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I understand that after cremation, the remains are put through a crenulator to reduce them to ashes and to sift out metals. I assume it's a sort of shaker/sieve.

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A shaker and sieve might be used after bone fragments have been powdered, to separate metals (dental, jewelry, prostheses, coffin nails) from bone dust, but the main mechanism in a cremulator often is a flail or hammer mill with metal flails or chains hinged to periphery of a disk or cylinder. Ball mills and blender-like grinders also have been used. – jwpat7 Mar 10 '12 at 17:24

The word you're looking for is cremulator a device to grind the bone fragments that remain after cremation into fine powder.

It's probably a slightly macabre jokey extension from crenulate/crenate (having a notched or scalloped edge, as certain leaves) in reference to the fact that notched rollers are likely to be part of the grinder.

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What piques my interest here is that having a margin with small rounded teeth seems to imply the the crenels are the teeth, but in castle terminology, crenels are the spaces between the merlons (teeth). – Jim Mar 10 '12 at 0:16
@Jim: I'm not going to look up the etymology, but I think the fact that a leaf, for example, may be described as crenulate acknowledges the bits "nibbled out" of the potential straight edge, not the fact that there are "sticky-out" bits left to form the jagged edge. – FumbleFingers Mar 10 '12 at 0:21
@jwpat7: Thanks for info. Dunno what happened there - I changed the link. – FumbleFingers Mar 10 '12 at 15:34

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