Modding A Paper Shredder

detaks writes "The university of alberta's undergraduate computing science student group modded the office shredder, with duct tape, 110volt case fans, and a athlon fan, to increase the speed of the paper shredder from 12 to 37 pages shredded before overheating. You can also read it in the google cache"

Enron et al.

[andyrut]

They can now cook their books in half the time!

Re:Enron et al.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't a reduction in heat augment the cooking time?

Re:Enron et al.

[spike hay]

They should use the excess heat of the shredder to set MORE paper on fire!!!

Re:Enron et al.

[Anonymous Coward]

Would that be the RIAA/MPAA equivalent of 3, or 4 shredders?

Re:Enron et al.

[slickwillie]

I just ordered the shredding attachment for my HP printer. Just print and shred at the same time.

Sounds interesting

[os2fan]

Can you imagine this in the hands of the corporate people who want to "cover" their paper tracks - I shudder to think this is what is becomming of the world

Re:Sounds interesting

[angle_slam]

Not interesting at all. Anyone who really needs to shred documents will purchase a high-volume shredder, such as those found on Papershredders.com [papershredders.com], instead of modding a personal shredder.

imagine this in the hands of...

[benjamindees]

We should outlaw shredder "mods". These are obviously an attempt to rob shredder manufacturers of the profits from their "razor-and-blade" business model of selling third-rate plastic products and expecting customers to buy a new one every year. Shredder hackers must be stopped.

Fans

[Capt. DrunkenBum]

Maybe they should have used some of those fans, and the duct tape, and overclocked their server.

Re:Fans

[rehannan]

If you you're refering to the "modded the office shredder" link, the url is incorrect. It's pretty hard to /. a server that doesn't exist. Remove the "www." bit.

Re:right

[Sh0t]

" Maybe you should check the "No Score +1 Bonus" box and start posting responsibly." So says the anon coward

Duct Tape!

[core plexus]

Duct Tape, of course! Ever see the Red Green Show? Now all they need are some blue tarps.

The Red Green Show

[OzPeter]

When I used to live in the US I loved that show .. ahh the memories it brings back

Re:Duct Tape!

[hitzroth]

"If they don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."

Re:Duct Tape!

[Dr Caleb]

and always keep your stick on the ice.

We could've used this!

[Equuleus42]

If only Enron and Worldcom had invested in this new type of shredder, they would still be in business!

Re:We could've used this!

[RubberDuckie]

No, they still would have gone bankrupt. The muckie-mucks would just have gotten away with driving their companies out of business.

Call me a troll, but ...

[lethargic]

Call me a troll, but what is so special about this? :) Their server appears to be down, so I can't read the article to find out.

Re:Call me a troll, but ...

[SoCalChris]

Hey troll, why should I think you were even going to read the article, since you obviously didn't even read the whole post? The second sentence in the post refers to the Google cache [216.239.53.100] that Hemos thoughtfully provided since he knew the server would probably go down.

Re:Call me a troll, but ...

[lethargic]

hmmmmmm, and *now* I see the link to the google cache. Atleast the article is meant to be humourous, not something half-serious. :)

Of course the Server is down

[s-orbital]

The server is down because they ripped its fans out to sup-up the shedder.

Re:Call me a troll, but ...

[macdaddy357]

Why not mod a shredder to look just like a fax machine. Take it to the office, and watch hilarity insue!

Re:Call me a troll, but ...

[Sh0t]

Now that made me chuckle.
That would be a cool episode for an "Office Pranks" show.

No, make the fax machine look like a shredder

[Gerry Gleason]

That was my first thought when I read this item. Just making a faster shredder isn't that interesting, but either sending someone a copy of what is being shredded, and/or getting a picture of the person doing the shredding seems a lot more interesting.

Ok, so there are legitimate uses of shredders that would make it bad to just send out copies, but legitimate users wouldn't mind having their picture taken (much). Maybe the mods should enable themselves after hours.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan would never have become Governor if it hadn't taken so long before we learned about the shredding party at the Sec. of State offices before he was elected.

Just goes to show you...

[TechnoLust]

It's really boring in Canada. ;-)

Speaking of which, that's the last place you think of having cooling problems. Why not put the thing outside a save a few bucks?

Re:Just goes to show you...

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Actually, in my city (Calgary) we don't even have snow yet. We're having a very brown Christmas this year.

When I used to live in Edmonton there were snowdrifts over my head - course, I was four feet tall then. Quite warm and dry these last few years.

Not here either

[phorm]

Not much snow, except the upper heights, here in BC either. Kamloops, Merritt, Vancouver... all bare.

Which leads me to think... computers+snow, not good.

Re:Just goes to show you...

[Capt. DrunkenBum]

Because Duct Tape doesn't stick when it is VERY cold... Don't you know anything important? :)

Re:Just goes to show you...

[Dr Caleb]

That's why we invented spit and binder twine.
That'll hold till spring.

Re:Just goes to show you...

[terrymr]

Thanks for reminding me - I was wondering what the significance of that was. I remember now. ARRRRGGHHHHHHH!!!

Re:Just goes to show you...

[Idarubicin]

Just goes to show you...It's really boring in Canada.

Tell me about it. At my school (University of Waterloo, in Ontario), we celebrated Halloween by blowing up pumpkins using liquid nitrogen. (Sealed vessels of liquid nitrogen can rupture catastrophically.) Here's a direct link to the video. [uwaterloo.ca] It's rather low res (the video was captured using a digital camera from a safe(?) distance away) but you get the idea. I like the remark at 1:12: "That went right through our spectator area..."

Speaking of which, that's the last place you think of having cooling problems. Why not put the thing outside a save a few bucks?

Where do you think we got the liquid nitrogen? ;)

oh, great

[stinky wizzleteats]

I was just wondering how and when the corporate scandal news would finally pass from the minds of large corporate investors, and now this.

I wonder if this qualifies as enabling technology for comitting corporate crime, much like watching DVDs on Linux is for copyright violations. I wonder if it would be pursued as stridently.

Even better...

[jonman_d]

...I'm scared to think of what these people would do to this poor shreader if they were introduced to liquid nitrogen cooling.

Remember the movie Screamers?

[jabber01]

Nuff said [imdb.com]

Re:Even better...

[Chris_Stankowitz]

...I'm scared to think of what these people would do to this poor shreader if they were introduced to liquid nitrogen cooling.

or Fluorinert [3m.com]

Low Tech Solution

[istartedi]

Just pour the LN2 on the paper and hit it with a hammer a few times. I bet that would shatter the old record. Pun intended!

Re:Low Tech Solution

[dmaxwell]

It would be much more fun to pour LO2 on the paper and toss a few Blue Devils on it.

Re:Low Tech Solution

[istartedi]

I have no idea what a Blue Devil is, but if paper is anything like charcoal briquettes, you shouldn't ignite it after pouring on LOX. According to people who have experience clowning around with LOX [purdue.edu] one briquette is "approx equiv to 1 stick of dynamite".

Re:You can tell they are CS students...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

3) if they were engineering students they would well have directed the shredded output to a mini incinerator and used this to a run a cooling pump

Or find some way to just pump the motor heat directly to the paper. Unlikely.

Engineering students might have tried to up the motor and its drive circuitry too so that it has better torque. then one might need the blades and rollers made from stronger materials.

Or maybe improved on the design by building a better one from scratch, hopefully so that it mulches down to the fiber and composts in an automatic two stage process, it's pretty hard to put the fibers back to gether after that one.

O/Cing a paper shredder

[Mr.roboto]

Now all that they need to do is add some stripes and a backwards "R" to it. ;)

correct link

[rehannan]

http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~uacs/events/shredder. html [ualberta.ca]

Actually, I prefer the

[Mac Degger]

french bread slicer we made which, when modified to run backwards, could shoot the two halves to hit the ceiling at such speed that if it was days-old, it could shatter the bread :)

But then again, that's what mechanical engineering students should be up to ;)

Link seems to be wrong

[jo-do-cus]

the right URL is:

http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~uacs/events/shredder. html

Meh

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Since we had yet to swap the motor with one more powerful, the shredding was trying our patients.

At least in Calgary we know how to spell. Or were they putting med school volunteers through El Shreddoro? All you Edmontonians can give us is a modded shredder and Space Moose. [spacemoose.com]

[/playful troll]

(BTW, those Space Moose comics are not office friendly. You've been warned!)

Re:Meh

[Dr Caleb]

At least in Calgary we know how to spell

But perhaps you should by a hockey team. :P

(mistakes intentional, being from Edmonchuk n all.)

Re:Meh

[Lao-Tzu]

*sigh*. Yeah... or at least we should hire some blocks of metal, put skates on them, and leave them on the ice. I think it'd be an improvement. The team might not win, but I bet it won't screw up as much.

Re:Meh

[Dr Caleb]

That might not be so bad. If they were playing the Rangers, the Rangers would be all like "Wow. Shiny!" and the score wouldn't get too high ethier.

Re:Meh

[vsprintf]

Well, obviously a few patients got out of the looney bin to do this mod.

Re:Meh

[BdosError]

All you Edmontonians can give us is a modded shredder and Space Moose.

That and the main host for OpenBSD [openbsd.org]. Sure, Theo lives in Calgary, but without Bob Beck and the UofA servers ... they'd be somewhere else.

V8 chainsaw...

[FyRE666]

This story reminds me of the vid clip I saw on this page [punchbaby.com]. Totally pointless, but very cool - I've never seen anything chop through wood quite so quick - and the sound it makes it almost worth the effort...

Provides great fake snow for chrismas!

[Jonny Ringo]

Did anyone else see that new Heineken commercial where you see a nice
Christmas party looking into the apartment from outside. Snow is
falling. Then the camera moves up to where a bunch of executives are
shredding paper out the window.

NIce.

MORE!

[DonniKatz]

Now they should mod a garbage disposal and see how fast it can eat up a christmas ham. The puree will go to charity of course...

Must be Friday Afternoon

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Highly entertaining read, and props for putting the Google Cache link into the summary.
On that note, I'm going home.
--

They went the wrong way

[Aggrazel]

Modding it to be cooler so it runs longer?

Nah.

I bet you it destroys more paper if you mod it to run hot ...

really ... really ... hot ...

Sledge Hammer

[thomasdelbert]

I love how the whole thing is held onto the recycle bin with the shaft of a sledge hammer!

Slashdot needs software version of shredder

[hdparm]

Whit it, troll, offtopic and flamebait posts would be auto-erradicated enabling moderators to dedicate points to quality posts.

Jesus

[poopdik]

All it takes is mention of the words "case fan" for Slashdot to get a hardon and proclaim the story "news worthy".

What I really want for christmas

[beaverfever]

As nice as that shredder is, this [ualberta.ca] is much more sexy and functional.

oh santa please please please

Leave it to CS students

[I Am The Owl]

To be chugging bottled water instead of beer.

Or is this a Canadian thing?

Re:Leave it to CS students

[Atzanteol]

You ever have Canadian beer?

*ducks*

Re:Leave it to CS students

[MalleusEBHC]

No, if they were real CS students, it would be Mountain Dew... with liquid nitrogen cooling of course.

Re:Leave it to CS students

[yamla]

Mountain Dew contains no caffeine in Canada.

Damn!

[Isbiten]

Now you americans have to make something even faster, bigger and ofcourse cheaper! Oh wait it's korea that makes it cheaper :p

I give up

[tswinzig]

If someone can wade through the uber-cool-intelligent-student humor and tell me what the fuck they actually did, that would be much appreciated.

I had to stop reading after about the third paragraph due to a headache.

Re:I give up

[jfengel]

They added a bunch of cooling fans to the shredder to allow it to run longer and harder before it overheated.

It's just supposed to be funny. If it doesn't make you laugh, skip on to the next article.

This isn't modded.

[WasterDave]

It's overclocked. It would be modded if it gained an aluminium case with a window, some blue lights, something to measure fan RPM and "whohoo, l33t" dremelled into the side.

Dave

Re:This isn't modded.

[Gaccm]

It's overclocked. It would be modded if it gained an aluminium case with a window, some blue lights, something to measure fan RPM and "whohoo, l33t" dremelled into the side.

Actually It isn't overclocked at all, none of the electronics were messed with. They hadn't upgraded to a better motor. All they did was cut holes in the case and add a heatsink and fans. Now if that isn't modding I don't know what it.

Now if they HAD overclocked it, now THAT would be cool. Taking the whole thing apart figure out where the controls are, do a little bit of soldering here, voltage mod there, and active cooling on all the chips, that would have been an insane amount of effort though, so we gotta live with this "mere" modding job.

Re:This isn't modded.

[NeoSkandranon]

Now if they HAD overclocked it, now THAT would be cool. Taking the whole thing apart figure out where the controls are, do a little bit of soldering here, voltage mod there, and active cooling on all the chips, that would have been an insane amount of effort though, so we gotta live with this "mere" modding job.

How many chips do you think a paper shredder has in it? that need cooling? I think a better bet would be..oh..say..the motor that generates all the freakin' heat making those cutters move?

Re:Maybe I am wrong...

[WasterDave]

Hmmmm, to me modded means modified with no actual increase in performance.

I think that even by slashdot's standards, we're both thinking into a hole.

Dave

How wasteful!

[shivianzealot]

A flamethrower made from an old Gateway would have been more economical!

Modded Water Bottle (bottom link)

[antdude]

Look at the bottom of the Web page and look for modded water bottle [ualberta.ca]. Insane. :)

If they're going to mod their paper shredder...

[VistaBoy]

...they need to paint it black, put a window on the side, and put neon light sticks inside!

If they're going to take it to the next step, they should have SHRED parties where all they do is show off their l33t 5hr33d1n6 machines.

Hmm,

[jointm1k]

I hate to think what happens when your tie gets caught in this machine ;D
--

But...

[pjt48108]

Will it run Linux?

Scrapheap

[Hubert_Shrump]

Wouldn't a full-on geek have bypassed the heat sensor entirely and put a gas engine in there?

Nitro-charged brush shredders, and then some vacuums [corvair.org] exploding [garage-g.de].

That, my friends, is a well-booked weekend.

I'm reading..

[RumpRoast]

Since we had yet to swap the motor with one more powerful, the shredding was trying our patients.

I'd be afraid to go to this hospital.

no speed increase

[willll]

the speed was not increased from 12 to 37 pages. the number of books shred before overheat was increased from 12 to 37

I'm sure this was inspired..

[Anonvmous Coward]

...by an episode of Home Improvement.

Soon we'll see a Slashback linking to the Darwin Awards.

A great overclocking project

[abirdman]

They demonstrated a tripling of the throughput of the machine with those soup-it-up fans! That's impressive. I'll bet that's better than the fan-and-heatsink donor got from his Athlon. It's too bad they couldn't get that "1 Roll eXtreme Duck Tape" to physically support the twin 120 volt fans to really cool off the beast. My experience with these (shredder) devices is that there is another metric besides raw throughput that makes all the difference in perceived "beastliness", and that's the speed of the feeder, analogous to the "first page" speed of a printer, except obviously the opposite. And as long as they have to run 120 VAC to it, they can add all sorts of lights and stuff. (For more 120 VAC computer projects, see etherkillers [fiftythree.org]). Maybe with some tweaking they can hack a truly useful device that attaches to the output bin of a fast printer, and shreds as fast as the pages come out. Then they can haul away the incriminating evidence as fast as it's output.

The Water Bottle

[Alien54]

They also modded a Water Bottle:

http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~uacs/events/bottle.ht ml [ualberta.ca]

What are they putting in the food up there?

Re:The Water Bottle

[KillerBob]

It's not what they're putting in it, it's how it's served.... Bitter Cold. You'd be amazed at the things that people decide to try out when it's 40 below.

Not enough

[select * from]

It still isn't enough.

It couldn't make it through the number of credit card offers I get in the mail everyday.

Hmm

[FakePlasticDubya]

... I wonder if this work contracted by Global Crossing or Adelphia?

Stuff like this makes CS look bad

[t0qer]

Yeah we all know college is a party, but carrying stories like this, where an acredited learning institutions students are wasting their research time with such frivoulus pursuits makes CS look bad in general.

If I were an ulumni I would be less inclined to donate.

military grade

[geekoid]

I have seen military grade. They'll shred 100's of pages per minute, into pieces roughly 1/4" by 1/10".
Then they go out and burn it.

sharpen?

[Hadlock]

hm. so heat is generated by resistance of paper to cutting. sharpen blades, decrease reisistance, decrease heat, increase life of paper shredder. THEN add cooling fans.

just a thought.

110V???

[Bassthang]

Real shredders use 3-phase!

Underclocking

[olddoc]

You don't need 115v to shred! This is only crap the shredding industry feeds to you to get you to upgrade! Try running the motor with 80volts and see how long it will run. So it runs slower. You don't need a 3Ghz cpu either!

U of A's Co-Op Program

[pixel_bc]

We've had a number of placements from their CompSci Co-Op program -- I can't recomend it enough. If you're looking for good students, this place has them.

They have extremely long placements (16-18 months -- unlike some other programs we've termed "bungee" programs *cough*Waterloo*cough*) which allows the students to become part of the team, and take on much meatier tasks.

We've hired a few of the students we've had after they graduated... take some time and investigate the program if you're either looking to go to school, or looking for some interns.

Did I mention I think quite highly of the program? :)

Hmm... this sounds familiar...

[leshert]

Let's see... a couple of CS neophytes inherit a system with limited functionality. Then, instead of obtaining a better system, or fixing the root problem, the proceed to cut, tape add, bodge, and grow the thing until it's three times its original size, takes five times the power to run, and is now incapable of performing the tasks for which it was originally designed.

Hey, kids, I hear Microsoft is hiring... :-)

And not one Andersen joke...

[sjbe]

Not a single Enron or Andersen joke to be seen. Come on people, what's this place coming to?

Re:And not one Andersen joke...

[sjbe]

Since you are apparently unaware, Andersen and Enron both did business in Canada.

Global companies, global problems, eh?

UACS up to it's old tricks.

[Black Copter Control]

it's good to see that UACS is up to it's old tricks. Back in my day, we were (among other things) known for our parties, where the beer was only '$.50'/glass. This was supposedly an attempt to burn off the extra money that we got by reselling computer accounts (back in the late '70s early 80's) (we were non profit, so we had to do something creative with the profit). It never really worked that well, so we ended up paying $5000 for a couple of intelligent terminals for the club office.

That they're down to buying cheap paper shredders leaves me worrying that the society is now in dire financial straights -- and they're probably selling beer for $2.00/glass now.

And the proper link is http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~uacs/events/shredder. html [ualberta.ca] (note the lack of a leading 'www').

Re:UACS up to it's old tricks.

[swordgeek]

Heh. That's about what I was thinking. I was actually a chem student at the UofEh, but some friends were in CS, and we ended up back and forth a fair bit. While I was there, the UACS budget was getting tight, and the MTS system was gradually getting put down, so the fund raiser du jour was the semiannual terminal bash--literally. For $2.00, you could take a swing as an AJ510 terminal with a four pound sledgehammer. I've got to say, those AJs were SOLID!

Re:UACS up to it's old tricks.

[Black Copter Control]

AJ510s were the $3500 terminals that UACS bought back in the early '80s.. with their own Z80, at least 32K of ram and runtime loading of the system on boot up, they were KICK ASS units... --- and yes they were pretty solidly built. When you're paying $3500 for a terminal, an extra $20 worth of structural steel doesn't really hurt (and you can use it for heatsinks).

Oh, and having had the 'opportunity' to move some of those suckers around, they're not just strudy -- they're friggin heavy. The first time I had to move one, I thought that it was bolted to the table... It wasn't. It was just gravity holding it down.

Correct Link Below

[mysticalreaper]

With more pitful disregard for anything remotely resembling quality journalism, it seems slashdot editors don't even click on links to see if they work now.
[ualberta.ca]
CORRECT SHREDDER LINK

Hemos, working as he usually does, repsonds to CmdrTaco's question about the link working. "Of course it works. Why wouldn't it work? No one would send us a broken link. That's impossible. Also, since i'm telepathic now, I don't even need to read the story to know it's front page material. Damn I'm good."

Hemos cliks *post*, grinning smugly, "Congratulations, Hemos, another feather in your cap. Job well done."

Yeah, but....

[Asprin]

Yeah, but how many frames per second does it do with FSAA?





**NOTE: ...because as you all know, FPS is the one true universal metric of a mod's effectiveness.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Already!!??

[tomhartung]

It's worth grabbing the google cache version, the author has a sense of humor: "At a total of 7 fans we had more than the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn."

Re:Already!!?? (bad link)

[Black Copter Control]

The proper link is http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~uacs/events/shredder. html [ualberta.ca] (Note the lack of a leading 'www'). I presume that ugweb stands for undergraduate web pages.