How a Plastic Granulator Works
Plastic products are an important part of our everyday lives, but when they reach the end of their useful life, we need to properly recycle them so that they can be repurposed into new items. Plastic granulators take these small pieces of recycled plastic and further reduce them in size, making them easier to melt and reuse in new products. Basically, a plastic granulator is much like a giant shredder. Plastic granulator systems cut full sized bottles, jugs, and other plastic containers into flakes. These flakes can then be used by molders and manufacturers to make new plastic items. A plastic granulator is also a great way to save money, manpower, and materials by reducing the amount of waste produced by your industrial processes.
There are several different systems that work together to perform the task of converting plastic waste into new reusable material. The core systems include the cutting and power transmission systems. These systems are responsible for transforming the large blocks of plastic into the smaller granules that can be used to make new plastic products.
The cutting system is a large cylinder that contains rotating blades. These blades break down the plastic pieces into granules, which are then forced through a screen that separates them by size. The screen is then removed and cleaned by the operator. This process is repeated until all of the granules are finished.
Once the granulator has finished processing the plastic waste, it is then collected and shipped to companies that will use them in their production processes. Plastic granulators can be found in many industrial plants that produce plastics, and they can be used in both injection and blow molding. They can also be used to grind trim waste, runners and sprues.
Power transmission is a key component of the plastic granulator, and it is responsible for turning electrical energy into the rotational energy needed to operate the machine. This is accomplished with a motor and gears that are connected to the reduction system. The gears and motor are then connected to the hopper feed system, which ensures that the proper amounts of material are fed into the machine at all times.
In addition to reducing the cost and labor of operating a plastic granulator, the power transmission system is responsible for minimizing the embodied energy in the machine. This is done by using low-torque gears and a motor that can be run at lower speeds. The machine also uses a low-energy LED lighting system to further reduce its embodied energy.
The open source plastic granulator project was designed and built to convert post-consumer waste, 3D printer plastic, and other polymer scrap into recycled raw material for distributed recycling and manufacturing with recyclebots and fused particle/granule printers. The granulator draws only as much power as 3-4 conventional incandescent light bulbs. This low embodied energy level along with its rapid throughput makes this device suitable for community, library, maker space, and fab lab-based distributed recycling and manufacturing. plastic granulator