Here is a cautionary tale. We had a shredder made by Royal. (The PX12D1 crosscut shredder.) It worked fine for about a year. Then after a rigorous shredding session, the blades started to run really slowly. It sounded like the motor was still working though. We examined it for metal debris and found none. After reading some advice here, we decided to clean it out and apply some lubricant. Our intern used a can of air on the blades, and unscrewed the top portion to clean out the dust around the wires. (There was a lot of paper dust in there.) She was very careful not to disturb the wires while cleaning it out. She screwed it back together and used some dry spray lubricant on the gears and blades. This was per the advice on several webpages on this subject. We plugged the shredder in and ran a shredding test. Again, the blades kept moving slowly and wouldn't shred. And then "BOOM!" the darn thing exploded. Our intern said that she saw a bright yellow light appear around the blades just before the explosion. We suspect that the lubricant caught fire. Our intern was shaken up, but fine. Fortunately she was standing up and looking down at the shredder when it happened and the paper waste try absorbed most of the force. But the room was full of gassy smoke for a while and we were all shaken by the experience. Lessons learned: Shredders aren't that expensive, so tinkering around with one isn't worth our time or risk. When we run into a "slow" or malfunctioning shredder in the future, we will simply toss it and buy a new one. We didn't do anything weird to the shredder, all we did was use a can of air and lubricant. We feel very lucky that our poor intern wasn't injured during this incident.
Answers & Comments
You can try putting some oil into the throat where you normally put the paper....back and forwards across the opening...see if that loosens things up.
Here is a cautionary tale. We had a shredder made by Royal. (The PX12D1 crosscut shredder.) It worked fine for about a year. Then after a rigorous shredding session, the blades started to run really slowly. It sounded like the motor was still working though. We examined it for metal debris and found none. After reading some advice here, we decided to clean it out and apply some lubricant. Our intern used a can of air on the blades, and unscrewed the top portion to clean out the dust around the wires. (There was a lot of paper dust in there.) She was very careful not to disturb the wires while cleaning it out. She screwed it back together and used some dry spray lubricant on the gears and blades. This was per the advice on several webpages on this subject. We plugged the shredder in and ran a shredding test. Again, the blades kept moving slowly and wouldn't shred. And then "BOOM!" the darn thing exploded. Our intern said that she saw a bright yellow light appear around the blades just before the explosion. We suspect that the lubricant caught fire. Our intern was shaken up, but fine. Fortunately she was standing up and looking down at the shredder when it happened and the paper waste try absorbed most of the force. But the room was full of gassy smoke for a while and we were all shaken by the experience.
Lessons learned: Shredders aren't that expensive, so tinkering around with one isn't worth our time or risk. When we run into a "slow" or malfunctioning shredder in the future, we will simply toss it and buy a new one. We didn't do anything weird to the shredder, all we did was use a can of air and lubricant. We feel very lucky that our poor intern wasn't injured during this incident.