I Spent $945 on Transformers to Scrap for COPPER
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- So much copper in this video! This time though, it's scrapping copper transformers. After the success of my experiment buying AC compressors, I decided to up the ante and spin that scrap wheel again! This time we loaded up the truck and trailer with as many copper transformers as we could haul, and smashed them into dust with the biggest hammers around! How much can we make? Was it worth it? Find out here!
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30hours of hard grafting for a jaw dropping $2300 cnd is awesome am glad you felt proud driving to the scrapyard with all that #2 copper
Soak the thick paper coils in a bucket of cheap paint thinners, I leave them in the thinners for a week, then the paper/glue will just slide off, make sure you hose down the copper with cold water afterwards, thanks for keeping us entertained with your videos 👍
Find a yard that takes it is number two with it on they should there’s plenty of them that well as for me, one of my yards takes it as number three electric motor copper, but the price is higher than most other yards number two by at least 50 Cent
Thanks for this tip. I've got some transformers that are fairly hard to remove the glue and paper.
@@ScrapFatherScrapSonyea I just have to cut the rubber or plastic wire off
All you need is a hammer
Excellent result, simply super, it’s always a pleasure to work with copper, especially in small quantities.👍
If I recall correctly project shop nfl once said he stopped cleaning them up and still got the same price. Not sure which video he mentioned it in but I often go to his channel for information on transformers.
Yeah, most yards should take it as number two with the paper on if they complain, find another yard!
You need a shop press, you put the transformer in it diagonally corner to corner and crush it till cracks and falls apart.
He should be thanking u but... of course not 😂😂
During most of the core disassembly I kept thinking this is a job for a log splitter. Thanks for sharing.
I was thinking a machine press from Harbor freight with the big bottle jack in it. Give each one a smoosh.
Yep, we use a wood splitter it's the fastest easiest way.
I admire your patience. I work 2 jobs I don't have the time or patience to go to these lengths. I just turn it as is.
To keep your hammer head tight keep it soaked in water. I'm a Faller and keep my axe in water once in awhile in summer. Also copper usually goes up in price in spring.
Hi, I enjoy watching your content. Just a couple suggestions. You can save alot of pounding by cutting right through the welds to the copper and then the sides should peel off pretty easy. Also, I'd suggest raising your log with your vise on it. It was killing my back watching you bent over pounding the the transformers. Lastly I'd suggest putting your processed materials in containers as you process them - hopefully reduce your handling time and efforts.
Happy Scrapping!
On that note, he has an sds and a wedge for it.
@@siggitiggiHow you know he has an std? Is it a bad one?
I thought it was neat watching you unload truck and noticing the rise of bumper as weight came off
I loved that part too! It’s just interesting to me, seeing incremental changes sped up so you can watch it. Like those high-speed videos of mushrooms or flowers blooming
totally a cool shot
The truck came up like 6 inches
Always a pleasure watching your videos ,your a well spoken ,intelligent and very interesting scrapper ,keep up the good work . Always look forward to your informative videos
Thank you!
Amazing! Riveting techniques! Superb rhythm! Good eye and steadfast determination. 5 stars!
Well done Drake! Your technique is second to none 😂!
Damn you are lucky, every time i seem to crack a large transformer open all i get is steel and copper coated aluminium. GRRR!
That was a big part of the advantage of buying them from the yard, they check and sort them for copper when people bring them in. There was a much bigger pile of aluminium ones there haha
YES! I cannot wait to see how this unfolds!
You should go watch Project Shop FL .. he does this with transformers all the time, but he uses a press on the steel and cracks em...
That was so awesome!! I love the copper toroids though, they take seconds to breakdown with a 🔨 and actually have 2 layers of copper, yum! I'd kill my back hammering at that low angle, how the heck do you do that 😬 but yes awesome, astounding and I can't remember the words you said lol. The level of effort and work you put in was formidable, great job as ever 👌😄
👀
Duuuude. Be proud. You earned that 💯
I think Thor himself would be amazed by your hammering techniques.
I need to find some scrappers near me. I’d pay more for copper!! Unrelated, but very cool edits unloading-I especially liked watching the truck rise as it was unloaded. 😂 Lastly, carry a rake on your rig bro.
That was an awesome video my friend!!
Awesome job
As I’m visually impaired and cannot see what your truck set up is like something you might want to consider moving forward he has a there is a aspect you can put on your truck that you can hand crank and it’s designed for soils rock, etc. which would work fine with scrap of this nature, motors etc. that will allow you to drop your tailgate and then hand crank it into a pile right off the bed of your truck makes it a whole lot easier whole lot faster a whole lot less work.
Fascinating. Intriguing. Excruciating. 😄
I’ve found that soaking those coils in gasoline overnight makes it much easier to remove that heavy resin and insulation paper ( just don’t smoke around it)
In Australia we get domestic price for transformer wire $3 and refinery price for plumbing copper $9 and bright copper $9.20 AUD
Great info and a great turorial! Youve been doing this for enough time you should think of investing in some lights. After all, the real product is the video. Love ya man!
That's awesome! A really great video!
You could build a fire outside and drop one of the 9:30 coils with the plastic -glue residue on them in the fire for a minute or 2. That may help in separation.
Slowly watching the truck raise as u empty it
use the pointed end of the hammer on the welds no need to grind save electric and blades
Nice like the vids.I get a good supply of electric motors I tear down when time allows. i use a portable 110v band saw on alot of my scrapping adventures. Another aluminum laden motor I've come across is a grundfos water pump was not worth the teardown for 40 cents of windings haha
outstanding, incredible, superb, risky, hammering, rust, grinding, inspiring, know how, just thubprint, leave it better than you found it!, keep doing ya thing
Glad you got a win
Reminds me of my days back when I was a tweaker. Now I'm clean, rich, and I don't even recycle my beer cans
copper sheets are a good way to maximize the copper-flux interface surface area
Masterfully done!
Sometimes you just have to see which way is worth it or not. I just got a bunch of old transmissions, I took most of them apart and took a couple whole. Turns out I would have made a little more money selling them as irony aluminum rather than clean cast and prepared steel. The oil pans would have to come off either way.
I love your videos thub! Always entertaining and love the camera angles!
Thanks so much! I think I used five different lenses for this one haha
War Zone Garage!
Your Lungs. Your Ears, Your Eyes, Your bones.
Take care.
I bought about 6,000 lbs of sealed units once and lost $100 because I sat on em too long combined with the non-ferrous guy leaving the yard I went to and the one box was all huge units which were not the right copper percentage.
Would of taken all of them , they are actually a lot of fun taking apart
You have a better vice than me I just hold them and free grind even the small transformers that aren't welded the score seems to help
Hi there, I watched a video where the gentleman hammered a cheap Harbor freight machete right through the plates. I havent tried yet but I'm thinking if you lock the machete into the vice, edge up , no grinding or cutting.
Astounding, impressive, inspiring. 👏
The three piece combo!? Smooth 😎
@@thubprint You deserve it sir.
Enterprising! I wonder if pressure from a bottle jack could bust the weld?
The paper, resin and varnish will burn and float on the top of the molten copper. Save yourself the time and just clean them minimally. Good luck and keep up the good work
My favorite type of scrap. Sucks you couldn't just sell the coils as is.
Thanks man! I can tell haha, I’ve seen you haul truckloads of transformers 😁 It’s kind of funny we were both working on big ol transformer videos at the same time! I don’t think I’ve seen you scraping all the glue off though, I probably won’t bother next time haha
@@thubprint I did in the beginning 13 years ago until the guy at the scrap yard told me I'm wasting my time it's #2 either way.
awsome techniques
Impact chisel best way…. Hatchet and hammer 2best way
Fire cleans varnish, plastic and paper.
Love the video Thub. What was that copper sold as copper 2? Or what is the copper with lacquer or from motors classed as?
I got #2 windings for it, I believe there is a cheaper category for enamelled windings
Just burn the coils and wash them with water later
The waxy resin and paper will come off very easily and it will save you loads of time
Thoughts on using something like a Jaw Crusher to improve the process and reduce time?
You do a great job with your vids. Cheers!
I worked at a shopping center and often found these in the dumpster. I can take these apart in no time. Soak the plastic copper in water to get the gunk off quickly.
What results have you had with using a hydraulic press for this process?
Could you slice through the copper bundle with a blade and hammer? Thus cutting what's wrapping it?
Great video. I keep finding aluminum wire in my transformers. Seems like most are not copper anymore.
Hammer Time!!
Should have taken a before and after picture of your swinging arm 🤣🤣😂😂
Fr haha, everything started to feel lighter compared to that hammer 😄
Fr haha, everything started to feel lighter compared to that hammer 😄
Good profit margin. I was salivating at all that magnet copper enamel coating being melted away to get closer to bright copper at $3/pound. You could have bought a new used truck with heavier leaf springs.
That's roughly $22.50 / hour (American).
That's a respectable amount to live off of in my book.
Have you cooked the paper and plastic out of them?
When I was a kid I bought my first rod and reel with money from scrap copper
What about a log splitter
Score them all then pop them in the log splitter????
I can't bring myself to sell copper. I just keep stacking it. One day I'll sell and it will be a great day and a sad day
Bigger Hammer 😁
Keep it up
Try to get a stump the is higher ,,,it saves the back and if you chain saw a 4 inch grove and force a 2 foot piece of R R track into that grove it will make it easier for you…. That is a good idea and if you have the money to invest and you have a day job ,,,look at like a monthly thing ,,,at the end of the month ,,,, 945 can turn into into about 3000…
Sweet
Be sure to wear a P100 mask when doing this stuff. Who knows if those copper wires are covered in materials that include asbestos.
Where were you able to source them from?
Yeah your are a WINNER side bonus 650God
What grinding wheel did you use? Going through more than I want on this task here.
To cut through the copper? That’s the ez-arc Diamond tip blade, I bought it on Amazon. It basically performs the same as diablo blades on soft metals, I did a whole video comparing different blades
You should invest on a smelting furnace! Make nice little ingots. Just like the UA-camr bigstacksD.
Hammering on wood is a mistake; it will absorb a lot of the energy.
You may or may not be aware, but this can't hurt: Please be aware of PCBs and maintain good PPE habits. Not that you aren't, but again, it can't hurt.
You should make a giant grinder and make an AI sorting machine
he is alot of things but not a programmer
Nice
In which machines are this to find ?
Where do you buy them??
wish this was an option for the private joe in the street in my country but that went all goverment run + special companys hired by goverment to handle copper, when i was a young lad 30 years ago it was an option , was hard work but it was good way to earn food on the table miss that , this make me think bck. :)
I'm in texas, when I scrap transformers I get played for number 2 copper, paper or not
"Impactful!"
Ware did you buy them from
Based on what I have seen on Project Shop FL, you don't really need to clean it up as all you will get is No2 copper prices because of all the glue. I'm not the expert, but it seems like you did a lot of unnecessary work cleaning up the copper. May want to check with the scrap yard before doing all that extra work.
whyd you have to scrap the transformers like that
my boy optimus prime did nothing wrong
The camera angles and lighting are really nice btw
Google show me the weather for tomorrow
it's a hobby
Am I the only person that just puts them in a fire to get thru the paper and glue
06:00 proper mounting your "ANVIL" will make it easier. You're losing a lot of force (Edit impact) in that movement.
I hope you’ve considered hoarding the copper these days. Prices are on the rise. Likely to surpass $6 eventually just saying. Might be a few months to a year by then but could be worth it
Buying transformers and motors to break down further is really the only way to really make money scrapping. There's a ceiling to how much raw scrap a person can collect and process. Canadian Treasure Hunter works tirelessly at it and makes like $35k a year. He's sitting on probably $100k worth of copper though.
There is alot more money than that in scrapping. You just gotta pay for your scrap metal.
Thub, it would be easier to break these things up if you scored them a little deeper, stored them in an ice chest to get them cold, and then stuck them in a vice before using a chisel and mallet to split them.
Basically, make them brittle, stick your chisel in the notch, and whack them.
A little prep work can make the physically demanding side of this much, much easier
Wow this was satisfying. $1200 is definitely worth your time. That's almost a rent payment, in only 30 hours. For something that takes almost no tools and no skill, that's not a bad side hustle. Hell it's not a bad main hustle. If this was full time, that'd be an $80,000/year job. And, that's with your beginner's methods and tools. You'd get better and faster as time went on. One thing about breaking apart the stacked E-I transformers (versus interlaced), unless you want to re-use the transformer you don't need to use an angle grinder to cut the welds. An old hatchet as a wedge and a 3 lb hammer to smash it will punch right through those welds on the first strike. Also, since you left $400 on the table by selling high-silicon iron as tin shred... that's getting close to the cost of shipping a pallet to the coast. If you're doing quantities like this regularly (you aren't, but...), it's probably worth it to call around and find out just where the closest yard is that *will* pay you high silicon prices. Or, I dunno, if it's Edmonton or Red Deer or somewhere in-province, it'd borderline be worth your gas money and time to trailer it. I know yards in Ontario and BC pay for high-silicon, but, I've never heard of any here in town.
I'm wondering if it'd be worth it for you to have/build a small hydraulic press (that's electric or air over hydraulic, so that it's 10x as fast). So much of what you do is hammering lettuce-sized objects, this has got to wear you down and slow you down. A fast-set vice (old impact driver and socket mounted to a vice, with a foot pedal to tighten/loosen) would also be a project worth building. Nothing you couldn't easily build out of scrap, and, I'd bet a project video series like that would be quite popular. Even not as a video series, your efforts are slowed down so much by your simple lack of clamping. You're wasting 90% of your body strength by having everything floating around all loose-like and never getting to apply proper leverage. Selling yourself short.
As to peeling paper, my only thought is to maybe get it at a 15 degree angle and smash it into a parallelogram with a hammer. Might sheer the windings and sheer the fiberglass/paper. Fire is another option. Get a $25 weed burner propane torch and roast 'em. Copper soaks up heat magnificently, it'll soften the enamel and glues. Few seconds with a torch then the hammer perhaps? Like anything, you'll get better at it as you do more of it, but, for something you only do a couple times a year you're never climbing over the learning curve.
I think the hard part would be to find truck loads of copper transformers 😅. Consistently I mean
@@amogusenjoyer - Well, honestly, the scrapyard should be willing to do this, for all they're concerned. They got rid of some transformers, they got back some iron and copper. Both in this case as market rates, so, at worst they should be ambivalent towards it. Meanwhile, he could make $80k/year processing them. Or more if he got more efficient. Though you're right, maybe the entire yard doesn't have enough transformers to justify this. I don't know if he went to Empire or Recon for this load. It was Recon at the end where he sold the iron. Empire's like 5% the size, just a small bay or two in a warehouse strip, but Thub usually takes all his non-ferrous there 'cause their prices are significantly higher. Either one could've sold him transformers. The thing is, none of these yards are anywhere near the size that they're doing actual recycling with it. They're just stepping stones to the actual recyclers. They sell to "someone", so, the "someone" might as well be Thub. These aren't un-askable questions or a charity operation necessarily. Even a tiny premium to them in a very competitive industry has value. If he pays them 10% above transformer value, he'd only lose 10% of his profit, but meanwhile, they'd probably be happy making 10% more on it than they were. It's good money for Thub, but it's literally free money to them to get a 10% premium.
@@MattsAwesomeStuffagreed! And as you said, a hydraulic press would make it even easier and much more steady if the supply is there. Not sure about the very thick transformers but for the smaller ones and the separate coils, would be a huge help for sure
i bet you would need a couple of rest days after that
@@MattsAwesomeStuffgreat info mate thanks
Good day from Ontario. Interesting video.
Yesterday my bro. crushed pop cans but we used shovel to scoop up goes alot quicker.
Thanks Interesting!
Project shop FL is the expert on breaking transformers
He is with the machine. Stop by mine and watch how ibreak them down by hand!
@@ScrapFatherScrapSon
Ok cheers
@@ScrapFatherScrapSon Don't let the machine fool you, My hammer game is still on point. lol
@@ProjectShopFl abahhahahaha I know it is derek I’ve seen you swinging that thing like is a lollipop! Still haven’t made me a transformer press! I need it! 600 lights rolling in!
So much inspiration to start this in the UK! 😜🙏💯🔥
You need a more stable surface to hammer. That log is bouncy, and it is sending energy back into your body.
Your copper skillz are MAD bro! Astounding, incredible, amazing, Randallicious, divine, i-Cream, beautiful, righteous, Bob's-your-Uncle, flash, and crafty! Glad the payout was worth your time. Thanks for sharing.
Going above and beyond Mr. Z! I’m gonna screenshot those and try work them all into sentences haha 👍 thanks for being a part of it!
Maybe find yourself a slab of thick steel to use as an anvil, or an old piece of rail track, easier than smacking that vice all day
Blood sweat and tears won't describe the difficulty you'll encounter the 1st time you get the copper from these. 😂