was just wasteful.
The “hurt durr me hate hippie” part of the demo was pretty fucking stupid. It’s a cool machine being sold by troglodytes.
If you hear another, it’s me. I have a major soft spot for Beetles (blame the Herbie movies).