Inside the mysterious MAGNETRON !

Cut up a couple of microwave oven Magnetrons out of curiosity, not much in there. Sheet metal housing, 2 strong magnets, aluminum cooling fins, 2 copper coils over ferrite, 2 insulators, brass mesh washer and a copper and steel core. I will add weights and times later, not really worth the effort but I have about 1/2 a barrel of them to recycle.

I just leave them in the microwave and pop the cap, cut the copper coils out. I dont like those beryllium things.

I beleive Mech688 use to call them "the pink pill of death"

Ditto on the wariness surrounding magnetron handling.

Also, we have a forum buyer for whole units and the testing methods are pretty easy. Payout is better than motors, too, on most cases.

They also contain Thorium on the end of the internal electrode. It's slightly radioactive and might set off the radiation monitors at the scrapyard.
There's been differing results to this, they have set them off sometimes in some yards. Not for me, but one yard I took them to were not interesting at all in buying them. They told me "Not to bring them in again".

I didn't know about the Thorium or Beryllium at the time. I just saw the 80 grams of near solid Copper.

Very old magnetron's, military and commercial radar systems used Gold plating inside them too. I expects that there's none in cooking microwaves though.