Can crusher

I have managed to find myself a couple of local sources of cans. I am pulling in between 20 and 30 pounds of beer and pop cans each week, and in the fall I am guesstimating that I may be able to grab well over 100 pounds of cans during a few select weeks. There is a recycling company locally that only pays about half of what a few places pay within about a 50 mile drive of me, and so it makes sense for me to save them up and take a larger load on a 50 mile drive. I have been crushing all these cans by the heel of my boot so that I can haul more in a load and have been looking into figuring out something mechanical to crush cans. I see some pneumatic air powered can crushers on ebay for over a hundred bucks that have caught my eye but I'd like to build my own and hopefully not spend that much. Ideally I'd like to do something with 2 spinning wheels kind of like a baseball pitching machine that would just pull them in out of a hopper and spit them out the other side into a trash can. Does anyone have any experience with any kind of mechanical can crushers?

Why waste the time crushing them?? I get roughly 50 lbs a week on my route n just takr em in w my other scrap...
Roughly half of those were crushed..

Last thursday was 102 lbs of cans, 40 lbs of #2 cu, and #100 of #2 wire..

Btw I crush my cans in my hands..

Mech beat me to it, I do the same with my cans. Drive over them with the van, makes short work of it, an saves my hands an feet the trouble of doing such.

Far as why crushing them? You can fit more crushed cans into a sack or bag then you can non-crushed. Thats my story an I'm sticking to it. It's also kind of fun to drive over them.

Sirscrapalot - Crunch on.

I tried to make one once. We took a piece of aluminum pipe like for flag poles welded a piece of metal to one end, cut a hole in the middle the size of a can, cut a hole by the welded piece of metal on the pipe itself about a quarter of the original size of the can, got an electric motor , and a piston from a lawn mower, atattched the piston to the motor. You would turn it on, drop the cans in, and they would fall out the other end.

Originally Posted by scrapping4ever

I tried to make one once. We took a piece of aluminum pipe like for flag poles welded a piece of metal to one end, cut a hole in the middle the size of a can, cut a hole by the welded piece of metal on the pipe itself about a quarter of the original size of the can, got an electric motor , and a piston from a lawn mower, atattched the piston to the motor. You would turn it on, drop the cans in, and they would fall out the other end.

That would be great if it had an automatic feed

If I was going to consider trying to build one I'd start by studying one up close like the ones you'll see at the scrap yard

If you make one you need to make sure the cans go into a bag! I hace a hand crusher that goes over a 33 gal trash can. It sucks to crush and then pick up the can again.

When i was much younger i used to walk the town picking up cans, scouring dumps,and a few beer drinkers along the route saved then up for me. A good heavy post mall worked fine, just lay them on the ground and splat,splat did the trick. The picking them up twice did slow me down. later a harbor freight manual can crusher worked just fine. It worked even better after the kids were big enough to do it,they loved crushing cans,but when the teen years came about i lost my cheap labor

Originally Posted by Arkansaw

Later a harbor freight manual can crusher worked just fine. It worked even better after the kids were big enough to do it,they loved crushing cans,but when the teen years came about i lost my cheap labor

LOL!! My secratary brings her 5 year old grandson out to the shop a couple days a week & he loves crushing cans. He's good cheap help, a bag of gummy worms a day and he's a happy camper.

Originally Posted by Dieseldozer

LOL!! My secratary brings her 5 year old grandson out to the shop a couple days a week & he loves crushing cans. He's good cheap help, a bag of gummy worms a day and he's a happy camper.

thats why farmers have lots of kids....free labour

I've got a setup for quite some time now that is cheap, and works well. Get a 5 gallon metal bucket, 12"x12" 3/8" thick sheet of steel, 2'-3' long black pipe. Cut a circle out of the steel, about 1/2" less then the diameter of the bucket bottom. Weld the black pipe to the middle of the cut-out. Easy peasy. Only issue I have sometimes is the cans wont come out of the bucket, just gotta smack her around, or add a bit a lube to the bucket before you crush em.

Found this on IMGUR, not sure if its a repost.

Looks good, but I think some kind of hopper might be a lot safer. Someone would just need to look away at the wrong moment to get some fingers caught.