Choosing your garden waste shredder or chipper?

This sounds simple! The reality is that chippers are great for wood but are limited in processing green waste. Shredders process green waste and have limited capability in process wood. Then you must choose which machine you need for the size of wood and job and how the waste is fed into the machine.

Another consideration is the waste – chippers produce wood chips as they normally cut across the grain. Shredders cut with the grain and produce more of a mulch, so it is quicker to ‘break down’ for your garden.

To help you choose from our selection of chippers/shredders. Starting from the smallest machine:

1. Timberwolf 3inch (75mm) woodchipper. This is a good sturdy machine and takes to a maximum of 3inch (75mm) wood. The feed is gravity fed (‘no rollers’ to feed the wood into the knife blades to chip). It is a great machine for waste that is predominantly wood with little foliage. The limitations are:
   1. The feed is gravity so the input needs pushing towards the bottom of the shoot.
   2. Processing smaller ‘whippy’ wood can be difficult for the blades to get a clean cut.
   3. The processing of the ‘non wood’ waste is limited as the green tends to mulch in the cutting chamber and needs to be manually cleaned as blockages may occur.
   4. The chipper is heavy (light machines will not do the job!) so manoeuvrability is sometimes challenging. The wheels are not self-propelled.
   5. The throughput is manual so is labour intensive on big jobs.

It must be concluded whilst we have outlined the limitations – this is an excellent robust machine. It does a great job on what it was designed and built for – chipping wood branches up to 3 inches (75mm).

1. The Eliet Pro 6 – this is more of a combination of a shredder and chipper. This is a machine that has a shredding action (cuts with the grain) with a more of a mulch output (as opposed to wood chip) – the key here is that it can process waste that has green and wood up to 4inches (100mm) diameter. It also is for narrow access (810mm) and is self-propelled on tracks. The machine has a roller feed which feeds the waste into the shredding chamber.  This is a great all rounder machine which can process significant volumes quickly blockages should be limited but the easy access chamber does make the cleaning simple. Popular with both our commercial and private customers.

1. Timberwolf – towable 6 inch (150mm) woodchipper. This is a towable machine that has a roller feed mechanism in to the cutting chamber. It has a maximum capacity of wood up to 6inches (150mm). Popular with our commercial customers.
2. Large Tracked 8 inch woodchipper. This is for the larger jobs with a capacity to chip wood up to 8 inches. The tracks allow it to get into the more robust areas.

We hope the above helps you understand the difference in the chipper versus the shredder and helps select the correct machine for your job.