Patent ID: 8807468
Filing Date: 2014-08-19
Classification: B02C

Abstract:
1. A system for the controlled-feed-rate shredding of material in a rotary shear shredder comprising a pair of spaced, laterally adjacent, nominally matched-motion counter-rotating, power-driven shredder shafts, including, under all shredding operating conditions, a selected main shaft and a selected controlled shaft, said shafts carrying sets of confrontingly rotating knives which, along with their respective, associated shafts, define between them a shredding zone into which material to be shredded is fed, a pair of drive motors, each drivingly connected to a different one of said shafts, each said motor being selectively, and individually, speed-variable and rotation-direction reversible and operatively associated with said shafts and motors, material feed-rate control structure including (a) a torque load sensor at all times operatively connected to the drive motor which is drivingly connected to said selected main shaft, operable effectively to monitor, continuously during shredding, the torque load experienced by that shaft, (b) a speed and direction controller at all times operatively connected to the drive motor which is drivingly connected to said selected controlled shaft, operable to change the rotational speed and the rotational direction of that shaft, and (c) an algorithmically programmed digital computer operatively connected both to said sensor and to said controller, operable, based upon the selected main shaft torque load monitored by said sensor, and employing said controller in relation to the drive motor which is drivingly connected to said selected controlled shaft, to control selectively, in a manner variably differentiating the relative rotational motions of the two shafts, the rotational speed and, if needed, the rotational direction of said selected controlled shaft in a way effective to achieve a desired, appropriate and controlled, material-shredding feed-rate through the shredding zone.