If you have a large pile of paper or newspapers that you can use for good, then use them to create your own biofuel. Do not rush to throw away old documents and papers, together we will turn all this into a source of fuel that does not take up much space, and most importantly, brings significant benefits.
Let's look at the process that is shown in the homemade video:
To create biofuel at home, you will need:
- water;
- a lot of newspapers or paper, the more newspapers there are, the better it will be for us;
- paper shredder;
- several plastic or metal containers of different sizes;
- sieve for straining;
- a form for creating a briquette.
Fuel fabrication consist of several simple steps, first of all you should shred the paper into small pieces. Shredder does it very well and quickly.
If you don't have a shredder, you can rip newspapers by hand or use scissors. Of course, this process will take much longer, but then you will have something to do in your free evening.
Transfer the shredded paper to a large bowl and fill it with warm water. There should be as much water as it can cover all the paper.
Remember the paper with your hands to make the particles even smaller. If you have an industrial or home blender, it will pulverize the paper almost to the point of porridge. This is the consistency of paper we need.
Leave the container with paper and water for 10-12 hours so that it is completely soaked.
It is not necessary to use a sieve, but only if you are not afraid to get dirty. The paper can also be wrung out by hand.
Now metal molds are being used. We put paper in one form.
The bottom of the second container must be pressed against the paper pulp to remove all residual moisture and form a briquette.
Ready-made cakes will be easier to get if you put a film or plastic bag on the bottom of the container.
The resulting semi-finished products must dry well before use. Leave them for a few days in a warm place, for example, place them on a radiator.
let's consider different kinds and designs of garden shredders for twigs, wood chips, grass and grain, capable of handling any type of vegetable waste. For you, we have collected a selection of drawings and instructions for making a do-it-yourself knife garden shredder.
There are always a lot of cut branches, grass, tops and other plant waste in the garden. You can collect them and burn them, you can put them in a huge pile in the hope that one day you will get compost, or you can prepare raw materials for a quick organic fertilizer, for adding wood chips to the soil in order to improve its structure, you can get excellent mulch or fuel for the boiler . To do this, you need a garden shredder, which you can buy, or you can do it yourself.
Advice! Protect your hands and eyes when operating the shredder, especially if you are shredding solid waste. Glasses and leather gloves will protect you from injury.
Types of garden shredders, main components and elements
Shredders consist of a cutting mechanism, a drive, a loading hopper and a frame with a sheathing. In addition, they can be equipped with a hopper of crushed organic matter. Of the auxiliary means: a pusher and a sieve, which is used to obtain a certain fraction of wood chips. The residue on the sieve is sent for re-grinding.
Garden shredders are classified according to the type of cutting system and the type of drive.
Cutting systems
Commercially available chippers may have cutting systems:
- roll - branches and bushes;
- hammer - thin branches;
- milling - solid vegetable raw materials;
- with a rotating turbine - thick branches;
- knife - universal;
- trimmer (fishing line instead of knives) - grass, tops.
1 - hammer grinder; 2 - milling grinder; 3 - chopper with milling-turbine knives; 4 - knife disk chopper
There are other designs as well. For self-manufacturing suitable knife and type-setting of circular saws. The most common are knife blades, and the knives can be fixed on a massive disk in two, three or more pieces, or rotate towards each other in a two-roll design.
type of drive
Garden shredders can be powered by electricity or use two- and four-stroke gasoline engines. In practice, when making a do-it-yourself unit, they use an engine from a walk-behind tractor, which most idle for a year, or remove the motor from an unnecessary household appliances. The main thing at the same time is that the power is sufficient - not lower than 1.1 kW. If there is nothing suitable, you can buy a new engine, but in this case the benefit from homemade chopper is no longer so noticeable compared to the purchased product.
Some shredders that process exceptionally soft raw materials, such as succulent animal feed, may not be driven and run on human muscle effort. Below are drawings of shredders that you can do yourself.
Homemade hand choppers. A - two-knife chopper: 1 - knives; 2 - counter-cutting plates. B - multi-knife greens chopper: 1 - knives; 2 - counter-cutting plates; 3 - base frame. B - root crop grinder: 1 - shell; 2 - bearing; 3 - drum; 4 - cross; 5 - handle; 6 - end wall of the body; 7 - shield; 8 - pitched tray board; 9 - stand; 10 - side wall corps
In the first picture, the knives are made from old, one-sidedly sharpened saws; in the second, the knives and blades are made from saw blades. On the knives, oblique teeth are machined, like a saw, in 5 mm increments. Both shredders are equipped with long handles for lighter effort. The working part of the third structure is made in the form of a drum with notches, the sharp edges of which stick out.
Drawings of various designs of garden shredders
Consider several designs of shredders that you can assemble yourself.
Hammer grinder blueprint
Hammer grinder can crush branches, straw, corn stalks, grain.
1 - loading hopper (sheet δ1 mm); 2 - edging the neck of the loading hopper (corner 25x25); 3 - damper/valve (sheet δ1 mm); 4 - M6 bolt for screed (8 pcs.); 5 - framing the loading opening in the body (an equal-shelf corner 25 mm); 6 - hairpin M8 (8 pcs.); 7 - outer drum of the body (pipe Ø 270x6); 8 - stator with grooves (pipe Ø 258x6); 9 and 20 - hammers and spacers (sheet δ3 mm, hardened to hardness HRC 45-47, 72 pcs. and 70 pcs., respectively); 10 - latch Ø 3 (4 pcs.); 11 - M20 nut with spring washer; 12 - axis of the hammers (circle Ø 22, 4 pcs.); 13, 14 - piping piping (equal-shelf angle 25 mm); 15, 19 - gaskets (rubber, sheet δ3 mm); 16 - M8 nut for fastening the flange (8 pcs); 17 - hammer rotor; 18 — flange (sheet δ5 mm, 2 pieces); 21 - retainer; 22 - drive shaft
Cutting Tool - Circular Saw Pack
A pack of 15-30 saw blades mounted on a shaft is one option for a shredder cutting system. Some craftsmen point out that the saw teeth quickly become clogged with plant matter. Others claim that they have achieved good work of the tool empirically - by setting teeth differently relative to neighboring saws. Since the carbide teeth are thicker than the blade itself, thin separators made of metal (for example, washers) or plastic must be installed between the saws, and the entire package is clamped with nuts.
Pack of 15 saws on the shaft
As a drive, you can use a walk-behind tractor high power, pulleys and bearings - used parts from a VAZ car. The bell of the loading hopper is a truncated pyramid, the outlet is small so that the human hand does not pass. It is better to make the frame for the chopper higher in order to remove the crushed raw materials less often.
Set of saw blades M20
Side view
Two-roll chopper
This chopper cuts branches into measured lengths from 2 to 8 cm, convenient for heating a sauna or wood-fired heating boiler. Its design consists of two shafts with knives - 3-4 pieces per shaft, rigidly fixed with bolts. Knives can be machined from a KamAZ or MAZ spring. If you can find a bulldozer knife, that's fine too. The shafts are fixed on massive sheets in parallel, at a distance sufficient for the knives to cut off the branch, but not to cling to each other. The free rotation of the shafts is provided by bearings, and their synchronization is achieved by a gear clutch moving with the help of a belt (chain) from the engine. To drive this grinder, it is advisable to use a high-power engine, but low speed.
If you want to create a mobile chopper, you need to provide wheel mounts on the frame.
frame element
Axle and shaft
Shaft Assembly
The location of the shafts on the frame
Shafts from a square billet for 4 knives
The video shows a chopper with gears: driven gears - from the MTZ shank, fitted to right size, the drive (gear for transmitting torque to the shafts) was found by selection.
Making a garden shredder with your own hands
The most structurally simple and inexpensive chopper can be made from a disk with knives fixed on it, an engine, a frame and a hopper. The disk and knives can be turned on your own, ordered from a turner, or bought parts in a store. A cultivator engine is suitable as a drive, and it is not difficult to weld the frame and the hopper yourself.
Depending on how many knives are used and how they are set, the fraction of the resulting mulch may be different. The drawing below shows the basic design of such a grinder: a disk with four knives is installed vertically. Also, the design works well if the disk is fixed at an angle to the horizontal, and there are only 1 or 2 knives.
Assembly drawing: 1 - knives 4 pcs.; 2 - disc cutter; 3 - bearings No. 307
Operating procedure:
- Buy, order or grind your own disk with knives. The angle of sharpening knives is 35-45 degrees. The knife blade should have holes for bolts for attaching to the blade. It is important to correctly set the knives and secure them with bolts and stops.
- Weld the frame, taking into account the fasteners for the drive and other elements.
- Push the disc onto the drive shaft and secure.
- Weld the feeding hopper and, if necessary, the receiving hopper of the chopped mass.
- Collect all the elements on the frame.
If the frame is mounted on wheels, then the structure becomes mobile.
Disc turning
Knife set with fasteners
In the video, the master gives advice on the device of a homemade disc chopper.
The garden plot is a place where you can enjoy lush greenery for breakfast and bird trills in the morning, as well as spend a pleasant time with benefit, immersed in the fresh colors of nature. If we consider the garden from a more prosaic point of view, then creating a neat site is impossible without eliminating plant waste. spring pruning fruit trees, clippings of old strawberries and raspberries, a sea of weeds after weeding the beds - all this is piled up in order to be burned at the end of the season. Thrifty owners, who know how to use this waste for good, create compost heaps on the plots, which in 3-4 seasons from all this good will transform the material into excellent organic fertilizer. Deciding to make your own garden shredder can provide an excellent material in the form of wood chips or flour, which is convenient to use to speed up the fermentation of compost.
The principle of operation of the grinding device
A homemade garden shredder will help not only to derive practical benefits from the waste, but to make it easier to bring beauty to the site. With the help of such a grinder, any plant residues can be crushed into small chips.
Such chips look interesting as a decorative mulch for paths and flower beds.
The grinder works on the principle of a meat grinder, in which a branch of 1.5-7 cm, falling into the receiving hopper and moving to the grinding system, is easily ground into small chips. The hopper is a structure that prevents parts of clothing and hands from getting into the area of rotating knives. The grinding system consists of a cutter and several knives. The thickness of the shaft depends on the purpose of the device, so for grinding thin 3 cm branches, an 8 cm shaft is installed.
Work with the grinder should be in protective glasses and gloves
The performance of the equipment directly depends on the power of the engine. So the chopper, whose engine power is in the range of up to 2.6 kW, is able to grind branches d = 5 cm.
Construction assembly steps
A homemade garden waste shredder is not much different from the industrial counterparts of these devices. A stationary chopper can be made on the basis of a circular saw. To do this, it is enough to replace the disks in the unit with a cutting shaft or cutter, and also attach a receiving box-hopper. Or use these saws as a chopping device, placing several pieces on the shaft at the same time.
When creating a garden shredder with your own hands “from scratch”, you must first purchase a motor. The electric motor is the best option for fast grinding of raw materials in relatively small volumes. The electric motor is silent in operation and does not emit exhaust gases. Such characteristics of the electric motor make it possible to use it not only on adjoining territory but also indoors. The only drawback of the device is the need to connect to the power supply system.
To work with coarse material in sufficiently large volumes, it is most preferable to use a walk-behind tractor, the power of which is much higher than the power of a traditional electric motor.
Advice. The use of circular saw blades with carbide tips will allow you to create a reliable and durable knife that does not require a periodic sharpening procedure.
For Assembly quality knife an average of 10 to 20 saws with a thickness of 6-10 cm is required.
Installation of cutting saws
Cutting saws are mounted on a stud - an axis whose diameter is equal to the diameter of the landing disks. To assemble the cutting device, you will also need nuts and washers of the same size. In advance, you need to prepare thin washers that can be cut out of plastic. These washers will be required to separate the discs at an equidistant distance from each other so that during rotation their slightly protruding teeth do not cling to each other. The number of washers must be 1 element less than the number of discs.
A pulley is installed on a stud strung with disks, which can be taken from a pump or from a VAZ generator. To rotate the axis, two bearings with an internal d = 20mm are required
Manufacturing and arrangement of the frame
You can come up with a sea of design options, it all depends only on the imagination, ingenuity and desire of the craftsman.
When pruning trees in winter, every gardener is faced with the problem of storing thin branches, since they take up a lot of space. You have to chop them manually or with a special grinder. The second option is preferable, as it makes it possible to process wood into small chips very quickly. Only factory-made units are too expensive, and therefore in this article we will tell you how much cheaper it is to make a branch chopper with your own hands.
Types of wood shredders
The main element of the unit is a working mechanism, whose task is to grind small branches to a fraction of a certain size. Different factory-made shredders differ in the design of this mechanism. The drive that rotates it can be anything: gasoline, diesel or electric.
The following types of factory units are most suitable for playback at home:
- disc grinder for grass and branches;
- unit with a cutting mechanism of saws for wood for a circular machine.
In a disc crusher, branches in literally chopped into small chips with sharp knives mounted on a flywheel in the form of a disk of thick metal. It spins electrically or gasoline engine by means of a belt drive. For safety reasons, the disc is covered with a metal casing, and a bunker is used to feed the branches manually. It is located at an angle to the rotating blades in such a way as to split the wood as efficiently as possible.
The advantage of a disc chipper is that it processes wood quickly enough, that is, it has a high performance. The main disadvantage is the need for periodic removal and sharpening of the cutting edges of knives. Not everyone can do such work with their own hands, they have to give the knives to the master for sharpening and pay money for it. It turns out homemade crusher for wood will make you incur costs during operation.
It should be noted that the materials for the manufacture of a disc grinder at home will be quite inexpensive. Especially when the metal required thickness can be found in household or get it at the nearest scrap metal collection point. But you will have to spend money on the second type of crushers - buy 2 dozen saws for wood for a circular machine.
The principle of operation is as follows: the drive rotates the shaft, on which saws with hard alloy teeth are installed one next to the other. Wood is supplied to them through the loading hopper and the mechanism literally bites into it, grinding it to the size of sawdust. The processing speed is not too high, but the sawdust is small, which is much more convenient for heating a house than wood chips. For example, you can make fuel briquettes from them yourself.
Important. In both types of shredders, it is not the speed of rotation of the shaft that is decisive, but the force developed. In the first version, it is higher due to the untwisted heavy flywheel, which allows you to cut branches faster. A sufficient number of shaft revolutions is 1500 rpm, no more is needed.
How to make a disc crusher?
If you liked this type of chopper, then you need to understand that good skills are required to assemble it. welding work. In addition, you need to prepare the following materials:
- steel sheet with a thickness of 10 to 16 mm;
- the same, 5 mm thick - on the casing and the loading hopper;
- high carbon steel for knives, car spring is suitable;
- pipes are round or shaped to weld the frame;
- steel shaft with a diameter of 20 mm;
- 2 rolling bearings No. 307 or others;
- fasteners (bolts with nuts)
- pulleys, belt.
Note. You can omit the belt drive if you plan to use an electric motor with a speed of 1500 rpm for the crusher.
On various Internet resources you can find all sorts of drawings of a branch chopper, we bring to your attention one of the popular options:
A regular circle with a diameter of 400 mm is cut out of thick metal, a hole for the shaft is made in its center. Pulleys and shaft must be machined to lathe, while at the ends of the shaft, threads should be cut for attaching the flywheel and pulley. Knives can be made at home, following the drawing, in last resort entrust this business to the miller. Further, from a steel sheet it is necessary to weld protective cover with a bunker, from which to make holders for bearings with holes.
In fact, a homemade branch chopper is a cutting mechanism mounted on a frame of arbitrary design. The drive motor can be placed in convenient location depending on the length of the belt. Do not forget to make the motor mount sliding so that the belt can be tensioned. The shaft of the mechanism is also mounted on the frame, a pulley and a flywheel are attached to it. The knives should be bolted to the flywheel so that their angle of inclination is 30°. To do this, you need to prepare special steel linings.
Chopper with a working matrix of saws
The assembly of this unit is somewhat simpler than the previous one, there is less welding work. For the grinder you will need:
- saws for wood with hard alloy teeth - 20 pieces;
- separating washers 5 mm thick with a hole of 20 mm - 19 pcs.;
- sheet steel 2 mm thick;
- pipes for the manufacture of the frame;
- shaft with threads at the ends with a diameter of 20 mm;
- 2 rolling bearings;
- fasteners (bolts with nuts)
- pulleys, belt.
This simple garden shredder is assembled by alternating a set of washers and saws on a common shaft, after which they are compressed from the sides with nuts. The washers are routed between the saws so that their thicker carbide cutting parts do not press against each other and are not squeezed when the nuts are tightened. Then bearings are pressed onto the shaft and installed in cages welded to the pipe frame.
The rest of the chopper assembly work is carried out as in the previous version: you need to make a belt drive on pulleys with the engine attached to the frame, make a casing with a hopper and put them in place, as shown in the photo:
Note. The resulting matrix of circular saws during operation can be clogged with a small fraction of wood, sometimes wood chips get stuck in it. But carbide teeth serve for a long time without sharpening, the main thing is not to overheat them, otherwise soldering can fly off.
Conclusion
When on personal plot a lot of trees grow, then a do-it-yourself wood chipper can be very useful thing. At a minimum, it will save you from a bunch of pruned branches that take up a lot of space. The scope of the resulting sawdust and wood chips is extremely wide, including they can be useful for heating your home.
Ecology of consumption.Homestead:After spring pruning trees, most gardeners are faced with the problem of disposing of old branches. Here you can come to the aid of a garden shredder - a device that will turn the source material into chips or flour.
After spring tree pruning, most gardeners are faced with the problem of disposing of old branches. If you are an economical owner, accustomed to putting all the waste into action, then most likely you send all the branches to compost heap. There, all this stuff rots and in 3-4 years you are guaranteed to receive an excellent organic fertilizer - compost. All this, of course, is wonderful, but too long. If you first chop the branches and leaves on them, then your compost will ripen in a season, or even in a couple of months. And here a garden shredder can come to your aid - a device that will turn the source material into chips or flour. The devices that are on sale are not cheap, so we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the instructions for making a garden shredder with your own hands.
Materials we will need
We will not convince you that a homemade shredder will be completely free. Naturally, some details will go into its manufacture, which will cost money. However, on average, a home-made unit will cost you 2 times cheaper than a ready-made chopper of a popular brand. Judge for yourself, for the chopper you will need:
- Circular saws - 15-25 pieces
- Motor - gasoline or electric
- Stud (rod) M20, washers and nuts to it
- Pulley (for example, from a VAZ generator) and a tight belt
- Bearings
- Metal pipes for the frame
- Sheet Metal for Hopper
- Plastic washers 14-24 pieces
Garden shredder device - define the most important parts of the unit
Crushing of material in the garden shredder is carried out with the help of knives. In finished models, the knife is most often a metal disc with 2-3 cutting surfaces. A large amount of work quickly makes the teeth unusable and they have to be sharpened periodically - you see, this is not very convenient, and besides, it takes your time. If you decide to make a garden chopper with your own hands, then you can not repeat these design flaws, but assemble a reliable, high-performance and, most importantly, durable knife.
We suggest using carbide-tipped saw blades for this. It will take not one disk, but several to collect a system from them - a package. In ready-made garden shredders, the knife, as a rule, has a thickness of 3 cm, but we can pick up a package of any thickness - everything will depend on the number of saws purchased. On average, for a quality knife 6-10 cm thick, you will need 15-25 pieces. Each disc has many teeth, originally designed to cut solid wood. Therefore, grass stems, leaves and branches for them will be the same as seeds. As a last resort, if the teeth on the saw become dull, there is nothing to stop you from going to the nearest tool store and getting a replacement for it.
Circular saws can be successfully used as chopper knives
However, the knife is not everything. In order to set it in motion, we need an engine. For fast chopping of branches in small volumes, it is easier to use an electric motor. Its use may seem somewhat inconvenient due to the cable and the need to connect to an outlet, but it works almost silently and does not emit exhaust gases. The walk-behind tractor has more power, so it is ideal for those cases when you need to crush coarse material often and for a long time.
Step-by-step instructions and nuances of work
1. Saws are assembled on an axis, the diameter of which is determined by the bore diameter of the discs (20mm). For this, a stud with an M20 thread is suitable. Accordingly, washers and nuts of the same diameter will be needed.
Saws assembled on the axis of the future chopper
If we install discs on a hairpin close to each other, then the knife will not work. And here's why: the width of the saw teeth is greater than the width of the blade itself, so when rotating, the teeth will cling to each other. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to separate the disks a short distance. This is easy to do with homemade washers that you can cut out of thin plastic. Their number should be 1 piece less than the number of circular saws.
2. A pulley is put on the stud axle (from the VAZ generator or from the pump). To rotate the axis, two VAZ intermediate shaft bearings with an inner diameter of 20 mm are also used.
3. From profiled metal pipes a frame is welded onto which the walk-behind tractor bar is attached. The engine is mounted on the frame so that it can be moved relative to the circular saws. This is necessary to change the tension of the drive belt if necessary.
Attached to the frame is an axle circular saws
4. For ease of use, a thrust bar made of a metal profile is fixed on the frame, into which branches and stems will rest during crushing.
5. It is necessary to put on a metal casing on the cutting block, which is welded from sheet metal or cut from galvanized steel. For reliability, it is better to use the first option.
The casing is better to be made of sheet iron - it is more reliable!
6. Another hopper with a socket is attached from above to load the material to be crushed. There are no special requirements for this part, so most often it is made of flexible galvanized steel.
The receiving hopper is easy to make from galvanized steel
The benefits of a homemade option
Unlike factory models, a homemade chopper does not require an overly careful attitude. It will become a universal helper in the household and will help not only to chop branches and other household waste, but also to crush fruits (apples, pears, plums), and along with the seeds. This is very convenient if you need to make jam, puree or homemade wine when the fruits are crushed to a paste.
Garden shredder in action
The circular saws that form the blade of the unit are capable of processing fairly large pieces of wood. Of course, we are not talking about logs, but branches with a diameter of 10 cm will be quite “too tough” for him. This home-made shredder compares favorably with the factory product, the body of which simply will not let large parts of the material through. Accordingly, you will significantly save your time, because you do not have to sort the branches by size and think about what to do with too large fragments. Also, it will not be necessary to monitor the moisture content of the material, while the purchased grinder requires adjusting the degree of dampness of the feedstock. The fact is that in most modern ready-made shredders, the electric motor is located at the bottom of the structure, so when processing wet stems, moisture will inevitably get into the engine, and this will lead to breakdown. IN homemade product you are free to decide where to install the engine, in the embodiment described above, it is located horizontally, on the same level with the knives.
It is also worth paying attention to the cost savings when using a homemade chopper. Firstly, manufacturing will initially be cheaper than buying a factory device, and secondly, a “home-made” will not need to purchase expensive parts in the event of a breakdown - all of its elements are not expensive.
Homemade garden shredder is able to crush even large branches, turning them into chips
In addition, a homemade garden shredder is different high performance. All waste loaded into the hopper will be pulled in by the circular saws and disappear at an incredible speed. Thus, homemade apparatus can be no worse than expensive and modern garden tool. In a word, if the chopper is really needed, but there is no money to buy it, there is only one way out - to make it yourself!
Video example of using this unit
