Weima shredders have sharper edge with Hägglunds drives

As the focus on recycling grows, Weima is providing recyclers with innovative, high-quality machines for shredding and briquetting. Its equipment is built with sustainability in mind but, because the life cycle of shredders is especially demanding, Weima shredders are equipped with Hägglunds drive solutions.

Headquartered near Stuttgart, Germany, Weima has spent the past 40 years pushing the boundaries of recycling. Though still a family business, now in its second generation, the company has expanded to become a truly global OEM, with two sites in Germany, another in the USA and subsidiaries in China and India. Weima sells around 1 500 machines per year with 90% of that business going to the export market.

Shredders and other scrap recycling components represent at least one-quarter of the company’s turnover and are an area where Hägglunds hydraulic direct drive systems are key. The choice of drive is crucial, underlines managing director Andreas Mack, who has been at Weima since 2006. ‘Our customers want systems they can operate 24/7. Production time means output, which in their business means turnover.’

Drive choice is crucial

When it comes to briquetters and shredders, Weima trusts hydraulics from Bosch Rexroth to manage the extremes. For the shredders, the choice is always Hägglunds hydraulic drive systems. ‘What’s the secret of a shredder? It’s not the steel but the drive train, the machine control and the cutting geometry,’ Mack says.

The partnership between Weima and Hägglunds dates back to 2008. Since then the company has used Hägglunds drives in everything from small mobile machines for document shredding to large shredding units with 355 kW of installed power, pumps and large Hägglunds CA or CB hydraulic motors.

‘We’ve had many very successful projects with Hägglunds solutions and the drives are very good for the way our customers use the machines,’ Mack points out. ‘One of the real advantages is the variation in torque and speed we can provide for specific customer needs. We can build our machines to order, with a specific configuration of pumps and motor sizes that addresses all our customer’s requirements on a very high level.’

Mack says the flexibility in designing shredders with Hägglunds systems is matched by that of operating them. ‘One of the big challenges for our customers is the changing input material which can be small or large, light or heavy and possibility full of impurities. The ability to vary these two aspects, speed and torque, means security and risk reduction for the customer.’

Even smarter shredders

Weima plans to continue innovating, especially when it comes to digital solutions. The company already makes use of the Hägglunds Spider control system, which provides a built-in shredder mode. But Mack envisions even more independent shredders eventually and sees cooperation with the Hägglunds team as a way of reaching that goal.

‘I want to see completely automatic, self-regulating systems, where the shredder decides the necessary operating mode based on sensors that get information from the machine,’ he says. This idea fits neatly with the condition monitoring and other connectivity already being employed in Hägglunds drives. ‘My vision for the years to come is a shredder that learns and is able to decide the best thing for a customer’s production and we have projects with the Hägglunds team where this is in focus.’