HDPE, How Much Processing Is Required; I Put It To The Test!: 043

over the past few months I have been intensely focused on finding a way to shred HDPE plastic like the pros do I gave myself the added challenge of not using my industrial gearbox here and I also tried to avoid a lot of custom made parts like what you see here which is required for the single shaft shredder designed by Dave of precious plastics I love that design but I thought it was kind of expensive for the DIY market and again wanting to avoid expensive options I put a lot of effort into finding a way to shred it without spending very much money which included me spending a lot of money but the interesting thing is all along the way many of you said that much processing was not required they didn't have to shred it quite so much and you could still get good blocks of HDPE plastic and I thought you know if the professionals are shredding it you know certainly I need to shred it but then one of my neighbors sent me this this is HDPE plastic which has been shred in an industrial shredder this brought about the perfect opportunity to test where the plastic which has been shredded to the industrial standard would actually be better than plastic that has been processed more minimally in a home environment so over this past week I have been trying many different methods for processing this plastic using as little effort and cutting as possible I'm going to pull up a little closer to the bench and walk you through what I've tried and let's talk about the results okay I thought I'd start by telling you how I processed each one of these samples and then we'll take these over to the bandsaw cut them open for the real test which is saying how solid and consistent it is on the inside this comes from a red watering can which was HDPE you can tell by looking at it that I process that very very little just to give an example the pieces look something like this I left the corners I didn't go through much effort to make it flat I left some of the ridges process for this one was I took in this pan which looked a lot better before all of my testing it was just about new I took some parchment paper put it inside of course this is all used and dried out now I put all the loose pieces inside of there and then I'll put another tray on top the same sized tray so that they fit nest inside of each other and then I also put these weights inside all of these samples were baked at 350 degrees except for the professionally shredded plastic and I'll tell you about that when I get to it so I put weights in the pan I left it in there for about an hour then I took it out and I noticed that the plastic was sticking to the bottom of the pan now you can see here so I went back I put another layer of parchment paper in between and then I sandwich them back together like so after about this whole process took maybe two or three hours I wasn't watching it rigorously I'd walk away for a while work on something else and then come back and check on it occasionally I would open it and push over the sides a little bit but other than that that was all I really did to it in the end the plastic of course was on the inside and I put two clamps on the outside right after I took it out of the oven and I left it clamped for a couple of hours the next sample is this guy I'll put a little bit more effort into this but the original pieces were similar to what I just showed you I took a lot of pieces like this just nope jokes that weren't cut up very much I'd only cut it a couple times on the bandsaw to get these very large rough shaped pieces I used a larger pan but most of the rest of the effort was the same the tricky part about this was it took a lot more time to get all the plastic into the container and the reason was because the pieces were so large and unruly this would kind of be cocked up like this and never quite it didn't quite sit flat so I did put all the weights on the inside and over time it was sink down as melt it and then I would open it up put a few more pieces in press it down in my opinion that took quite a long time the effort that I saved by not cutting it into smaller pieces was just spent trying to get all the pieces back into the can so this method was not nearly as efficient in my opinion now you will see that there is parchment paper stuck in here I didn't go through any special effort to try to prevent that but I think with a little bit of practice and or maybe using something else as a nonstick surface and not parchment paper then that could be mitigated so while you see these residues of parchment paper stuck in here I think with a little bit of practice we can mitigate that problem this guy is very large sheets like this so I took a container I had a whole bunch of these plastic food containers that I've been saving up I only cut them a couple times but because of their shape I was able to lay these very flat inside the pan I nested them using their natural shape as flat as I could get it and then the bottom pieces I did the same thing I just kind of scattered those inside a pan and then I use the same process 350 degrees parchment paper on the bottom parchment paper on top the next pan on top of that one put a few weights inside and then I just let it melt this was definitely minimal processing so this is looking good for those who told me I didn't need to put much effort into it the next one I want to show you is the one I'm most pleasantly surprised with and that is the plastic that came from the most recent shredder concept I'm calling it a concept because it is not nearly done it needs a lot more work to make it safe and useful for daily for regular use but the concept is surprisingly good there are a couple of other modifications that I want to make which I'll tell you more about it shortly if you haven't seen that video the material came out looking something like this we have these long strands many of them were much longer than this and then what was the equivalent of sawdust in the just this plastic dust took all of that and dumped it in a pan following the same process I clamped it when I was done and that was baked at 350 degrees and then left to cool overnight although I'm sure that you know three or four hours are probably fun and this is really solid and uniform and then we have this guy this is the industrially shredded plastic and all I did as you probably can guess is I just poured this into the bottom kind of patted it down so it's relatively flat another pan on top with parchment paper and then I also put the weights inside of it after about an hour and a half at 350 degrees I opened it up kind of dusted it around like that of course it was hot so I was trying to barely touch it but it was kind of like grains of rice it wasn't sticking it was just dry it looked it didn't look like it was affected by the 350 degrees so I turned it up to 450 degrees I left it in there for another two hours and I came back I didn't quite look like it was really melting so I was like I thought for a second maybe I need to go higher temperature I'm not sure and it was getting late I just said forget it I'm gonna clamp it up like it is and leave it well when I took it out of the pan the next morning I was pleasantly surprised this actually looks really good I did not expect it to mesh so well this one required the least amount of effort during the heating process I just poured it in and if we figure out the right melting temperature and things like this for this particular plastic here it might be a slightly different variation of HDPE actually it is I just came from what his call but I'll put the name on a screen for you it could be because the gentleman who sent it to me told me exactly what it was but there is no doubt that shred it to this level the melting and bonding process is easier but enough said about that let's cut these guys open at the bandsaw that's looking pretty solid and looking at the outside it's kind of surprising that it looks that good on the inside there's a little bit of a void there but I think with a little bit of practice and just slightly more effort I could have closed that gap so same kind of thing quite a bit of it is very solid that's really impressive there's a gap here you know I got to admit I was looking pretty good for the minimum processing folks will find will confirm with the next one in just a second and there are just another small void but otherwise very solid this one actually doesn't look as good as the red one there are some faint voids all along here and that one is not looking nearly as good at towards the edge there I don't know all right now we're moving closer to the center here there's a void here a void here ooh nice big void there Mina is looking pretty solid but there are a few more examples of void spaces in this one well that's the uncut edge oh man all right there's a big gap there that to me to find that is unacceptable I can look down that hole and see there's definitely a cavity there and there's another one right next to it even though it looks great on the outside if you were gonna put this on the lathe of course you'd make a thicker block but if you wanted to spend this on the lathe and your tool got caught in that hole you likely rip this thing right out of your Chuck so I don't know I'm not particularly happy to see that one so this one was shredded on the safety police provoking shredder that is looking amazingly solid all the way through can't spot a single void or cavity and hopefully that is looks like that might being focused there for you I can't believe I'm going to say this but the de tous shredder is looking like the winter man that is just about perfect and it was very little effort put into this very little effort both in the shredding process all I did was feed it in there and then also in a melting process all right this is the one where I started with big sheets so there is a little void here it's not quite that deep and another void that one's a little bit deeper though no like an L want too much on the outside looks great though and most of it is pretty solid so some of this might be practice right like I'm taking into consideration that this is not a huge sample size so with a little bit of practice and a more effort in the right places we could get better results right all right all of that is looking really good and then right there there's a big deep void man and then another one right next to it and that side looks beautiful all the way up to that part I'm relatively deep boy and one here alright that's that's maybe not good and professionally shredded plastic well it's looking very solid except for a pinhole there and a pinhole there Wow look how uniform and thick that is though it was not nearly as easy to get the other ones that thick all I had to do is just pour it all in there this side is very solid I can't find a single void on this side so considering the thickness of his piece and that's about it let's take a look at the other ones all right once again very very solid I don't know about you but I can't see a single void spot Wow well now we know why they make industrial shredders right that is beautiful okay here are my thoughts I'm gonna say the winners by far is the industrially shredded plastic and my dado shredder I cannot believe that that is shocking but this is a preliminary test I think some of this is practice so here's where I want to put my efforts now I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my dado shredder I'm gonna put the blades back together get rid of the spaces and shift up the table to the top so that it cuts more like a table saw with the blade coming towards the plastic instead of the blade grabbing it and pulling it away from me I think that's gonna be the safest and most effective design and so I am gonna put a little more effort into the shredder but I think that's as far as I need to go with that but it could be argued I think it could be argued that would practice you can make really good solid blocks with very little processing the ideal situation in my picture and the way I'm picturing this situation now to get the ideal results is if you have containers that can be cut into relatively flat pieces like what I showed you earlier pieces like this of course you would clean it and get rid of the stuff like this press it and if you are willing to put a little more time into the cooking process if you will then you can bypass some of the cutting process but in my mind it appears to be that you're really trading one part of your time for another part of your time and if you have a really good shredder the cutting process will be really simple so I'm sort of on the fence about whether it's worth the effort to keep building the shredder although the most recent shredder design is by far the cheapest designed to make all you need is a motor and some pillow block bearings and some saw blades I've got a couple more modifications I want to make to that that I think is gonna make it better and still be very very cheap and affordable and of course it's gonna have proper guarding and things like that so there's no way to get your hands in there one or one other thought just by looking at these you will see the dare of some tiny brown spots on here that came from the parchment paper so I am interested in finding another nonstick method for keeping the plastic from sticking to the metal but as I mentioned before the color of the plastic seems to matter and it's and it's sticky properties if you will so the white plastic didn't stick nearly as much as the red did this plastic didn't stick at all I barely melted the clear plastic sticks a whole lot and in fact I have stopped using that until I found a better way to melt it without it sticking to my pans I think it's pretty clear that for industrial purposes you're going to need to shred it up into nice little pellets so that you always get a nice uniform sheet but if you don't want to make a shredder you can certainly get this done with very little cutting just more effort in the heating process I want to say thanks to Donald for sending me this plastic this UHMW mm-hmm I know it's gonna come back to me anyway this was a really fun test when you consider how thick this came out and to still not have any voids that really speaks volumes to the to the benefits of shredding so I really want to focus on the heating and cooling process now and I'm going to be trying some other experiments that I have in mind but I'd love to combine your ideas with mine and let's come up with something that makes this process really easy and fluent so we can get good solid results each time I look forward to speaking with you guys in the comments and as always thanks for watching

Channel: Jeremy Fielding

Views: 129,438

Keywords: shredding HDPE plastic, How to process HDPE without shredding, melting UHMWPE

Id: ijIe5Xl4IYU

Length: 18min 12sec (1092 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 13 2017