OT can crusher

How about just stepping on cans with your full weight on the heel. Works great.

i

Cant use the bootheel method due to a broken leg a year ago that leaves me barely able to walk and ruined knee on the other side.I don't have the stamina to clean up this many cans.

We need a can crusher that requires calories to operate equal to calories in one can of beer ;)

So go buy one at Wal-mart. There about $10.

Or if you want something automated, a gear motor with a crank arrangement would make a wicked can crusher. Just have a tube that will fit the cans with a slot in top to drop them in, and a much smaller slot at the bottom for them to fall out of.

Why do you want to crush them? If for recycling, be advised that recycle centers that pay for cans get weird about crushed cans. At least around here they do. Depending who is there that day, they may refuse to take them. I guess they have had problems with people weighting cans before crushing them.

I fully realize uncrushed cans take up substantially more space. I find it annoying as well, but I just bag them and take them in every month or so. It's only a few garbage bags of cans.

JW

I personally never drink anything out of cans, we can go for years without a single can in garbage. Bottles, that's another story.

i

In California they can be crushed and the recycler pays about $1.30 per lb. I might have 75 lbs saved up.

Slightly unresponsive, but while hydraulics may be slow air certainly isn't. I knew a guy with a simple shop-made air-operated can crusher. WHAM, p'tew. Mind your fingers! All that's needed is a fairly small air cylinder (1" dia or better would suffice), a frame and a valve, all but the frame available as surplus. Details left to your imagination.

Same here. Diet Mt. Dew in cans, sucks. Out of a 2 liter bottle, tastes Good!

Gunner, conisewer of Mt. Dew, and can often tell where it was bottled.

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

WOW. I'll send you a few pounds of them. Only about $.35 here.

I make sure to sort out any "deposit" cans and take them back to MI with me when we visit family there.

JW

I like that air pressure scheme. About 5 minutes ago of buying an old reel type lawnmower with rear bag and running them over. Not in the house of course.

We help recycle thousands of pounds of aluminum cans. Th' funds are donated to our local volunteer fire dept, and a number of other local charities. Anyway, Ol' Bud just empties th' cans on his driveway, throws some plywood on 'em and drives his truck over a few times. Used to drive his wife crazy .

Just th' opposite here (PNW). They know what a 50 gal bag worth of crushed cans will weigh. Hell, I can tell ya within a few bucks how much th' flatbed has loaded before we get weighed.

Heh, most of th' folks who collect cans for us crush them, but Bud likes to drive over 'em anyway. When yer 85 yrs old, ya getcher jollies where ya can, I 'spose.

Snarl

You could use an air cylinder to get the cycle time - the trick is to pinch and put little dents in the side of the cans as you load them, that makes them crush a whole lot easier when the cylinder shape is disrupted.

I just took a standard hardware-store hand operated lever-action crusher, and cut a slot in the back of the main channel right above the stationary "anvil" so the un-crushed can lays there, but a crushed can falls through it. Nothing to go wrong... Then you mount the crusher horizontally on it's 'back' on a piece of plywood with a hole in it, and place a trashcan under that hole.

Drop in the can, crush it, and when you release the pressure the crushed can falls right into the trashcan by gravity. One hand cycles the crush lever, the other loads, and you can go through a pile fast.

-->--

it would be also a good idea to need to press two buttons with two hands for this thing to actuate.

i

The neatest can crusher I've seen was at an old time steam and hit/miss engine show. A guy had taken an old up and down windmill style pump, hooked it to a hit and miss endigne, used a pair of automobile pistons to work over two collumns of cans. The can would drop into place, the ram would squash the can, the can retaininer had a small slot in the end that was bigger than what was left of the can. Bang-bang-bang,crunch, whoosh, whoosh, etc. Just fun to watch.

But anyway: load cans vertically, crush cans with horiz> Can crusher project needed and I want to use some sort of tubing or

That is an excellent idea, in the work enviroment there would be anti tiedown circuitry involved but for home, buttons in series would be fine.

Wes S

I built a can crusher a few years back, using a bunch of relays, microswitches, and "bimba" air cylinders. Let me attempt a re-creation of the sequence...

1: Gate opens to drop can into crush zone 2: pair of bimbas, one one each side, put a "dink" into the sides of the can. 3: larger ram from below brings bottom towards the top 4: back ram pushes can forward and out of crush zone

It was all pretty much a bunch of RC networks and microswitches for the timing. I donated it to a local youth group, no idea if it still works or not but it could do about 30 per minute, maybe more had I tweaked it.

Naah, just build an expanded steel cage around it & put a microswitch on the door. Hands free, just keep the chute full.

Electric motor and some sort of wringer type washing machine setup. Maybe hand crank if you aren't lazy.