Electric paper shredder jammed (costs, vent, outside, remove)
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I knew this would happen. I recently shredded an accumulation of personal papers and I think I fried my electric shredder. Upon inspection (with the machine unplugged) I could see that there are a lot of paper shreds basically melded onto the cutting wheels, so the wheels won't cut anymore, or even "grab " the paper as it's fed in. I tried to remove as much of the paper from the wheels as I could but it's pretty impossible. Any suggestions, or time for a new shredder?
I have accidentally jammed too much paper in my paper shredder too. I unplugged it and tried to manually remove as much paper that was jammed in the cutter. I plugged it back in and then toggled it back and forth from forward to reverse mode trying to dislodge any more jammed paper.
This works for me.
Unplug the power, pour some water on the paper (to soften the paper), wait a few minutes, power on (make sure no water gets to the power plug), insert 1 or 2 paper and see if it shred it with the softened paper. You may need to forward and reverse a few times.
This works for me.
Unplug the power, pour some water on the paper (to soften the paper), wait a few minutes, power on (make sure no water gets to the power plug), insert 1 or 2 paper and see if it shred it with the softened paper. You may need to forward and reverse a few times.
Interesting. I may give this a try because it does make sense to try and soften the paper. It's on those teeth like cement. I do have reverse on the machine which hadn't helped my current predicament. I can keep the water away from the power plug but won't the water harm the motor?
What I have done is use a pair of tweezers to patiently pick out the paper, a few strands at a time. Be careful about the forward/reverse trick, it will work, but it can also burn the motor.
Whether you should buy a new shredder is up to you. I've tried that too. I think you'd have to buy one that costs several hundred dollars to avoid this problem. The fact is that the smaller units are prone to jamming if you're not careful when you're feeding paper. It's such a boring job, and so tempting to try to push the machine just a little bit harder!
What you are suppose to do is buy some sort of cheap oil (the cooking kind is usually pretty cheap). LIGHTLY wet a piece of paper and shred it BEFORE shredding anything that day... that's suppose to prolong the life of your shredder since the oil will lubricate the gears and help prevent paper from clogging the system... it may be already too late for that shredder though...
What you are suppose to do is buy some sort of cheap oil (the cooking kind is usually pretty cheap). LIGHTLY wet a piece of paper and shred it BEFORE shredding anything that day... that's suppose to prolong the life of your shredder since the oil will lubricate the gears and help prevent paper from clogging the system... it may be already too late for that shredder though...
That sounds brilliant! I'll give that a try if I ever get this thing running again.
Thanks for all the tips!
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