Pneumatic Can Crusher Awaits Your Command

April 26, 2021 by Tom Nardi 22 Comments

A powerful robot awaiting for a verbal command to crush its foes might sound like something from a science fiction film, but now it’s a permanent fixture of the [Making Stuff] garage. (Video, embedded below.) Thankfully this robot’s sworn enemy are aluminum cans, and the person controlling it with their voice isn’t a maniacal scientist, just a guy who’s serious about recycling. Well, we hope so anyway.

The star of the show is a heavy duty wall-mounted can crusher that [Making Stuff] built from some scrap steel and a pneumatic cylinder hooked up to the garage’s compressed air system. A solenoid operated valve allows an Arduino with attached ESP-01 to extend the cylinder whenever the appropriate command comes over the network. In this case, the goal was to tie the crusher into Google Assistant so a can would get smallified whenever one of Google’s listening devices heard the trigger phrase.

Obviously, those who’d rather keep Big Data out of their recycling bin don’t have to go down the same path. But that being said, having to give a specific voice command to activate the machine does provide a certain level of operational safety. At least compared to trusting some eBay sensor to tell the difference between an aluminum can and a fleshy appendage.

After crushing a few cans with his new toy, [Making Stuff] noticed a fairly troubling flaw in the design. Each time a can was crushed he had to reach into the maw of the machine to push its little flattened carcass out of the way. In other words, he was one bad line of code away from having one good hand.

The solution ended up being a new hose that runs from the exhaust port of the valve to the crushing chamber: once the cylinder retracts, the air exiting the valve pushes the crushed can out the rear of the machine and into a waiting pail underneath. Very slick.

Even if you’re not interested in the voice control aspect, this is a great design to base your own can crusher on. While it’s always a treat when a fully automatic crusher comes our way, we’ll admit the challenges of getting one to work reliably probably aren’t worth the hassle.

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A Fully Automatic Electric Can Crusher

January 13, 2019 by Jenny List 63 Comments

Those of us who recycle our empty drink cans know the annoying storage problem these containers present. For an object with very little metal, a can takes up a huge amount of space, and should you possess a greater than average thirst you can soon end up with a lot of space taken up with stacks of cans. The solution of course is to crush them, and while there are many simple solutions involving hinged blocks of wood or lever systems, this is 2019! We have Machines to that kind of thing for us! [All Things Electro-Mechanical] thinks so anyway, for he has created an automatic can crusher that is a joy to behold.

At its heart is a 120V AC powered linear actuator, which crushes a can held in a welded steel guide. As the can is crushed it drops into a waiting bin, and when the actuator retracts a fresh can drops down from a hopper. Control is handled by a Raspberry Pi, and there are end sensors for the actuator and an optical sensor for the can hopper. As it stands, once the last can is in place the machine stops due to the optical sensor registering no can in the hopper, but no doubt a software change could cause it to execute a single crush cycle after the last can it detects.

This machine would be an ideal candidate for a simple industrial automation system, but however it is controlled it would save its owner from an embarrassing test of strength. Take a look, we’ve posted the two videos showing it in action below the break.

Thanks [Baldpower] for the tip.

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Can Crusher Keeps Track Of Your Recycling Efforts

April 25, 2011 by Mike Nathan 27 Comments

arduino_can_crusher

Instructables user [MRHint] was inspired by his friends’ recycling efforts, and decided to start recycling as well. The one thing he noticed was that they typically had no idea how many cans they had stored up, nor how much their bags of cans weigh. He figured that he could somewhat automate the crushing process while keeping an accurate can count using a handful of electronics and some elbow grease.

He started by designing a can crushing rig that would use an old windshield wiper motor he had sitting around the house. The motor is connected to a pulley, which drives a set of threaded rods connected to his movable crushing panel. When the motor is started, the panel is drawn against a stationary board, crushing the can.[MRHint] also had an unused Arduino hanging around, so he used it to control the crusher as well as keep track of how many times the crusher had been run.

From what we hear the whole setup works pretty well, but as with any project he sees plenty of room for improvement. Future changes may include a more powerful motor and a chain/sprocket setup in place of the belt and pulley he currently uses. Do you have any other suggestions for [MRHint]? Let us know in the comments.

Cannihilator Can Crusher

February 18, 2010 by Mike Szczys 49 Comments

This box will crush your cans and deposit them in the bin below. Branded the Cannihilator, [Jeff Walsh] built this with his two sons, [Jake] and [Ryan]. Early hacking eduction is important if they want their future projects to be regular Hackaday features.

The crushing power is provided by a solenoid pneumatic ram. As seen in the video after the break, the can goes in the door on the left, is crushed, then drops through a slot. [Jeff] had fingers and hands in mind when designing this and included a few safety features. The “crush” button is locate on the opposite end from the can slot, there is a kill switch to disable the solenoid, and a keyed switch to shut the whole apparatus down. A Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller handles the electronics with the help of a daughter-board to manage the load switching. This is a nice addition to the creative can crushers out there.

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Smart Can Crusher

July 10, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/4821403%5D

[Mangonha] has put together this interesting project involving aluminium can recycling (translated, sortof). They’re using an arduino to tally up how much aluminium they have accumulated. That information is then passed on and displayed on a google map. There are families that go around collecting the cans as a means of income, and this system could be very helpful to them. They state that their goal is to eventually have restaraunts and more families included. We’re a bit curious about how helpful this really is. How is that information actually changing the actions of the collectors? Would a simple flag on your door or window signalling enough cans to pick up or not be just as effective?

[via the Make flickr pool]

Quarter Shrinker (can Crusher Follow-up)

October 17, 2007 by Will O'Brien 11 Comments

[Paul Anderson] sent in this classic quarter shrinker after seeing the can crusher the other day. It’s another high powered pulse shot into a coil system, but uses a solenoid actuated spark gap switch to swith those sweet high voltages. The results are quite impressive.

Hackaday Prize Semifinalist: CANcrusher

August 25, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

In 2007, everyone discovered you could blink an LED with an Arduino. A few years after that, someone discovered you could make a PID controller work with an Arduino, and a great number of sous vide cooker hacks showed up on the Internet. Trends in electronics projects come and go, and this year we have CANbus sniffers and development platforms. One of these CAN dev platforms, CANcrusher, is a semifinalist for the Hackaday Prize, and does a great job at poking and prodding a CANbus.

Like a lot of very excellent projects, the CANcrusher is based on a Teensy 3.1 microcontroller. This, along with the MCP2515 CAN controller gives the CANcrusher three independent CAN channels supporting DW-CAN, SW-CAN, and LSFT. The software for the device can stream data directly to a computer over USB.

Simply providing an interface for a CAN bus is something that has been done to death, and to improve upon the many CANbus projects out there, the CANcrusher is adding Bluetooth, a GSM radio, SD datalogging, and a real time clock. It’s a great project for the Hackaday Prize with multiple videos explaining how it works and what it can do. You can check out the entry video for the CANcrusher below.