Pneumatic Can Crusher

Indeed you are Harry. Good to hear from you, and I hope life is treating you well. How are things going on the shop? Cheers, Mike

I admit that I'm one of those Wis 'friends'.
 
Indeed you are Harry. Good to hear from you, and I hope life is treating you well. How are things going on the shop? Cheers, Mike
Errmmmm. That post was from 2015, Mike.
 
Errmmmm. That post was from 2015, Mike.
Man, I did not wanted to say anything... I was just here quiet... I thought that some adult beverage was responsible for it... but now it is out.... :D
 
well since others have revived this thread I may as well comment too... aside from the obvious safety issues with most can crushers, I haven't made one so far because it has not been worth the effort, at least yet.

Toronto recently approved drinking in public parks. Previously we had drinking in public parks on a fairly wide scale anyway but on the down low. Evidence was taken away by industrious people collecting huge bag loads of cans to return to the liquor stores.

I have often watched an elderly couple in one park hauling huge bags and thought why the hell don't they use a cart and a can crusher? Likely renders the cans unreturnable for deposit....

I'm basically too poor to be able to buy aluminum for casting, so I keep thinking about the opportunity to collect cans during festivals and long weekends in order to get free aluminum.

IIRC it takes between 55 - 75 aluminum cans to make up 1 kg of aluminum. In order to be worthwhile for me I'd have to collect enough to make the equivalent of $25 / hr. At a scrap price of $1.25 / kg of aluminum cans I'd need to collect and crush 1200 or so cans per hour.

It would take about 6000 cans to obtain 100 kg of aluminum. How large an air pig would I need to bring to run a crusher? Too big...

That would definitely need to be a drinking event too...

So still not worth the effort.
 
I just crease them in the middle and fold them up. A one handed task. We also sort and save the steel cans. The cans are collected in bags until we have a trailer full. It doesn't make much sense to sort and save cans to conserve resources when more fuel is used in transporting them to the recycling point, We take them to the local high school where the baseball team uses the proceeds to buy equipment for the team.

Regarding the steel cans, many years I designed a can crusher for them that would crease them in the middle and fold the two ends to produce a flattened can. Never got around to building it. The design is somewhere in a notebook; it was the era before CAD. It had too low a priority at the time to execute. I'll have to dig it up and take another look at it.
 
well since others have revived this thread I may as well comment too... aside from the obvious safety issues with most can crushers, I haven't made one so far because it has not been worth the effort, at least yet.

Toronto recently approved drinking in public parks. Previously we had drinking in public parks on a fairly wide scale anyway but on the down low. Evidence was taken away by industrious people collecting huge bag loads of cans to return to the liquor stores.

I have often watched an elderly couple in one park hauling huge bags and thought why the hell don't they use a cart and a can crusher? Likely renders the cans unreturnable for deposit....

I'm basically too poor to be able to buy aluminum for casting, so I keep thinking about the opportunity to collect cans during festivals and long weekends in order to get free aluminum.

IIRC it takes between 55 - 75 aluminum cans to make up 1 kg of aluminum. In order to be worthwhile for me I'd have to collect enough to make the equivalent of $25 / hr. At a scrap price of $1.25 / kg of aluminum cans I'd need to collect and crush 1200 or so cans per hour.

It would take about 6000 cans to obtain 100 kg of aluminum. How large an air pig would I need to bring to run a crusher? Too big...

That would definitely need to be a drinking event too...

So still not worth the effort.
Cans make a lousy source of casting material. They have a huge amount of surface area, so they produce an enormous amount of slag when melted - necessitating multiple skimmings of your crucible each time you add more material (and you will need to add material quite a few times to get a full-ish crucible as the volume is reduced tremendously). They are also not made from an alloy well suited to casting. It'll still melt and pour, but you'll often have fits with porosity and poor quality. Better sources are (cast) aluminum engine parts or anything else made from cast aluminum.

GsT
 
Cans make a lousy source of casting material. They have a huge amount of surface area, so they produce an enormous amount of slag when melted - necessitating multiple skimmings of your crucible each time you add more material (and you will need to add material quite a few times to get a full-ish crucible as the volume is reduced tremendously). They are also not made from an alloy well suited to casting. It'll still melt and pour, but you'll often have fits with porosity and poor quality. Better sources are (cast) aluminum engine parts or anything else made from cast aluminum.

GsT

yes of course there are so many reasons cans suck for casting material... I was trying more tongue in cheek way of saying it is fiscally a waste of time to even consider pursuing... as are IMO can crushers themselves. IF I need to crush I use the trusty foot and floor method.

We have a decide supply of cast tire rims where I am because many clowns are dumb enough to keep them on their cars thru the winter.
 
yes of course there are so many reasons cans suck for casting material... I was trying more tongue in cheek way of saying it is fiscally a waste of time to even consider pursuing... as are IMO can crushers themselves. IF I need to crush I use the trusty foot and floor method.

We have a decide supply of cast tire rims where I am because many clowns are dumb enough to keep them on their cars thru the winter.
But it feels so therapeutic to crush them using a cool gadget… I am only doing it to stay mentally healthy, so for health reasons only… :p
 
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