Grinding HDPE for recycling

This video details my various amateur and perhaps laughable attempts to make a plastic grinder to reduce HDPE lids and bottles into small fragments for recycling

[@grittykitty50]

It's nice to know that there are inquiring minds all over the world holding experiments in their basements/backyards/garages using household items. Good to know I'm not alone. Thanks for sharing all of your projects/experiments both successful and not so much.

[@funmaster4632]

A tinkering mind like mine. I have my share of fails too. I find it refreshing that you showed them.

[@OliverUnderTheMoon]

Nice work. Thanks for showing discarded designs too... it's always valuable to know what has been tried.

[@boa9535]

I really appreciate your trail and error process. You even admit in this one this isn’t necessary. Thank you.

[@proxy9573]

I've been on a hunt to figure out how to grind up PLA scraps for melting down into molds. This is helpful in seeing what I can expect from a meet grinder

[@kevinbowker2385]

Thanks for sharing your successes and failures. You've certainly learned what does and doesn't work well. Huge Kudos to you! Again, many thanks for sharing your experience.

[@richardbrewer2570]

Thanks , your failed attempts are a tenement to your honesty. It's both inspirational and informative.

[@frankklein4872]

tenement !?!

[@asulondawn]

Brilliant, loved the chipboard flywheel, nearly fell of my chair. Great video. I might try some HDPE for lathe chucks.

[@RobWhittlestone]

Very interesting and ingenious continuous development! Thank you for sharing! Your research helps all amateur HDPE recyclers. All the best, Rob

[@AtomicShrimp]

Just a word of caution though to anyone watching this - some of my methods were stupidly dangerous - that meat grinder would quite happily eat fingers

[@hansdegroot8549]

@@AtomicShrimp Yummy, minced fingers! LOL. We used to make minced meat this way (only hand-turned). Putting a kind of funnel on top should prevent fingers slipping in.

[@WillitsCommunityTV]

Agreed with guys below not laughable, because you are actually making an attempt to recycle materials even on a small scale which is admirable.

[@edgeeffect]

Thant mincer/drill press/hand drill is ace! Very Heath-Robinson AND it works really well.

[@ShopSDB]

No laughing on my side, i love the effort that you put into it! I'm also working with plastic (just started) and am learning a lot about it. I've already read/seen that a lot of options that work with papershredders and blenders are not really working that well, I've already thought about a meatgrinder and like what i see here (i am not thinking about making it drill-powered, but like it that the machine itself works!)

[@Allison-405]

Awesome , I have a metal meat grinder and an old bench saw I reckon I could use. Thanks for saving me from wrecking blenders etc. good work!! Cheers Allison from Tasmania

[@ganainm5113]

Interesting to see your process.

[@joemulkerins5250]

The meat mincer worked excellent by the look of it. 3 years later I am thanking you! 😄

[@KevinRMoore]

Awesome info thanks!. I too am thinking about skinning a boat. I've had some small scale success with laminating fabrics with HDPE tarpaulins, the clear solid sheets not the woven blue tarps.

[@kamakaaweau8856]

That answered everything that I thought of to use. I appreciate the heads up info on this. Thanks

[@dadygee]

I like this! not only showing the win! but the road to winning! Not like regular tv where 1. get! 2. nothing but flash cuts 3. __ 4. the win.

[@ConstructIcon]

Very innovative! Keep up the good work!

[@samspade7522]

Good video. None of your projects was a failure! Now you know which ones don't work so they can be ignore in the future.

[@paulwyleciol3459]

subscribed! ... and if only for the bright wit of ingenuity seen - saved my day

[@kathrynillsley7557]

Brilliant bits of heath-Robinson 👍

[@roberttill3787]

As an ameteur its actually quite easy to weld HDPE togethr, On ebay you can buy hot air welders from around thirty pounds, and you can buy HDPE welding rod from ebay cheaply too. Then all you have to do is tack the plates together from the rear, and seam weld them, so the front face stays nice to look at.

[@erikandreassen6531]

Thanks for the videos. As for welding them together you would have to preheat your panels (not to melt temp) and use one of the new freehand extruder pens. Had some success with this ( without the preheat the joints just snap or don't bond at all)

[@MusicTubeLover]

Interesting progress. Thank you.

[@NOWThatsRichy]

Until last year I worked in the plastic injection moulding industry, making car door rear view mirrors, some of the biggest machines we used were 500 ton, ( that's the clamping pressure to keep the mould closed while the plastic is injected), they are about 30 feet long! but basically the same principle as what you have there only many times bigger and operated by hydraulics.

[@dannpurvis]

Not laughing at all. Very admirable attempts. Thank you.

[@MyAirsoftRealm]

Totally agree, we appreciate sharing shredding options and besides that, figuring out different solutions and testing them out is time well spent by experience accumulation. Kudos!

[@beasaroze5596]

Cool new art medium!

[@lancepugh4138]

Brilliant stuff, brother.

[@joeestes8114]

Absolutely genius! Iam going to try it!

[@bobjohnson2800]

You tried, no fails here. 👍🏼

[@hansdegroot8549]

I saw some of your other videos lately but this one only today. Great job. I have a table drill and a hand drill and I might find somewhere our meat grinder (bought in the days when we couldn't buy minced meat here). I'd like to receive more detailed information. I'm eager to try this out.

[@AtomicShrimp]

I really would not recommend copying this setup. Looking back, it was incredibly unsafe

[@marcushennings9513]

Has anyone tried modifying a portable tile or table saw into a shredder.

[@Flederratte]

Great video! I am a subscriber now.

[@lordlucan66]

I used a garden shredder I got off Gumtree for £20. It's the most successful thing I have tried. I cut milk bottles in half rolled them up and pushed them in. Usually took a couple of runs through the shredder and it does clog up. I was going to try altering the exit shoot to see of that helps.

[@petermcnamara6115]

Very good. Keep up the good work.

[@NoIntroTutorials]

These things sound like the things I would have tried, probably dumber ways tho but we appreciate the video. Thank you for the upload!

[@cowtowndaddy]

Hey liked this great effort. I saw a vid. That showed melting plastic with sand. Sand is the binder and. They make paving bricks. 😀I want to try that.

[@FlipTieYT]

Great great great video. I personally cut it into small pieces and sometimes just throw HDPE caps straight into the oven, it melts fine

[@davitberishvili8062]

Wery simple and good idea, thank you

[@drmodestoesq]

I have an insane idea. Get a drill press. High amp and with a three pulley system. You can get those for 100 dollars used. Those small bench top models probably won't work. They have only 2 amps and only two pulleys. Here's the insane idea. Lay the thing sideways on the workbench. And then you can directly hook it up to the meat grinder. Naturally, you're going to set the pulleys on the lowest speed. You're probably going to have to go to town with a bunch of two by fours to block the drill press in and support it so it's not wandering and vibrating all over the place.

[@fahimmubin3697]

very interesting method i went through the trouble of just using a grater

[@andrewclark2017]

Would this work for sand blasting or tumbler media?

[@survivalag2293]

Does the first 1 work with harder plastic

[@LisbethSighFehrmann]

U weld pieces together with hot air gun. Melt both sides and stick together. A guy put layers together to make cool hdpe slingshot handle :-)

[@TheNormanbro]

I never thought about meat grinder... I think connected with bicycle will be great. Afterall, human muscle can produce much more torque than those machines. That will prevent cogs. For your boats... You idea was great! I love it! I hope you can find a way so day.

[@escapefromny2012]

Thanks for letting us know it's hard to seam weld HDPE as that was my plan (to make squares and seam weld to make boxes). But would like to know what you tried and what happened, with the seam welding. I've seen a video on seam welding corrugated sewage tubes and it didn't look too hard, with the correct tool. What did you try? Thanks.

[@AtomicShrimp]

For seam welding, I first tried adding material and heating with a hot air gun with a narrow nozzle - it didn't heat enough area at any given time, so the weld was patchy/ Next, I tried sprinkling ground HDPE into the gap and heating the whole area with a clothes iron (with a nonstick separator sheet) - this heated too large an area and caused some of the existing pressed sheets to buckle. I then tried heating just the area of the seam by pressing with a heated metal bar, but this didn't have enough thermal mass to deliver heat consistently to the seam - so it created a weak join. I think the way they get this right industrially is all about consistency of heat and material application - hard to do on a small hobby scale

[@nickfree46]

If you havent resolved the jamming issue , easy resolve would be spray the inside of the machine with silicone spray. ( a ex ldpe hdpe extrusionist plastics industry ). Good Clip

[@davecoates2308]

Only problem with silicone spray is it affects the bonding of the hdpe once it’s melted and worked with. So I might find it breaks easier or especially if you are turning it you might find pieces break off or fly off as you work it

[@nickfree46]

@@davecoates2308 good point as in extriusion its virgin material and silicone is used at the die to aid extraction for the ballon creating film. worthy checking melting point of silicone spray versus temp of gound material. when heated after being ground the effects of silicone spray may be lost. bear in mind this is only to aid grinding when reheating and moulding into blocks for eg it may loose the silicone. i think worth a try with protective face visor on .........

[@davecoates2308]

Big Nick thanks for the info :D

[@37Iulian]

Hello! What is grinder hole/screen size used? 6 or 8mm?

[@BJ_555]

Fantastic ✨

[@antonyandrerenaissancearti977]

Making mistakes is the road to success. ...never stop imagining ....

[@reptiloidx8942]

OH REALLY ??? WELL SOME OF THOSE MISTACES MAY LEAD TO INJURY OR WORSE ........... SO THINK HARD SWEAT AND PISS WITH STEAM BEFORE YA DO SOME THING LAD

[@tomrisar5492]

dude put a hopper on the meat grinder, so nothing can be ground up, like fingers

[@markallred1953]

I agree. Small pieces should be easier to melt. The flywheel, though resource-intensive, was also a good idea, Now hooked, where do I sign up?

[@samatteb1]

Thank You for sharing !

[@ohjesushesaiditagain.6748]

You got mad skills init cuz. 🙋

[@rkb6783]

Failure is what I learned from this video !

[@FirstLast-kx1gr]

The problem with steam welding is probably the steam. The parts should be hot to begin with and the edges to be joined may be heated with a heating element held near the work pieces. There are two reasons for the preheat: It takes less effort to get the edges to fusing temperature AND... Plastic expands a great deal when heated; if the pieces are not close to the same temperature all over, when they cool, the edges joined will shrink too much and be in great tension. They will be likely to break. Too, overlap joints are better than edge-to-edge joints. Use pressure to thin the joints while they're hot. Don't use material that is thicker than you need. Remember that plastic is a lousy conductor of heat and take time to heat all the way through. Look up information on "plastic welding." It absolutely works.

[@f.demascio1857]

First Last SEAM welding. Not STEAM welding.

[@davecoates2308]

Lmao! And the only reason I am laughing is because this is exactly the sort of thing I do ie the way you ‘hack’ things together to find something that works. I’ve generally given up on my own wacky engineering attempts using things I have on hand (not a lot) and now I just save up until I can build or make something using the ‘proper’ stuff. Please tho. This is not to degrade your efforts. Brilliant experimenting. I’m really pleased I’ve seen a video where someone else tries some ‘weird’ ideas to solve a problem. Well done :)

[@AtomicShrimp]

Yeah, if nothing else, I have eliminated some unproductive avenues so others won't need to!

[@Bianchi77]

very cool idea

[@EvelOttos]

Have you tried feeding a HDPE shopping bag into your grinder? I'm curious as to results. Thanks!

[@Jen-sv7dt]

Hey, that's pretty clever!

[@MeansOfProduction209]

Thank you, ive.been wondering if a meat grinder could help

[@skaltura]

out of the box ideas indeed :)

[@NOWThatsRichy]

That's really creative, have u tried using one of those garden wood shredders?

[@AtomicShrimp]

I have one that is the high speed rotary type - I doubt it would do very much at all to the plastic - the slow cut/crush models might do it, but what's really needed for grinding this material is sets of opposing teeth like in the Precious Plastic grinder

[@highvibemysticallifestyle]

This is great. I don't have a drillpress and read that wood chippers don't cut well but maybe I'll try hand grinding. Off to find a used meat grinder!

[@gatyi28]

Do you have some video on how u made those plastic sheets :)

[@stash.]

Thanks for the tip, i almost chopped off my knuckle last week (hand bandaged) cutting hdpe milk cartons with large garden shears, i'm going to use a suction vice for my hand clamp next time, but i was going to try a blender myself, so it doesn't work using a blender! cheers for the heads-up. Using a meat grinder seems extreme, going to have to purchase one from ebay now

[@AtomicShrimp]

I don't think what I did here was especially safe, so please don't take my makeshift solutions as best practice. A blender might work for you, if it's a good one.

[@stash.]

you can buy electric meat grinders for like 50 bucks on ebay so i'll buy that once i have lots of milk cartons broke down

[@AtomicShrimp]

Good plan - I imagine one with its own dedicated power will be safer and probably more powerful at the job. I suggest fitting a cutoff switch that you can hit with your foot or hand - if the plastic jams it into a stall, you want to shut it off fast so you don't burn out the motor or strip the gearing

[@stash.]

i'll keep that in mind, i'm going to use the dirt mud ground as templates, i'm just going to put the plastic into a small dirt trench shapes i made with my finger then just heatgun it to any shape i like i'm hoping it works, but i'm months away from that plan till now

[@itsthelepto]

are there any other effective ways to grind plastic other than that drill powered drill powered grinder? I don't have access to that and my group has a project concerning plastic.

[@AtomicShrimp]

Some people have had success using a good quality food processor or blender (this didn't work for me though)

[@itsthelepto]

@@AtomicShrimp thanks, I'll take note

[@reptiloidx8942]

HEY MAC IM GLAD I CAME ACCROSS WITH YA VIDEO DAMN IT I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT MEAT GRINDER DAMN IT . IT SEEMS TO WORK SO WELL . WELL I WILL GET IT AND GET IT MOTORISED LIKE YOU DID . BIG THANK YA LAD . BY THE WAY YOU CAN MAKE A 3D FILAMENT FOR 3D PRINTERS AND SELL THEM LIKE IM PLANNING TO DO

[@AtomicShrimp]

Reptiloid Павелитель всеx Земель и Миров just be careful of your safety. Almost nothing I did here is a very good idea. If you have the skills and materials, a shredder on the PreciousPlastic design is really the right way to go. BTW, I don't think it's possible to 3D print with HDPE - so you may need to choose a different source material

[@reptiloidx8942]

HEY THERE THANK YOU FOR REPLY . SO WHAT TOOL DO I NEED TO USE TU GRING BLASTIC IN TO GRAINS BASICLY LIKE YOU GOT ON VIDEO ??? i DONT WANT TO BUY 700EU MECHINES THAT WILL BE SHIPPED FROM CHINA FOR AT LEASTR 7000EU TNT DELIVERY WHICH IS SICK JOKE . THERE MUST BE A BETTER HOME MADE SOLUTIONS RIGHT ??? SO WHAT WILL IT BE THEN ????

[@kendarr]

hey man whenver i melt HDPE and use my ultimate clamp (a car batery and a rock) it works kinda well, but have wierd spots, where is more glossy, and just looks like the weight did not got on those parts, do you if that is the problem?. Also great idea on the attempts of getting grinding, i just use a pair of sciors, my blender also trowns them away, Peter Brown's blender works just fine for some magic reason

[@AtomicShrimp]

Victor Hugo HDPE shrinks quite a lot when it cools- which means some parts of your piece will pukk away from the face of whatever material you are pressing against them. The only solution I have found is more clamping force and leave it all in place until everything is stone cold.

[@anthonycoster8774]

I've settled for just using a band saw to cut bottles into strips then put the strips in a blender. It works ok but you don't get a very consistent product (lots of powder and larger shreds)

[@mihirsamak]

How did you homogenize the plastic bits into one shape? What chemicals you used?

[@AtomicShrimp]

No chemicals - I melted the plastic to form flat plates

[@mikestefanick7542]

Once the HDPE is ground up so fine can it be melted into liquid form and poured in to silicone molds. Thank you in advance

[@AtomicShrimp]

It never becomes pourable

[@cocospops9351]

Question. Would putting the hdpe in the freezer for a few hours and then grinding, be better? Would it make it more brittle and easier to grind?

[@AtomicShrimp]

good idea - I think I;d need temperatures colder than a domestic freezer though - I have frozen soup and stock in HDPE bottles before and they were still pretty resilient at freezer temps

[@ImranZakhaev9]

Cryo grinding is definitely popular in shredding plastic and tires and the like. However, Mr Shrimp is right; it's done using liquid nitrogen, not a freezer

[@niccolealdrich4890]

use a leaf shredder??

[@passion_proh-jects]

Very cool!

[@dawsie]

Lol I have been collecting mine for a while but wanted to keep the colours true to each other as I am looking to make some workshop tools out of it all one day there are just never enough hours in a day/week/month to get so many projects from my head to reality 🙄 as you say one day it will all fall into place 😹

[@carmatic]

does this meat mincer happen to grind plastic well due to a specific quirk of its design, or have any of you gotten it working with other meat mincers or grinders as well?

[@AtomicShrimp]

I don't think there's anything very special about this mincer

[@carmatic]

@@AtomicShrimp Hey thanks for the reply your Spong meat grinder has a rotating plate on the outside, and from what I can see in another KZbin video, there is a static plate behind that on the inside... but 'modern' meat grinders instead have a sort of grating in the outside, and a set of rotating blades which cut against it on the inside, these blades rotate with the screw ... and my concern was that they do not cut plastic at an adequate rate relative to how much the screw is bringing in, resulting in a jam

[@carmatic]

@@AtomicShrimp but also on closer inspection, it looks like the 'bore' of the Spong mincer is actually a helical cutting surface too, that probably helps with grinding the plastic the motorized meat grinder i looked at in the local shop had a completely smooth bore, so i doubt that it would work as well for grinding plastic

[@damiansulewski5539]

What is at end of grinder? I think it's not typical end of a meat grinder.

[@TealScarab]

for plastic milk cartons, I turn them first into a long piece of plastic "rope" with a razor blade nailed to a piece of wood. then just use some strong shears to cut up the "rope" into smaller pieces. I wonder if there is some way to streamline the process of cutting as it tends to wear on my hands, perhaps with a crank handle or one of those large size paper slicers.

[@damienlamy60]

i love this idea

[@THEOGGUNSHOW]

Brilliant!

[@mysticwolf11]

check out some artwork by a lady named Amy Toscani: she's a sculptor from Minneapolis/St. Paul MN who does a lot of work with plastics: apparently she uses welding tools meant for adhering plastic bumpers to automobiles. Not sure how obtainable that would be, but perhaps that could be your welding avenue for the HDPE boat?

[@AtomicShrimp]

I like her work and her approach. I couldn't find any detail on how she's actually welding plastic, but it could be ultrasonic welding (which would work for me, but not sure it's within my reach) - I think for some of her projects, she might, like me, actually be using laundry irons, toasters and soldering equipment

[@PavelK77]

Прикольно, я шредер сделал, тоже работает хорошо! В плейлисте plastic будут видео о шредере и инжекторе!

[@tkgcreations3247]

I have lots of hdpe that goes through my house, did you put a blade of some sort on the grinder or leave the orginal front on it,

[@AtomicShrimp]

It's got a little star-shaped blade that rotates against the inside face of the perforated output plate - this blade performs a sort of scissor action in conjunction with the pierced holes.

[@tkgcreations3247]

Thank you. I have tried several different ways but the results were not what I was looking for.

[@TheDarnull]

Would a decent blender work?

[@AtomicShrimp]

Yeah, a Blendtec or something like that would do it. I tried my food processor and the plastic pieces just went around forever without getting any smaller

[@123tobiiboii123]

Is there much you can do with HDPE if you don't have a workshop, is it soft enough to whittle and things?

[@AtomicShrimp]

Sure - it can be shaped with a sharp knife. The texture is quite uniform - it's a bit like very hard, tough wax.

[@bossdog1480]

Good effort but, you DON'T need to grind the HTPE if you're melting it in a sandwich maker. I just cut milk bottles in half lengthwise and melt them half at a time, adding halves as you go until you have the required amount. I just press down hard on it initially, and the container will collapse quickly and start melting. If you are preparing for an extruder/injector, then you will need to grind it.

[@watahyahknow]

worked at a place where they blowmoulded jerrycans out of plastic the schredders they used there looked a bit like the machines they use for schredding three branches big knives mounted in a cage running past a flat bar on the base cutting whole yerrycans up to sumtin the size of confetty in secconds maibe you can make a smaller version out of an electric wood planer

[@chrisedward7659]

Try seem welding with super glue and baking soda it works fairly well on most plastics. very strong when dried.

[@mcasualjacques]

i'm thinking, what diy hdpe shredder builders really want is ... thin hdpe sheet nibblers, or like the devices what makes holes in 3-hole sheets . so basically a square or round peg that lowers in a square or round hole

[@dheujsnrhfydhehehshshhdggsd]

not laughing at you, but I am thankful you shared your prevails and fails.

[@Bianchi77]

nice job :)

[@trucksavage]

What about a garden shredder?

[@ronyerke9250]

I wonder if a powered drum-style cheese grater would work. The metal in the ones I've seen so far looks too flimsy to me.

[@PacesIII]

As for joining the seams, you probably need an ultrasonic welder for plastics.

[@biti9648]

And what u do with the granules?

[@AtomicShrimp]

Various projects. Check out the playlist - kzbin.info/aero/PLk5KvJPikK01_KjuvjL6w8Giw-6sy5NPb

[@johnwhitson8015]

I was thinking that an electric wood chipper would be great for this.

[@meltedcreations7809]

Well, all clever ideas anyway. :)

[@AngieRodriguezStudio]

whats the name of that cutting silver machine you have...couse i dont even know ..i want to try and find one

[@AtomicShrimp]

It's a Spong meat mincer/grinder (actually, it's a cheap copy of the original Spong brand)

[@AngieRodriguezStudio]

AtomicShrimp thank you soooo much

[@AtomicShrimp]

Just be careful with your fingers, OK? Nothing I did in this video was 'best practice'

[@AngieRodriguezStudio]

AtomicShrimp ok Thanks for the tip 👍

[@daveartandmusic]

I use a wood chipper and it works fine.

[@999locke]

hey dude have u tried soldering iron to weld

[@AtomicShrimp]

Yeah, also heat gun and clothes iron. Nothing seemed to work very well