Grinders vs Shredders

Slow-Speed Shredders

Slow-speed, high-torque shredders are designed for commingled, contaminated waste streams, such as municipal solid waste (MSW), and pliable synthetic materials like carpeting, which will not fragment easily in a high-speed grinding system.

High-Speed Grinders

Highs-speed grinders are designed to turn diverse feedstocks into products like landscape mulch and compost.

Superior Particle Size Control

Typically, shredders are incapable of producing high quality end materials and are used mainly to pre-process raw contaminated wastes. Often when a slow-speed shredder is used for primary processing of contaminated waste, a horizontal grinder is used to process the pre-shredded material into a quality end product.

Enhanced Versatility

Horizontal grinders open more opportunities for low-grade waste materials, allowing operators to produce landscape mulch, biomass fuels, animal bedding, refuse derived fuels (RDF), and other valuable finished products with size and texture specifications that shredders usually cannot achieve. Exclusive Rotochoppper technology, like our 1-pass colorizer and our bale pre-processing system, make our horizontal grinders the most versatile equipment on the market.

Primary Shredding vs. Sorting

Usually, for materials like construction and demolition debris (C & D) and municipal solid waste (MSW), the most profitable recycling method is to pre-sort the recyclable fractions using a picking line or batch sorting methods, then feed the grindable feedstocks into a horizontal grinder. Rotochopper electric horizontal grinders provide the uptime and particle size control required to process sorted C & D and sorted MSW, making them a popular choice with transfer stations, material recovery facilities, and landfills. Our portable and track-mounted diesel horizontal grinders provide the same “Perfect In One Pass” advantage for companies needing mobile grinding capacity.