Paper Shredders used in the offices: a Detailed review
This is an informative article where I am going to discuss about the various types of paper shredders used in an office to properly dispose off your sensitive and very confidential document. Go through the entire article to know all about paper shredding equipment.
Introduction
A paper shredder is a machine that cuts a paper into fine pieces usually into vertical strips. This equipment is used in Business houses, Government offices and in any place where the handling of private, sensitive or confidential documents is carried out. Shredding of personal or confidential documents is required to avoid any misuse of the information such as fraud or theft of any kind by cons. In fact shredding of individual bills, credit cards, bank documents, tax information, Tender quotations and any such personal and business related information should always be properly disposed and not just thrown away in the garbage bins.
Usually a normal paper shredder is an electrically powered machine, but we have unpowered ones as well in the market for small scale usage. The unpowered hand operated shredders include special scissors with many blade pairs and hand-cranked shredder.
The shredding equipments can be classified according to the size and shape of the shreds they produce. Major types of shredders based on the type of shreds they produce from a paper are as follows:
Strip-cut Shredder :
Strip-cut shredder is the type of machine that uses rotating knives to cut down a document into shreds. The shreds produced by this machine are narrow vertical strips of the original sheet of paper. These types of shredders are considered as the least secure of all. This is because the long vertical strips can be rearranged and reassembled to get the information written on the piece of original paper. Though this is quite a tiresome and patient work but a determined investigator could not be stopped from doing this. Limitation:
Cross-cut or confetti-cut shredder machine :
Cross-cut shredder is also known as confetti-cut shredding machine since the shredded bits created by this type of paper shredder often resemble confetti. It contains two contra rotating blades or drums that could cut a document in a number of different shape such a square, rectangle, diamond-shape and so on. Since the cutting process is more randomized, this type of shredder is considered as much safer than a strip-cut shredder.
Advantages of Cross-cut shredders :
Limitation
Micro-cut or Particle-cut shredder
Particle-cut or micro-cut paper shredding machine is used where high security standards need to be maintained. This may include high security government offices, intelligent bureau, scientific research laboratories, and space research organizations and so on. This type of paper shredders usually creates 6,000 tiny squares or circular pieces per 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper (approximately); Which is a very high level of security standard. Limitation :
There is only one limitation associated with Micro-cut paper shredder and that is its cost price. This type of machine is very expensive and do not find its place in every office.
Other commonly used shredders may include:Cardboard shredder
A cardboard shredder is specially designed to chad a cardboard or a corrugated material into small pieces. These shreds could be either in the shape of vertical strips or a mesh pallet, depending on the type of model used. Disintegrator and granulators
Disintegrators and granulators cut a paper repeatedly in a random order till the shreds are small enough to pass through a wire mesh. This is very secure type of shredder where paper cutting is very irregular and random.Hammermills shredder
Hammermills is the type of machine that crushes the paper/document into very fine bits. This type of paper shredder consists of a steel drum that have a vertical and horizontal rotating shaft or drum. On these shafts special hammers are mounted, which is fixed to the central rotor and is free to swing on the ends of the cross. The rotor is spun at a high speed inside the drum and the paper to be shed is fed into it. These paper documents are impacted by the hammer bars and are thereby shredded into fine bits. Finally the shredded bits are expelled out through screens in the drum.Limitations
Pierce and Tear shredder
Pierce and tear type of shredder consist of rotating blades that pierce through the paper and tears them apart. No particular pattern is followed and the process is more or less very random. This process is also much secure and can be used in any office or at home for security purposes.Grinders
Grinders, as the name suggest, are special shredders that grind the paper into fine particles. It consist of a rotating shaft with sharp cutting blades just like a normal Grinder that we use in our kitchen. When powered on, these blades rotate with high speed, cutting and grinding the papers into fine bits that are small enough to pass through a screen or a mesh.Conclusion
To ensure the complete security of your valuable documents, shredding a document before throwing it in a bin is advisable. The paper shredding equipments also helps the environment by providing a means to recycle the shredded unwanted documents. So, along with safeguarding our sensitive documents by using paper shredders, why not we all 'Go Green' by recycling them.
Nice blog!The shredder looks like a very high quality product. Wish I had one to shred the 2 paper bags of shreddables.