Editing Compactor (section)

{{Short description|Machine}}
{{refimprove|date=February 2018}}
[[Image:Caterpillar 825G Soil Compactor.jpg|thumb|Soil compactor]]
A '''compactor''' is a [[machine]] or mechanism used to reduce the size of material such as [[Waste compaction|waste material]] or bio mass through [[Soil compaction|compaction]]. A '''trash compactor''' is used in business and public places like hospitals (and in the United States also in homes) to reduce the volume of trash they produce. A baler-wrapper compactor is used for making compact and wrapped bales in order to improve logistics.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Sales and Support|date=2018-12-26|title=What is a Compactor and How it is Used in Construction|url=https://kor-pak.com/compactor-used-construction/|access-date=2021-02-04|website=kor-pak.com|language=en-US}}</ref>

Normally powered by [[hydraulic machinery|hydraulics]], compactors take many shapes and sizes. In [[landfill]] sites for example, a large [[tractor]] (typically a converted [[Loader (equipment)|front end loader]] with some variant of a [[Bulldozer|bulldozer blade]] attached) with spiked steel wheels called a [[waste compaction|landfill compactor]] is used to drive over waste deposited by [[waste collection vehicle]]s (WCVs).

WCVs themselves incorporate a compacting mechanism which is used to increase the [[Cargo|payload]] of the vehicle and reduce the number of times it has to empty. This usually takes the form of hydraulically powered sliding plates which sweep out the collection [[Chute (gravity)|hopper]] and compress the material into what has already been loaded.

Different compactors are used in [[scrap metal]] processing, the most familiar being the [[car crusher]]. Such devices can be of either the "pancake" type, where a scrap [[automobile]] is flattened by a huge descending hydraulically powered plate, or the [[Baler#Industrial packaging|baling]] press, where the automobile is compressed from several directions until it resembles a large cube