This machine destroys everything

[Video Link]. Update: Previously blogged on BB. Here is a link to the "shred of the month" archive.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: Gadgets • Technology • Vintage Weird • Weird

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

seyo

FINALLY!!ELEVEN! A reliable solution for destroying limp celery! There is hope for our world after all.
bsdnazz

Om nom nom!
Blazel

I never thought I would see a man shred tampons to a cheesy 80′s soundtrack.

Thank you Boing Boing. Thank you so much.
- Steaming Pile
  
  If you look at the soda cans, those were circa 1985 or so. The Diet Pepsi cans are a dead giveaway.
- jnordb
  
  The soundtrack IS awesome (I wonder if it is on itunes…) These machines are commonly used in wastewater treatment facilities to grind up sewage (and other random items that make it into the sewer system) prior to it being sent to digester tanks for bacteria to begin working its magic.
  - betatron
    
    Sounds like music for establishing shots from Miami Vice season 2.
    - Anonymous
      
      Sounds like music for awesome 80s Italian porn scenes.
- Anonymous
  
  I think I may have rented that movie once!
dainel

These marbles seems to be too smooth. They’re just rolling around on top. Here, let me push them in … oww, my finger. Somebody switch off this thing quick. My arms. My head. … crunch.
lost feliz

Tampons? They needed to prove it could crush tampons and Cotex?
- Chevan
  
  I suspect they wanted to demonstrate that the machine can shred soft, pliable materials as well as hard, brittle materials.
  
  I could see a sufficiently soft material passing through one of these machines more intact than a hard one, by being deformed and stretched by the wheels instead of ripped apart or shredded.
  - Anonymous
    
    Actually, things like rags tend to wrap, and then the next solid through tends to enhance the chewing process. Eventually, even cloth fails to survive. I’ve seen Muffin Monsters eat rocks. The one thing I ever saw one have a real problem with was cable, like the kind that they use for guy-wires on phone poles. They do really fun things to golf balls too, they tend to take a bite and then pitch them! I didn’t watch the video, but I *did* work in a Wastepaper treatment plant.
seyo

ok, I must admit that seeing them run a whole chair through this thing was pretty cool.
Anonymous

Holy health and safety batman! Hope they had someone sitting with their finger on the off button in case someone caught a hand in that thing.
- kmoser
  
  You didn’t notice the guy in the wide shots with his hand on the button?
Anonymous

What would happen if you threw a shredding machine into the shredding machine?
- Anonymous
  
  Two shredders enter! One shredder leaves!
The Gunner

.. but will it blend? That is the question.
- Andrew S
  
  Alternatively, will it destroy a blend-tec blender? Also, will it destroy a blend-tec blender which is blending another of it, which… (et cetera)
Anonymous

My dad works with these bad-boys. Turns out each one of those blades is worth in the region of Â£100,000.
- awjtawjt
  
  No way. They are stacked chunks of cut steel. Probably cost about 5k for each spindle, tops. If they are charging more, that’s BS.
irksome

I’m most impressed with its utter lack of safety features.

“C’mon over here kids and let your Uncle Irksome show you a cool new toy.”
Anonymous

Why is Mario in the background…
The .invalid

Fuck yeah, that music was incredible!
Anonymous

It’s a compact version of the muffin monster from 30 Days of Night! I need one in case of vampires!
Anonymous

Hmm, this will help me hide the bodies
Nadaclue

Atlas and P-Body are not amused.
- orn310
  
  Ahh… Clever, very Clever and FOOLISH! No Way out.
  At my mercy and I don’t have any, you are at my nothing.
  Spinny-Blade-Wall
  Machiavellian!
tylerkaraszewski

So what happens if you take two of these machines and try to feed one to the other?
narddogz

Muffin Monster! My father worked at the Justice Center in downtown Portland where they had one of these operating. It’s supposed to grind up anything the inmates will flush down the toilets, hence the tampon / sanitary napkin demonstration.
- Anonymous
  
  Where did Jimmy the Stolly from Portland go?
Anonymous

This video could have really ended badly.
Anonymous

This is why we can’t have nice things.
Anonymous

That guy’s wife is going to be ticked off. Feminine hygiene products ain’t cheap.
sla29970

It doesn’t destroy DNA. I sense several TV crime drama plots in the making.
bobcrackerlacker

Slaughterhouses use huge machines like these to grind up livestock, pretty disgusting.
dross1260

I can see the benefits of smaller landfill/more food additive, but is it cost reductive? Please remember to recycle wood pallets at the sausage factory.
Rob Gehrke

Industrial version good for destroying pianos too (a welcome development) :
SSI’s Shred of the Month :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJzG7CSYg3U&feature=player_embedded
Anonymous

Health and safety-tastic. I like it when he plunges his hands into a box of shredded metal. I guess he must’ve already shredded his gloves.

I was waiting to see him shred a board made of asbestos next…
Anonymous

Ohhhhhh this is a metaphor for SooooOOOOoooo many things I don’t know where to start…..:)
mrjohnc

That’s the machine out of 30 Days of Night (the film version) that eats that man’s hand near the end
Anonymous

SPINNY BLADE WALL!

Machiavellian.
Anonymous

thats blanket smoke, dont breath this! lol
Anonymous

When the singularity happens the robots will have these as their mouths.
OtiGoji

Can they put Fukushima reactors #1, #2 and #3 in there?
Anonymous

Fargo!
Anonymous

Can I feed it my pain and sadness?
debido666

Thought this was a Tim and Eric episode, at first.
Max

Or, the bigger version shredding all your old IT kit :
http://youtu.be/j1_uvM-5xKs
- Soliloquy
  
  Wow, that gave me flashbacks to the Brave Little Toaster desperately fleeing the car crusher in the junkyard: http://youtu.be/-UfsEj7AOGI
  - Gulliver
    
    Wow, that gave me flashbacks to the Brave Little Toaster desperately fleeing the car crusher in the junkyard
    
    Yay! Brave Little Toaster :D
Anonymous

Throw in a tire… betcha it comes to a halt.
- Blaine
  
  It’ll do a tire.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onwV9R6A2EI&NR=1
  
  It’s a larger version, but same technology.
  
  A buddy of mine works with something similar to the muffin monster. There’s really not much they can’t chew up.
Jack

â€œAnd thus concludes my destruction of everything my ex-wife owned or gave me. From her tampons, to her precious $%@!ing tennis balls, to the Army blanket she gave me when she kicked me out of the house, to the roll of insulation that we never used because we had to sell the house on account of the divorce.â€
The Hamster King

What does it do to fascists?
- ethanol
  
  I bet it can also surround hate and force it to surrender.
- extra88
  
  Yeah, when I saw the title I thought the video was going to be a freaky mash-up of Woodie Guthrie.
- irksome
  
  Woody Guthrie reference, ftw.
Felton / Moderator

How big is the one at our secret lair going to be?
betatron

This thing, and its bigger siblings are truly nightmarish.

Interestingly (or not) you can see it choke on couple things. The pink insulation and, i think, the sofa cushions.
nemrel

“This machine destroys everything”

What about Cancer?
- madsci
  
  Yes…. but it’s not very selective.
EH

Finally, a way to convert old water into a recyclable form!
Teller

I’m so glad Saddam and spawn are dead.
Anonymous

bobcrackerlacker:
Slaughterhouses use huge machines like these to grind up livestock, pretty disgusting.

That’s correct, they even grind newborn chickens!! WTF! Sick!

http://www.meatvideo.com/
- jjbjj
  
  re: #46 – here’s more animal shredding – http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1c6_1250175155
Anonymous

“… Don’t breathe this!”
Stonewalker

FUCK TAMPONS
Nash Rambler

*Mafia raises eyebrows in interest*
valdis

To be fair, the couch at 3:50 *deserved* to be shredded. It was both ugly and flimsy.
sigismund

EX-TER-MI-NA-TE !!! Wooohoo !!! I can’t believe I’m the first one to say it !!
- Anonymous
  
  lmao, you are great for saying that. Doctor Who is the best
Brainspore

This just makes me resent my consumer-grade paper shredder.
Anonymous

I’ve been looking for a way to destroy all my tampons. Thanks JWC Environmental!
jrank

What do they have against female hygiene?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  jrank,
  
  Please don’t link to your blog in comments.
Anonymous

Even _I_ can chew up ikea furniture. I use it as a substitute for $5/box high fiber cereal.

Not sure about all the femhyg prods tho. Is it me, or did the presenter seem to spend just a bit more time fondling their remains than the rest of the victims.
Anonymous

Thank you! I have been going bonkers trying to decide what I was going to use for the mouth of the “Robot Who Will Help Me Destroy The World” I am currently developing. I was torn between rapidly chomping metal teeth or a simple flamethrower, but this is inspired. It will make post-devastation clean-up so much more efficient too.
Anonymous

more more more
mn_camera

Is it a good idea to microwave this?
Anonymous

but can it shred love?
VICTOR JIMENEZ

DIE stupid tennis balls!
FUCK YOU wet army blanket!
I HATE you all!
mxjohnson

“Blake, have you seen my tampons? Blake, honey? My tampons? What did you do with my tampons?”
Skidds

Why was the cut-away showing the shreaded tampons a second longer than the others?
Drew from Zhrodague

My god, its… beautiful!
Anonymous

i think one of those is on the front of mek quake…BIG JOBS!
Anonymous

No Chuck Norris jokes?

c’mon guys.
davecity

There are more massive versions, documented in the shred of the month here: http://www.ssiworld.com/watch/

They should totally throw some blend-tec blenders in there one month.
Anonymous

Thats an ‘accelerated entropy’ machine right there – awesome!
Anonymous

We’ve got a smaller version of this at work, the Techs use to destroy the harddrives from decomissioned computers.

Only it broke down. The aluminium metal in the harddrives sort of got stuck on the wheels (looked like someone fed it chewing gum) and the apparatus seized up.
karl_jones

Feed it Steve Buscemi. You know you want to.
Anonymous

How about this Shredder shredding a Shredder!

http://www.youtube.com/v/6nROrmYOJCI
microcars

Water goes in, water comes out. Unharmed.
You can’t explain that.
millie fink

After awhile I started expecting them to throw in a kitchen sink.
Lucky

Yes, not sure why we needed to see the machine gobble tampons and pads. Must be some latent he-man women hater psychosis being acted upon there.
- phisrow
  
  You can’t think of any reasons why potential customers of a shredding machine producer might be concerned about whether or not durable, but pliable and compressible, interlink fiber products that very commonly show up in consumer waste streams will be shredded successfully, rather than jamming the machine and forcing processing to stop while somebody cleans it out?
  
  You don’t have to look too hard for slightly covert misogyny in the media; but, until they just started amusing themselves with the sofa and things, the series of objects looked like a pretty standard lineup of “assorted things you might commonly find coming down the sewer line, with a few representatives from each category that might be of concern”…
Anonymous

@Anon,

Nope those machines do a fine job with car tires too. Here are some brand new looking tires getting minced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ1DP3ufdNA
Jake0748

Hey, I’d buy one of these, just for that sound the tennis balls were making. :)
candycritic

I would love to see it destroy itself… now that would be cool.
joeposts

But what does it do to bone and flesh? I need a shredder that can handle lots and lots of bone and flesh.
Anonymous

Machines?! How do they work?
Anonymous

Denver Broncos mascot shreds Raiders’ helmets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUoze-rGfbg
awjtawjt

If he’s gonna fondle scrambled wet army blanket detritus to 80′s promo music, he should at least fondle wet used tampon detritus to 80′s promo music.
Razzabeth

I need a miniature one of these for inside my toilet.
- Anonymous
  
  Actually that’s basically what this thing is. (a sewage grinder pump)
HC66

So now I know how they get the stuffing for my incredibly cheap pillows.
Anonymous

OMFG! The blend-tec blender has a grandparent!!
Soliloquy

I want to see it eat a bowling ball.
- microcars
  
  Bowling Balls? no problem:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73LjSLUZGZc
w000t

Dirty Jobs had a segment cleaning up after one of these in a sewage treatment system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ7GihJOJ7M
The muffin monster comes just after 2:15.
- Gulliver
  
  Dirty Jobs had a segment cleaning up after one of these in a sewage treatment system.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEdOqYEwcT8
KaiBeezy

.
goatbot
.
Glyph

*shudders*
I have this weird thing about destruction. Couldn’t tell you why, or really explain it, but.

This… thing… is an abomination. AN ABOMINATION I TELL YOU.
KaiBeezy

.
nightmares
please add flesh detector
can be done
see http://www.sawstop.com
or for that matter
google touchscreen gloves
.
alllie

The teeth looked thoroughly jammed after it ate certain things, like it would have to be meticulously cleaned by hand.
Theo Outlandish

I’d like to see it take out a blendtec blender.
Anonymous

Based on the title I was really hoping for a giant robot that shoots laser beams out of its eyes.

Nevertheless, cool vid.
Anonymous

I used to work on a ship where we regularly had to take apart sewage grinders at 2am because a member of crew had flushed a tampon or wetwipe. they’re very difficult to shred properly, and its something you’d definitely want to include in a promotional video. mind you, i’d also include safety features in a promotional video… get your hand in that, and it wouldn’t even slow down as it pulled your whole arm in.
Anonymous

Hence the reason we have OSHA.
Anonymous

I do have to wonder at all the feminine product munching….
- Gulliver
  
  @ Anon #94
  
  I do have to wonder at all the feminine product munching
  
  You didnâ€™t read the comments above yours, did you?
Fef

Has George Lucas seen this?
Prepare to see a planet sized mock-up.
- Anonymous
  
  Sadly, George Lucas has already become a machine that destroys everything.
Anonymous

Memo to machine feeder guy: if you ever wear a tie to work, make it a clipon.
bcsizemo

I know this is kind of old tech, but wouldn’t one of these upstream of one of those vacuum/tornado pulverizers make the perfect solid waste disposal setup?
Anonymous

I’ve seen ranchers use these machines on dead cattle and horses. Quite a sight.
Anonymous

Looking at the company its designed for sanitation systems so feminine products are relevant. Really cool, would be excellent for data destruction.
kennapea

it’s the perfect gift for that person on everyone’s list who has everything and FUCKING HATES IT ALL!
doofus666

http://youtu.be/JWxcJDONE_U engine blocks
Neon Tooth

Was really expecting the belts to be tangled on his arm…
KBert

Dodge Daytona – watch it choke; and swallow!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQs5hchKCAM&feature=relmfu
Anonymous

Where’s the bowling ball?
morat

Feed me, Seymour. Feeeeed me.
Anonymous

Someone needs to dub this video to make the machine go OM NOM NOM NOM! CHAIR! OM NOM NOM! SHOE! MY FAVOURIT! NOM NOM! MORE SHOE! NOM NOM!
Anonymous

2005 called:

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/04/industrial-shredder-.html

Here is a full link to the shred of the month archive:

http://www.ssiworld.com/watch/
PimpleAbortion

Fuck the Home Shopping Network. THIS is what I want to pass out to at 3 in the morning.
Antinous / Moderator

If only there had been one of these at Rivendell…
- Vnend
  
  >If only there had been one of these at Rivendell…
  
  “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve produced…”
swishercutter

It’s like I have always said…You have to know someone to get all the good jobs. Why can’t I get paid to break stuff…I am really good at it, I will even collect and organize any data you want. Oh…you want to know if we can shred a car to make it fit in a trash can? No problem sir. On my way now.

I would probably show up early to that job and whistle like the 7 dwarfs on my way.
Anonymous

If it can destroy a diamond then I would believe it can destroy everything.
JM

Somehow, I think you don’t fully understand the power of this machine until you’ve seen it shred live pigs. It’s out there.
Erik_1

If it can destroy a diamond, then I believe it can destroy everything.
- Gulliver
  
  If it can destroy a diamond, then I believe it can destroy everything.
  
  Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes.
  
  Positronium.
  
  Neutronium.
  
  Fluids.
- Gulliver
  
  And spider webs. Forgot spider webs.
- Anonymous
  
  Diamonds are hard to scratch, but both brittle and flammable.
Anonymous

This is when Boing Boing is most awesome!
Anonymous

I’ve worked quite a bit with the JWC “muffin monster”. They are expensive, very high maintenance piles of junk.
Alan

I got to admit, I was disappointed they didn’t throw in that forklift they had in the background at the end.
Anonymous

finally a way to facilitate a sucessful breakup…..
or,
that’s what happened to Hoffa.
Anonymous

Oh Mythbusters, your explosions were my first love, but I have a new love now….
Anonymous

How can they claim it destroys EVERYTHING? They didn’t even try a Guinea Pig with an Adamantium skeleton.
Anonymous

I want to see it break up old solid (Claughton brickworks) red house bricks & paving flags.
Ruadhan

I nominate Jonathan Coulton’s “I Crush Everything” as an alternative soundtrack.
Anonymous

It’s The Mangler from Stephen King’s The Night Shift!
Anonymous

best 5 minutes of my life.