After a while does this shredder break down or does it still work?
1264975
It is still working. I tried to do a lot of purging and shredding and I overheated it at one point. Has not worked as well since then, but I can shred things from the mail and no more than 2 items simultaneously. But was a great purchase.
1264976
It has preformed well for the year and a half that I have had it and has shown no signs of breaking down. Keep in mind that this unit is meant for home use and not high volume shredding. I have had no problems with it at all.
1264977
Haven't had any trouble with this shredder. We shred 10 or 15 min, Let cooland go again, Love the cut. Also bought the oil for it but haven't used it yet.
196784
You should oil it, it will last longer. The manual says cooking oil is OK. Youtube has videos on how to oil shredders.
1124421
It doesn't run continuously because it employs an auto on/off switch such that the shredder turns on when paper is inserted, and turns off when its done (provided there is enough room left in the basket for the strips to clear the machine).
2082516
The run time to shred something is about 3-4 seconds plus 1 more second of overhead for the device to make sure everything has gone through. If you are talking about how long it lasts, this is it's second year of service for me and it does not show signs of wear.
237048
All I know is that it doesn't make much noise. A very good shredder that works well.
1780398
Rita, I have one of these shredders. I won't tell you it is quiet, but I think it sounds like a shredder. It does a super job of shredding documents. I have no problem with it.
1718455
I've never tried it. This shredder starts to groan with 4 sheets of paper. I don't try to force it as I have a lot of shredding to do cleaning out my house. I don't try to use it any more than 15 minutes at a time.
1198274
It's tough for me to answer that since I've only had one or two other shredders in my lifetime. I can say that when using the closed-lid shredding option (the one which I don't feel works very well), the shredder is quieter than most others because the action is going on inside the machine.
1745466
Nate, I've owned this machine about 9 months now. I've put several hundred sheets through it. Some I've put straight in, in little packs, the machine ate them up. Others, I've stacked and laid them in, and closed the lit, it ate them as well. I read all the reviews too, prior to buying. I compared more $ costs to bigger and better machines, but who wants to pay $$$ big dollars just to shred junk you don't want, or need? My idea is this machine for the money it cost, does a better than average job, and doesn't jam. I think I've seen my wife feed it so much paper, hand fed, group after group for long enough to cause the machine to jam once. Once! When it did that, it backed itself up, and cleared the jam. I had her wait a little while to let it cool down. Gotta remember it's not a professional machine, but a darn good home owner's machine that does the job. There's always somebody somewhere that'll review that it's a terrible machine. Gotta expect that. But more, many more, said it was very good. Including my review. Good luck. rw
61
5 Amps like the previous response indicated. I've had this shredder since 2007 and used it almost daily with no problems whatsoever. It's my understanding that this model has been discontinued (or upgraded to a new model), but in my opinion, this is the very best shredder I have ever owned.
1779440
The thermal protection will shut down the machine when it gets over heat. I think it depends how hard machine has to work, if you use it for shredding cd or credit card for few minutes in a row, you may encounter overheating problem. For light shredding job, so far, I have never encountered such problem even I had used it for well over 4 minutes quite a few times. I read some negative comment about this machine, IMO it is a $ 30 shredder, one of the cheapest in the market, in such price range, we have to accept some limitation, e.g noise issue, overheat when we push the shredder too hard, etc. Overall it meet my expectation.
312175
This shredder does not have a continuous feed per se. That is, it does not have any kind of apparatus or tray (like on a fax machine) that would allow you to load say a large number of pieces to be shredded, and have either gravity or a roller (like what they have in small printers) pull the product down into the shredder. You can continuously feed pieces to be shredded, one at a time, manually into the shredder and it will handle that. Hope that helps. Overall, it is a very good shredder and very quiet.
960974
I just ran eight card stock weight sheets through at once. It chewed them up slowly but without stopping. I would say if you are going to run the fat junk mail envelopes through occasionally it wouldn't be a problem; too many at once will probably heat up the machine and force you to wait while it cools down.* Just an FYI on this machine: I have tried many and this has been the most reliable shredder yet. In fact another office often liked to borrow it, until they accidentally left it out near the trash. Their "replacement" was a piece of junk that became unrepairable within three months. I have since purchased another DS-3 and am once again shredding jam/issue free. I just ran eight card stock weight sheets through at once. It chewed them up slowly but without stopping. I would say if you are going to run the fat junk mail envelopes through occasionally it wouldn't be a problem; too many at once will probably heat up the machine and force you to wait while it cools down.* Just an FYI on this machine: I have tried many and this has been the most reliable shredder yet. In fact another office often liked to borrow it, until they accidentally left it out near the trash. Their "replacement" was a piece of junk that became unrepairable within... » Read More I just ran eight card stock weight sheets through at once. It chewed them up slowly but without stopping. I would say if you are going to run the fat junk mail envelopes through occasionally it wouldn't be a problem; too many at once will probably heat up the machine and force you to wait while it cools down.* Just an FYI on this machine: I have tried many and this has been the most reliable shredder yet. In fact another office often liked to borrow it, until they accidentally left it out near the trash. Their "replacement" was a piece of junk that became unrepairable within three months. I have since purchased another DS-3 and am once again shredding jam/issue free. « Show Less
2226705
What I noticed is that machine will not work more than half an hour if I use continually, as I shred only once in a month. It need a good couple of hour cooling time, may be something wrong with my machine.
1794228
I bought the shredder to replace another one that I thought was "toasted". Fortunately or not, the other one still works so I have not even used my Universal at all so far.
56440
Just got ours December 2014. So far good, but does clog often. Only shred daily papers. Hope it lasts.
2154512
We have been using this shredder for extended periods of time and it has not shut off on us.