Idaho Patent of the Month – May 2022

Landfill compactors are typically designed with hydraulic or hydrostatic drive and with a diesel engine. Maximum Density, LLC has recognized a limitation in hydraulically driven machines – they’ve reached their upper limit of hydraulic motors. Reaching the upper limit means the amount of torque is limited and therefore only small wheel diameters can be used. As a result, most existing hydraulically driven compactors are maxed out at 16 tons of compacting force on each wheel, 600 horsepower (hp), and 6ft wheel diameters. Maximum Density set out to overcome these limitations by designing a diesel-electric powered compactor. 

Their design is a roughly 120 ton landfill compactor which translates to 30 tons compacting force at each wheel which nearly doubles that of a traditional compactor. Set up with a 2400 hp diesel engine-alternator, the drive motors can deliver 250-350 hp at each wheel. By increasing the horsepower, the wheel size can also be increased. Maximum Density achieved both an 11′ 8″ and 12′ 6″ diameter wheel. To further improve their compactor, they added a hammer mill to grind waste. This hammer mill is positioned in an upside orientation, allowing the waste to be ground up against itself.

A hammer mill is normally a stationary unit to be fed by another machine. The waste would be ground by the mill then pushed into and processed by the compactor. Maximum Density’s design simplifies and streamlines this process without reducing its efficiency.

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