If ya gotta crush aluminum cans.....

I don't pick up cans, so my only source of cans is from my (bad) diet mountain dew habit, but I like to crush them by hand with gloves on. I figure it's a good forearm exercise.

Great idea, but I have a habit of crushing the can by hand before I can open the refrigerator for the next. one. And using a Gaylord to collect them instead of a tub makes less trips to the scrap yard. Gaylord of choice is old fertilizer containers. Can leave them outside without worrying about the weather.

Props to this guy for making that machine!
Seems like all that electricity would be hellish overhead for one's business, and yes picking them up out of the grass would stink. Machine needs a hopper on top so they can be shoveled in.
I have two other methods I like:
1. A classic wall-mount manual crusher
2. Dump the bag of uncrushed cans out on the sidewalk and let the kids go to town. They love it.
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Arrrrh!!
I would reconfigure that into a wire crusher/stripper...
A couple of things, actually several..
1) If you pick up a can twice, you are doing twice the amount of work that you have too..
Or in other words, you are getting half the amount of $$$ you can get for the same amount of work..

2). You do not save much space by squashing them flat.

3) When they bail squashed cans, the cans are not locked together as much and the bail can break, making extra work for the scrap dealers.

4) Squashing cans with your foot can give you varicous veins, I think.

5) leaving cans outside in the open is not a good idea, snails like beer too, then they poop in the cans, adding soil to the very clean quality Ali (that's a sin!)

6) You can help things if you pick up the can, turn it upside down, shake to remove anything in it, squash it in the centre so the sides touch using two fingers and thumb, put it in the final resting place for the can.
I use either a very large plastic cleansack, or a long tube of plastic obtained from the wrapper of house insulation, 'Rockwool' is what I think its called in the US of A (Fibreglass Batts here in NZ)

7) If you do this, the cans are consistant. They 'lock together' like building blocks in the plastic sack and therefor save space. They also don't move around much. When you shake the sack, you can tell if there's anything else inthe sack.
Like stones etc. You scrap dealer will thank you for that.
When they pour the cans into the bailer, the cans will lock together again, when they are bailed, they will lock together into a very solid Ali block and not fall apart.

All of our cans go into a 40 gallon trash can in the garage. When it's full I dump the cans out in a line in the driveway and let the van squash'em.

That's a neat contraption - but looks like a lot of work. I use a wall-mount manual crusher. Also have a can crusher that is attached to the top of a can, the can get crushed and slides inside the bag in the can - like this one CanPactor Can Crusher (but I got it for free.

everyday i go on a 3 mile walk out here in the country. bar a block away they finish it off and out the window it go's and they start another one.
anyway i take couple grocery bags walk along i find one i smash it with my foot and into the sack it go's. when i get home from what i collected i toss it into a 50 gallon plastic garbage can with a trash bag in it. when it gets full out to the storage shed it gos. i take mine in about once a year. every bit helps moneywise.

Hey this is a pretty cool idea, though I think I'd build a better crushing mechinism and feed chute(something along the lines of a wood splitter but with a ram instead of a wedge). It's stuff like this that gets my mind working lol.

Originally Posted by eesakiwi

Honestly, there's a lot of space saved when you just squeeze the can in the centre so the sides touch.
That way there's two open voids in the can only.
The resulting shape of the can is conductive for the cans interlocking when placed in the bag.

Then when they get poured into the bailer, they interlock again and when squashed into the cube, every can is interlocked togethet into a lump.
Also, when you have a plastic bag full of interlocked cans, it dos't make as much noise and you can't hear cans shifting over each other in the bag.
You can also hear that there's no water and no stones etc.

I can still see the puzzeled look on the scale guys face as he picked up a bag of my cans and shook them.
He KNEW there was something different about these cans....
Quiet, little fluid, no stones and a solid plastic bag..... now that don't happen every day...

He thanked me about it next time I came in.

I'd really hate to bail a bunch of cans and then to shift them and cans fall out, which you have to pick up by hand and they are thin and hard to grab and its all around your ankles....

All you have to do is, pick the can up from where you found it, turn it upside down and shake to remove anything in it, squash its sides in, with two fingers and thumb, chuck it into the bag that its going to the scrapdealers in.
Preferrably into a tall bag, like what 'rockwool' (Pink Batts insulation here in NZ) insulation comes in.
Try and get the bag back after its been emptyed, and make sure its not sticky or dirty when you use it again.
A tall bag is so they can carry it on their shoulders and pour it into the machine in one go.
It also uses up less floor space.
With this way, you only pick up the can once, the bag twice, load, and unload.

I've found this is the best way, too. You'd never guess how much space this saves...crushing them completely doesn't really do much better. Of course, I need to keep the UPC readable so I can get my deposit, so crushing MI10 cans isn't an option and I'm biased.
That said, while I've never encountered this in real life, I read a couple articles recently about how some yards don't like it when they're crushed, as that's often how people cram rocks and stuff into them and they can't tell. I suppose it's a YMMV thing.

My grandparents used to line the garage floor with their cans when they'd babysit me after school so I could wear myself out jumping on them. Tons of fun, but now I see it holds more value as a method to wear a kid out.

i put my heavy work boot on and flatten them...get about 15 to 17 pounds in a 30 gallon green trash bag...save money on less bags...they just pour into a gaylord at scrap yard