Patent ID: 8757526

Claim:
A shredder comprising: a housing having a throat open to an exterior of the housing for permitting a user to feed at least one article to be shredded; a shredder mechanism received in the housing and including an electrically powered motor and cutter elements, the shredder mechanism enabling the at least one article fed into the throat to be shredded to be fed into the cutter elements and the motor being operable to drive the cutter elements in a shredding direction so that the cutter elements shred the articles fed therein; a thickness detector configured to detect a thickness between opposing major surfaces of the at least one article being received by the throat; a controller operable to prevent the motor from driving the cutter elements in the shredding direction responsive to the detector detecting that the thickness of the at least one article is at least equal to a predetermined maximum thickness; and an input for enabling the user to input a type of material to be shredded for selecting the controller's responsiveness to the thickness detector.