Paper shredder conversion

bob22 said:

I've a Staples' Mail Mate paper shredder that stopped auto-detecting any paper put into it, then it stopped shredding unless I held down a button, and now will only work in reverse (to shred I have to hold down reverse button). Not very convenient.
It works well except for turning it off and on.
Nothing obviously toasted on the circuit board and fuse ok.

I'd like to bypass all the "features" that didn't really work too well (at all over time) and just put an on-off toggle switch on it.
The drive motor (a Pu-teng motor, ef-4435m12, 120v/60hz arrrow DC) has 4 wires: two blue, a red, and a black (all 22 g).
Any suggestions on how to wire it up? Not sure if it is 120v AC or DC (circuit board has a rectifier on it I believe) and don't want to let the smoke out.
Thanks!

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Did you ever complete this project? I also have a MailMate that recently stopped working. Read an instructables page about this shredder, watched a video about how to test bridge rectifiers and have confirmed mine (and the large resistor beside it) are bad. Maybe others too but stopped testing because not worth the time and money to learn to solder and replace multiple components on the board. But, rather than landfill it, I'd like to cut the circuit board(s) out of the equation and simply wire it so the existing open/closed safety switch for the paper bin works as an on/off to directly power the motor. In other words, I leave the bin pulled out when not in use but when pushed into place the motor would start running. You can see the mains line split off in the attached photo with one wire running to the aforementioned safety switch (with a blue wire coming back out of that) and the other main wire split off to GND on the circuit board. I don't need the motor's thermal protection or reverse function since I only shred a couple pieces of paper at a time every couple weeks = no thermal or paper jam problems. So, any idea if this will work and, if so, which wires to wirenut together for the motor to run in forward mode? Thanks in advance if you (or anyone) can help.