Find out exactly what differentiates office shredders from home shredders in this video comparison of typical examples of both types of shredders. Kyle Mitchell demonstrates both shredders mechanisms functioning up close, zooming in on the specific features that distinguishes one from the other. This will give prospective buyers a clearer idea of what makes one different from another aside from in terms of sheets per pass and price. Whitaker Brothers’ Kyle Mitchell gives you the low down on the difference in categories between a business commercial-grade shredder and something that you would use at home in this video. If you’ve ever shopped for a paper shredder before, usually about the only comparison numbers that you have are sheets per pass and price. In this particular video, the home shredder takes in 15 sheets of paper while the commercial shredder takes 22, but this does not account for the $1000 price difference between the two. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdsT2ViPMlM&w=560&h=315]

An Overview of Home Shredder

In the video demonstration, the typical home shredder is small but undeniably very low-end and costing for about $60. It’s great for shredding your stuff at home. It may be able to shred some stuff at school, maybe some tax forms, but it’s not something you want to run too hard. It’s basically a junk mail shredder. Upon switching it on, you will see its tiny little motor, which is not very strong but definitely not continuous duty. After about five minutes of running this, it’s going to have to be turned off and it’s going to need a cool-off period. Right here on the side are the three tiny little gears which are responsible for turning the cutting heads. They’re not very strong. They’re not going to resist a whole lot of damage before they just break. Most importantly, they’re not enclosed so all the paper dust created by the cutting heads is going to get into those gears. On closer look at the cutting heads themselves, you will see that these are mostly plastic. The little piece of metal on each cutting cylinder is the part responsible for all the shredding. In conclusion, the home shredder is not a heavy duty machine.

The Office Shredder

Upon switching the machine on, you can see the operating difference between them. The cutting heads are made of Solingen steel and the spacers are metal. There is hardly any plastic in the entire machine. In comparison to home shredders, business or commercial grade shredders have larger gears enclosed in the gearbox, protected from all that dust. Coming towards the front is the thermally protected motor. It can run all day long. You never have to give it a rest. It never poops out on you and in addition to not only giving you 24-hours of usage, thermally protected motors actually last a whole lot longer. Finally, a feature that you find on a lot of commercial-grade shredders is the automatic oiler. From outside, it sucks oil from a reservoir, which I then pumped brought to the shredder and pumped into the manifold to be distributed to the cutting heads. This is what makes up a commercial-grade shredder. You’ll get five to ten plus years out of something like this whereas with home shredders, your expectation may only be one to three years and that’s if you’re using it really lightly. The purpose of this video demonstration is to show you the actual differences between a home and an office shredder, and why it’s really hard to compare shredders based on sheet count and price. The best thing you can do is call up a Whitaker Brothers sales professional. They’ll be able to tell you from personal experience what shredders are tough and what shredders aren’t really made for the environment that you’re hoping to put them in.