Paper shredders do not seem to be designed for very long life. Therefore you will need to perform some maintenance in order to get it to last as long as possible.
These things are the epitome of planed obsolescence. I'm on my 3rd unit.. Take it apart and look inside at the motor, which will probably have a plastic fan on it, but note that there are no cooling holes in the outer plastic case. Take apart the cutters. Don't be afraid. Stack them all up and sharpen them. They come as raw metal stampings, and are not sharpened any further. Then flat grind each one on some fine sandpaper. Yes paper is dusty, but it also contains clay in it too, which is very hard on the cutters. Look at the gear train. Mostly plastic. My last unit has been going for many years now after tear down and rework. And as always, thank you for the time it takes to make good videos.
Very helpful tips! 6:08 - That's funny, Remington gun oil was what I used for this 20 or so years ago (mainly because it was what I had at hand at the moment). Being too cheap to buy those pre-made shredder cleaner sheets, every so often I sprayed a good amount of the oil onto a sheet of paper and ran that through my shredder. You could immediately hear the difference in how it ran.
All good tips. I found plain mineral oil worked well as a lubricant, it doesn't dry so it doesn't get gummy in the rollers, also no hazard to your lungs just in case it should become aerosolised. Honestly though I got very tried of wasting my time and electricity shredding, when our machine gave up I replaced it with a small incinerator bin. I wait until I have enough documents to fill the bin (about twicea year) then on a dry night fill it up, add a squirt of suitable flammable liquid and light it after dinner. By the next morning I have a small pile of just warm ashes that go straight into the compost. Much less effort and just as effective at destroying the information.
Great tips. I have a shredder from best buy that was jammed pretty bad. I was able to free it up and keep it that way now. Folding 2 sheets of paper is the trick to keeping it from jamming for me . Thanks a ton
I ended up purchasing a new Fellows shredder. I also have found that folding the paper in half lengthwise and feed it into the center of the shredder, keeps it from jamming the cutters which were packing full of paper on the outer edges. Reversing occasionally is also a good practice. Thanks for watching. Ron
You know it'll work and a man knows a fair bit when he mentions gun oil and wd40. I was about to throw my shredder away till I saw this. Thanks for sharing the knowledge 🙏
Glad it helped. Look around my channel. You may find other subjects of interest. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe! That is what keeps this channel running. Ron
Mine won't budge. There's no paper stuck in it. I've tried lubricant, reversing, leaving it off, letting it run. I don't even use it that much. Maybe a small staple got lodged in there, but I can't see it. So disappointed. Tax season, time to shred, and I will have to buy another one. They're not cheap!
I would advise against spraying WD-40 into a running machine as the universal motor will easily ignite the vapors. A better lubricant is a sheet of paper that has been colored on both sides with crayon. The ellipse shredders have mostly been discontinued because of the high tendency of the rollers to pack up with paper and debris. As part of a product development project I ran hundreds of sheets of paper with hundreds of staples in each one through several brands of shredder and found no issues with accelerated wear. The worst thing to put through them is cardboard/paperboard as that stuff has a surprising amount of non-paper debris mixed in. And paper clips, obviously, will ruin one quick.
Another trick that I found if using the shredder for an extended time is to drill a big hole in the container and hook it into a dust collector. Nothing builds up inside the machine and the airflow keeps the motor from getting hot, even after hours on end.
Thanks for your comments. If it had caught on fire it would only have accelerated the inevitable (sarcasm). Next week I have a video on the autopsy of this shredder. :-) Ron
I have a staples mod spl-txc82a shredder, the blades are paired in between plastic guides,and offset from the opposite shaft of blades, one blade on each side somehow got displaced and is positioned on the wrong side of the opposite pair separating the pair, that on both shafs. the paper keeps getting caught in the space created by that misalignment. is there an easy way to spread the two shafts apart slightly so i could move the one shaft back in place.
No way I can answer that as I am not familiar with your shredder. I have another video: Paper Shredder Autopsy - What Killed It? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3_Nv95LQkEQ.html And you can see towards the end how I took it apart. If you are mechanically inclined and have some tools... and if you take a lot of photos of the assembly before taking it apart (so you can remember how to put it back together) MAYBE you could reassemble it again correctly. BUT chances are, if things are misarranged now, something caused that and you may be missing (not seeing) what has become worn or broken in the process of it being used. Murphy's Law dictates that it is probably worn out and time for a new one. BUT it is always fun to take this stuff apart and see how it was made. :-) Good Luck! Thanks for watching. Please subscribe! That is what keeps this channel running. Ron
I have the aurora GB 12 sheets cross cut shedder and the other day I put 4-5 pieces of paper and they got balled up halfway through the machine shedding them and the machine got jammed what are the chances if I DIY try to unjam myself if it will run or work again I would really appreciate any advice come my way
Not familiar with your machine. You did not say if it is new or old. If new I would take it back. If it is old and out of warranty you can either try to fix it yourself or throw it away. There are no repair shops for this sort of thing, to my knowledge. I am just showing you what I experienced with my shredder. Good luck! Thanks for watching. Please subscribe! That is what keeps this channel going. Ron
WD-40 isn't a lubricant. It's just meant to displace water, and help with rust. You don't want to use most food oils either, as they'll go rancid. You could probably put a /SMALL/ amount of mineral oil on a piece of paper and run it through. Or get one of those lubricating sheets(or read the back of the package in the store) to see what they use. I bet you could get a bottle of it cheaper than what they sell one of those pages.
