سعة آلة تقطيع البلاستيك: ما هي الكمية الفعلية التي تنتجها الآلة الواحدة في الساعة

“How many kilos per hour?”

It’s the second question everybody asks, right after the price. And it’s the question that gets answered badly more often than any other, because the number on the brochure and the number you’ll actually get are usually two different things.

Here’s the thing though — it’s not because manufacturers lie. Well, not usually. It’s because capacity isn’t a property of the machine. It’s a property of the machine plus your material. A shredder rated at 1,000 kg/h on clean HDPE purgings might do 350 on loose film, on the same afternoon, with nothing wrong with it.

I’ve had customers call us convinced their machine was broken because it was doing half its rated number. Nine times out of ten the machine was fine. The material was different from what the rating assumed, and nobody had explained that.

So this is the practical version: what actually moves the number, how to estimate your real plastic shredder machine capacity before you buy, and how to stop under-buying.

If you only take one thing from this: plastic shredder machine capacity is not a fixed number stamped on the machine. It’s a result — and you can predict it if you know which variables matter.

Why the Rated Number Doesn’t Match Your Floor

A capacity rating is measured under good conditions — clean, dry, uniform material of one specific type, fed steadily. Change any part of that and the number moves.

Five things move it the most:

1. Bulk density (the biggest one)

This is the factor people forget, and on a shredder it matters more than anything else.

A shredder’s chamber has a fixed volume. What you care about is weight per hour, but what the chamber holds is volume. So fluffy, low-density material fills the chamber quickly with very little weight in it.

Two tons of loose film takes up many times the space of two tons of bottle flake or solid purgings. Same machine, same hour, wildly different kilos. Film is the classic case — a machine that handles rigid scrap at a healthy rate can look painfully slow on film, purely because it’s moving air and volume instead of mass.

If your material is low-density, you must size the machine on volume, not on the kilos you want. This single misunderstanding causes more under-sized machines than everything else combined.

2. Screen size

The discharge screen decides when a piece is allowed to leave the chamber. A finer screen means material stays in longer, gets cut more times, and leaves later.

Going from a coarse screen to a fine one can cut throughput substantially — sometimes close to half. So the honest capacity question is never just “how many kilos per hour,” it’s “how many kilos per hour at what flake size.” If your spec lets you accept a coarser flake, your real capacity goes up without changing the machine.

3. Ram force and how well material is fed

On a single shaft machine the hydraulic ram is what pushes material into the rotor. If the ram can’t press a dense or awkward piece into the cut with enough force, the rotor spins on material that isn’t being cut — and your hourly rate collapses while the machine sounds busy.

Steady feeding matters just as much. Surging the hopper, then starving it, gives you a worse average than feeding at a constant rate, even if the machine is identical.

4. Cutter condition

Dull cutters don’t cut, they rub. Rubbing generates heat, slows the cut, and forces the motor to work harder for less output. A machine running on worn cutters can lose a noticeable slice of its throughput before anybody notices the flakes getting rougher.

This is why cutter rotation on condition matters for capacity, not just for blade life.

5. Material hardness and toughness

Thick-walled, tough, or filled polymers take more torque to shear than thin, brittle ones. Glass-filled material is both harder to cut and far more abrasive — so it lowers capacity و raises your cutter cost at the same time.

How to Estimate Your Real Plastic Shredder Machine Capacity

Don’t shop off the brochure number. Work it out from your own material, the same way we do it when a customer asks whether a machine is big enough.

Step 1 — Your required rate.

Required rate = daily tonnage ÷ real running hours

If you need to put 6,000 kg a day through the machine and you realistically run 8 hours: 750 kg/h.

Be honest about the hours. Nobody runs a full shift at full feed.

Step 2 — Apply a material factor.

Divide your required rate by a factor that reflects how far your material is from ideal. This gives you the rated capacity you should actually shop for.

Step 3 — Do the division.

For dense rigid scrap at 750 kg/h required: 750 ÷ 0.75 = 1,000 kg/h rated — so you shop for a machine rated around 1,000.

For the same daily weight in loose film: 750 ÷ 0.4 = 1,875 kg/h rated. Nearly double the machine for identical daily tonnage, because the film is mostly air by volume.

That gap is where people get burned. They buy for the kilos and forget the volume.

Step 4 — Leave headroom.

Add 15–20% on top if your volumes might grow, or if your feed varies day to day. A machine running at 100% of its real capacity has no room for the day your material is wetter or your shift runs short.

What One Machine Covers

The follow-up question I get after the capacity math: “so do I need two machines?”

Usually no. A single correctly sized shredder covers a very wide range of factory volumes. The daily tonnages most plants deal with — a few hundred kilos to a few tons — sit comfortably inside one machine’s working range, as long as it was sized for the volume of your material rather than just its weight.

You’d start thinking about a second unit or a larger model when:
– Your required rate, after the material factor, exceeds what one machine can do
– You’re running multiple shifts and the machine becomes the bottleneck for the whole line
– You need two different, dedicated setups running continuously with no changeover time

Those are throughput reasons. “I have several different plastics” is not a throughput reason — that’s a screen and rotor question, and one machine handles it.

This is worth saying plainly: two machines double your capital cost, your cutters, your power draw and your maintenance. Only do it when the tonnage genuinely demands it.

Questions to Ask Before You Accept Any Capacity Number

When a supplier quotes you a capacity figure, these are the questions that tell you whether it means anything:

1. “On what material?” A number without a material next to it is marketing.
2. “At what screen size?” The same machine gives different numbers on different screens.
3. “Is that continuous running or a short test?” A burst rate over ten minutes is not an hourly rate over a shift.
4. “What’s the bulk density it was measured on?” If your material is fluffier, your number will be lower.
5. “What happens on my actual material?” A supplier worth buying from will ask you for a sample or at least a photo and a density, rather than quoting a generic figure.

If a supplier won’t engage with those questions, the capacity number they gave you isn’t worth much.

How We Size Them

When a customer comes to us with a tonnage, we don’t start from the machine — we start from the material and the volume it occupies. We ask what you’re feeding, how many hours you’ll really run, what flake size the next step needs, and what your growth looks like. Then we size the machine to that.

For most mixed factory scrap that lands on an S Series single shaft shredder, with the ram force and rotor configured for the densest thing you’ll feed and screens set for the output you actually need. Where the material is long pipe, the P Series cradle feed changes the picture entirely. Where it’s very bulky and light, the T Series sometimes moves more volume per hour than a single shaft ever will — and we’ll tell you that rather than sell you the wrong machine.

Send us your material, your daily tonnage, your real running hours and your target output size. We’ll tell you what one machine will actually do per hour on your material — not on somebody else’s test scrap.

الأسئلة الشائعة

What is the capacity of a plastic shredder machine?

It depends on the material, not just the model. The same machine might process dense rigid scrap at close to its rated figure while doing a third of that on loose, low-density film. Capacity is a function of bulk density, screen size, ram force, cutter condition and material toughness, so always ask for a figure tied to a specific material and screen.

Why is my shredder doing less than its rated capacity?

Almost always one of: your material is fluffier or lower-density than the rating assumed, your screen is finer than the test condition, the cutters are worn, or the feed isn’t steady. All of these are normal and fixable — they don’t mean the machine is faulty.

How do I calculate the shredder capacity I need?

Divide your daily tonnage by your real running hours to get a required rate, then divide that by a material factor (roughly 0.3–0.5 for low-density film, 0.6–0.8 for clean dense rigid scrap) to get the rated capacity you should buy. Then add 15–20% headroom.

Does screen size affect shredder capacity?

Yes, significantly. A finer screen holds material in the chamber for more cutting passes, which lowers throughput — sometimes by close to half. If your process can accept a coarser flake, your real capacity rises without changing the machine.

Do I need two shredders for higher capacity?

Only if the tonnage genuinely exceeds one machine after you’ve applied the material factor. Two machines double capital cost, cutters, power and maintenance, so it’s worth sizing one machine correctly first — most in-house volumes fit comfortably in a single unit.

Can one shredder handle several different plastics at good capacity?

Yes. Different plastics change the screen and rotor setup rather than the number of machines. One machine sized for your bulkiest, densest material will run the rest competently — that’s a configuration question, not a second-machine question.