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[Brogan M Pratt] and his students do a lot of 3D printing, and as such found themselves producing a lot of plastic waste. Seeing an opportunity, they built a bike-powered plastic shredder that turns a little human exercise into the power needed to transform waste plastic into small bits. Shredding plastic is a necessary first step for any sort of processing, so getting this part working reliably is as important as it is educational.
Shredding is a necessary first step to processing plastic waste.
Being in the Netherlands, using a bike makes perfect sense. But it turns out there’s a lot more to making a human-powered plastic shredder than simply bolting a sprocket to a shredder, looping the bike chain over it, then climbing on and working up a sweat.
In between the bike and the shredder is a large gear reduction, a fifteen kilogram flywheel, and a heavy-duty frame to anchor everything in the face of so much mass and torque. Add some covers and safety guards and the result is a stationary bike with a hopper for waste, a bin for output, and enough rotational torque and inertia to chew through stubborn bits without stalling.
