Industrial Baler & Compactor Overview

Selecting the right industrial baler or compactor
Industrial balers and compactor equipment and services

Industrial balers and industrial compactors are useful to almost all businesses that create scrap material or recycle cardboard. This equipment is used to compact these materials into a finished compact shape or bale. Compacted material is smaller, easier to handle and less costly to transport then loose material.

Industrial balers and compactors can assist almost any business including manufacturing facilities, warehouses, schools, medical centers, junk yards and reclamation centers, smelters and ore processing centers, hotels, industrial facilities, hospitals, airports and restaurants.

About Industrial Balers and Compactors

A baler takes loose, recyclable products and compresses them into a bundle that is bound and tied to ease handling. A compactor compresses materials into a receiving container that is either dumped on-site or hauled to a trash receiving station. Typically, a compactor is used for trash and a baler is used for recyclable products.

An industrial baler is used to compress and bind materials for shipping or recycling. Industrial balers can be part of a line, with conveyor systems and shredders or operate independently. They have an input area either on the side or top depending on the type of baler. The input area leads to a chamber where the material is pounded, smashed or squeezed into a compact size and then bound. Wire, plastic or string is often used in the binding. Balers can be used for many types of materials. There are also specialized baling and compacting equipment available for the extraction of oils and liquids from material.

The two main types of baling machine styles are vertical and horizontal. This describes the way the material travels through the machine itself and also refers to way the material is loaded into the machine. Horizontal balers take up more floor space than vertical balers, but they have the advantage of greater load capacity and more automated functions. Vertical balers often are single load machines and need to be manually unloaded when the compacting and baling is complete. These are used in smaller facilities that produce less waste and deal often with scrap that is lighter in density and volume.

Industrial compactors are similar to balers, except that compactors are generally smaller units, and they tend to form a more compact bundle. They are commonly used for food waste processing and in commercial, marine, light industrial or residential applications.

Using Industrial Compactors for Trash

Trash is not a "sexy" subject but studies show that efficient management of your solid waste disposal can lead to significant cost savings for many businesses and institutions.

Typically waste hauler rates are determined by the size of the trash bin multiplied by the number of bins and the number of times they are emptied. By compacting your trash, the number of times each bins is emptied can be reduced significantly. So even if the hauler has a compacted trash rate of 1-1/2 to 2 times normal, your waste handling costs can still go down by 50% or more.

Other benefits can include:

• Potential labor savings with more efficient trash disposal.
• A cleaner parking lot because debris does not blow out of the bins.
• Better security because employees do not need to take the trash out at night enabling managers to keep the back door locked.
• Elimination of other people putting trash in your bins.
• Better Sanitation for kitchen operations because bacteria and odors are killed inside the compactor and trash bags will no longer build up at the door.

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Using Industrial Balers for Recycling

Corrugated cardboard represents a significant percentage of the commercial solid waste stream and can represent 15% of the waste generated in an office setting and as much as 40% or more in a retail establishment.

By recycling your cardboard instead of discarding it you'll be:

• Conserving energy usage,
• Reducing the production of green house gases and the emissions of certain air pollutants,
• Conserving water use,
• Conserving natural resources (it takes 3 tons of trees to produce one ton of virgin cardboard),
• Reducing the cost of your waste disposal,
• Freeing up space used to store waste cardboard,
• Complying with local regulations as applicable.

The recycling of corrugated containers is easy and simple to implement. Once the clean cardboard is separated, your system for handling the corrugated may be a simple as placing the loose flattened corrugated into a container, manually bundling it, or using a mechanical baler.

For businesses generating larger quantities of corrugated the decision to bale and the choice of bale size, should be made on a case-by-case basis. Generally speaking, both baling and compacting improve ease of handling, reduce storage space requirements and allow greater quantities to be carried per haul, thus reducing hauling costs.

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Common Types of Industrial Balers and Compactors

There are a lot of applications for balers and compactors, and they can be part of an assembly system or independent units. Special functions such as automatic tie or wrapping of the bale are available along with the capability to shear and remove extra protrusions. Some common types include:

• Baling presses use a large plate that comes down onto the material in the bin compressing it, then it is baled and ejected.
• Cardboard balers are designed to deal specifically with compressing and binding cardboard, usually for recycling.
• Compactors are used to condense or crush material; they have one or two mechanisms that press the material with extreme force to the desired size.
• Crushers and flatteners compact and crush or flatten scrap material to improve handling, transportation, and disposal.
• Double-ram balers have a separate ram for compressing recyclable material against a fixed wall and a second ram for ejecting the finished bale. Double-ram bales are generally denser, more uniform and use less wire-tie than single-ram bales. Double-ram balers are typically more expensive.
• Downstroke baler is a baling device in which the compression ram and platen move vertically in the chamber.
• Garbage or trash compactors are a powerful device used to condense waste, trash and garbage.
• Horizontal balers load from one end with the material traveling through to the other end in a horizontal motion.
• Open-end balers push the bale out and require and "auto tie" system, while a closed-end baler has a door at the end of the chamber.
• Single-ram balers are fed by a conveyor that moves in sequence with the baling operation. Materials travel through the "in-feed" to an open charging box where they collect. A photo eye tells the machine when the box is full, then the ram pushes the materials into a chamber for baling and automatic tying.
• Vertical balers load from the top or front of the machine and may have more than one bin in order to process different types or grades of material. They often have to be unloaded manually.

Next: Selecting the right industrial baler or compactor