Why is my Fellowes paper shredder overheating?

Your Fellowes Paper Shredder is designed to manage volumes of shredding, generally within the limits of its model designation. Although Fellowes include a How to Choose the Right Shredder resource on their Fellowes.com website, shredding expectations do change and as such, sometimes shredding needs can change beyond the capability of the chosen shredder model.

Personal use Fellowes shredder

Fellowes helps minimise the risk of identity fraud by promoting the Home Use shredder range, where shredding of private documents encountered in the domestic home environment is required as they come to hand. These documents include information relating to personal, legal and private content just to mention a few categories of information types.

Common problems:

Overheating a Fellowes home use shredder is most likely to arise when shredding stored documents which have accumulated, where just too much volume needs to be shredded over one session.
Your shredder may also be overheating more easily if the blades have not been oiled enough, so try oiling your shredder blades. If this has been overlooked, you may notice an instant improvement.

Small and home office Fellowes shredder

These high-performance paper shredders are designed to meet the needs of busy work environments with up to 5 users regularly shredding. Maintaining confidentiality of sensitive data, the Fellowes range of small office and home office paper shredders are designed for frequent moderate to heavy everyday use. Compared to personal use shredders, Fellowes small and home office paper shredders can shred larger quantities over longer periods and generally include a longer duty cycle motor.

Common problems:

Overheating by passing the rated duty cycle can still happen to the small and home office range and if this is a regular occurrence, it’s a sure sign its time to update to a larger, more capable commercial shredder.
Your shredder may also be overheating more easily if the blades have not been oiled enough, so try oiling your shredder blades. If this has been overlooked, you may notice an instant improvement.

Office and departmental Fellowes shredder

These high-capacity, heavy-duty shredders are designed to cope with continuous use by workgroups with multiple users. Fellowes office and departmental office shredders have larger bin capacities, wider paper feed entries, and are able to deal with the constant demands encountered by offices with multiple users and those requiring continuous use. Compared to small and home office paper shredders, Fellowes office and departmental shredders can shred even faster, over longer periods to meet the demands of central shredding environments such as resource rooms and records departments.

Common problems:

Although some office and departmental shredders claim to have continuous operation, time and time again this claim has been proven wrong due to overheating. Again, overheating of these large commercial office shredders can occur from expecting more than what they were first designed to do.
Your shredder may also be overheating more easily if the blades have not been oiled enough, so try oiling your shredder blades. If this has been overlooked, you may notice an instant improvement.

Auto Feed Fellowes shredder

Fellowes Automax walk-away shredder range enables users to get on with work whilst their documents are being shredded automatically. Like Fellowes hand feed paper shredders, the Fellowes Automax walk-away shredder range accommodates various sized stacks of paper. Although designed predominantly as auto feeding paper shredders, paper can also be hand fed via a manual feed entry for when this option is more convenient.

Common problems:

The time these shredders can be used without interruption is determined by the machines duty cycle and extra patience may be required for cool down time when the duty cycle has been reached.
Your shredder may also be overheating more easily if the blades have not been oiled enough, so try oiling your shredder blades. If this has been overlooked, you may notice an instant improvement.

In Summary

Thankfully overheating a paper shredders motor is not all bad news, as a thermal overload sensor is what stops the motor when it reaches a pre-determined temperature range / duty cycle. Without a thermal overload sensor, the shredder will continue to operate until the motor is permanently damaged.

If overheating your paper shredder is a regular occurrence and a cause of concern or frustration, this is an obvious indication it is time to update your shredder to a more capable, heavier duty machine. If overheating your paper shredder is infrequent, then practice some patience while your machines motor cools down enough to be used again.

One important point to understand about duty cycles, is that this is to protect the motor against being damaged. The Duty Cycle stated by the manufacturer is based on starting operation from and ambient temperature. If your duty cycle is reached and the motor has cooled down enough to start operation again, the duty cycle will be reached sooner because the motor has not started from ambient temperature.