Yeah the Simsmetal plant in Brooklyn has a similar setup. Magnets and blowers and all sorts of sorting. Its even hand picked. Theres a spot you can stand where all the coins fall out. lol.
From memory the old motor was 4000hp, they put a new one on, cost a few $$$ and it was 6000, didnt even last a week, some mechanical fault.
Scrap is a strange industry, Bob. The way the prices work, it seems to be better to take them garbage than clean metal, as you say. A couple of years ago when I gave up bullet casting, I sold them 400 kg of small ingots, individually marked with the composition of that ingot. A lot of it was linotype, which is expensive. The result was $1 per kg, exactly the same as if I'd taken them the same weight of old wheelweights, still with the cast-in steel clips, and including kilograms of dirt, zinc weights (which contaminate the melt) and old tyre valves. I'm glad I at least kept the solder and pewter.
Yeah its strange. Some stuff is worth stripping other stuff isnt.
Clean cast alloy is about $1.00-1.20. Dirty alloy (with steel in it) is 40c or so. Its worth pulling the metal off a base, but its not worth ripping the crank out of an engine. I pull the head off (its usually off anyway) and pop the stainless exhaust valve out, because I can. One day I will have a whole bucket full. lol.
Things like air conditioners, they go 40c as well, I wouldnt bother stripping one of those, you need to get all the steel off the radiators (end caps), you get a bit of clean copper tube, refrigeration motor (its not much more than the 40c by itself), a bit of wiring, then you are left with steel and plastic. Leave it together and get the cash.
For the sake of a couple of screws, you can collect a fair whack of transformers out of old microwaves. Same with washing machine motors, drop them out and send the rest of it to scrap.
They changed the whole transformer and electric motor thing a while back, It used to be anything was fair game and all at the same rate. Transformers have to have weight to them. Now power tools and motors with the plastic go at the 40c. To get the better rate it needs to be steel or alloy housings on the motor.
I had a bag of bullet casings that my mate gave me (that he technically should not have had). All sorts even right up to big ones. Pulled out the few steel ones and took the rest in and got brass price for them.
I had a few kgs of pewter, they wouldn't even give me a price on it.
Heres a strange one, a month or so back I took in a great heaped trailer load of Ryobi/Talon/GMC line trimmers I was sick of looking at. I got the 40C price for the whole lot. It was only after I had them loaded that I worked out that a fair percent of them actually have steel shafts, not alloy.
