Friedrichshafen, Germany — Hellweg Maschinenbau came to Fakuma 2024 with a gift for the recycling industry.
The new LSZ 150/100 edge strip shredder is the granulator the "market has been waiting for," Managing Director Mark Hellweg told Sustainable Plastics on the show floor in Friedrichshafen.
The new machine is a less-is-more kind of gift. It has no blade, no screen, no infeed device, does not require regular resharpening of the toothed rollers, and makes very little noise.
"No blades, no big rotation, no screen, no maintenance, no noise — it's almost a fantasy, the machine the market has been waiting for," Hellweg said.
The LSZ 150/100 is designed to efficiently shred profiled edge strips, a task that is challenging for conventional granulators. Manufacturers of plastic sheets with edged geometries, such as thermoformed dimpled sheets, are often left with trimmings that can interfere with the recycling process. Edged profiles can easily get stuck during the feeding process and damage the granulator.
Hellweg's new shredder addresses this issue with a 600-millimeter oscillating probe arm, which compensates for variations in edge shape, while an integrated switch prevents damage by regulating the shredding process.
The standout feature of the shredder is its four robust toothed rollers made from solid tool steel billet. Unlike other systems that rely on a separate, infeed mechanism, the LSZ 150/100 uses its rollers to guide and tension the edge strips away from the sheet material during granulation. This allows for reliable shredding regardless of the strip's shape. And because the machine uses rollers rather than blades, its operation is quiet.
"These applications are usually very noisy because the blade is hitting the material, and the sound is moving over the body of the surface and going out of the machine. With our machine, there is very little noise," Hellweg explained.