Refrigerator Compressor Break Down!

Thought I would post this for those who are seeing whether breaking down compressors is worth it or not.

Begin Weight: 19 lbs 2 oz
Begin Value: 19 lbs 2 oz @ .15 cents per pound = $2.87

End Metal Weight 17 lbs 6.5 oz
End Metal Value = 17 lbs 6.5 oz @ .10.5 cents per pound = $1.83
End Copper Weight = 1 lbs 11.6 oz
End Copper Value = 1 lbs 11.6 oz @ $3.30 per pound = $5.69

Approx. Wear On Blade and Grinder = .35 cents



Total Profit = $4.30

You can easily do 4 of these in and hour. with practice you could probably do up to 10 in 1 hour. So if you like to work for a minimum of $17.30 an hour, you are throwing away money if you dont break them down Hope this helps some people out.

now i will break them down. the dozen or so i have been sitting on seem to be worth the time. got a stack of cutoff wheels just till i get the feel for it.
someone else suggested to take your time cutting off the top below the weld. dont go too deep the first pass, but instead, make a shallow groove all the way around it first and make multiple passes until its cut through. that saves on blade wear. thanks

you can cut above the weld and you will have plenty of room to get the motor out. only 4 screws and you can pull the motor straight out with no problem. Also, the total profit was over and above the .15 cents/pound that I can sell them at my scrap yard. You could put an ad on craigslist, and call the scrap people and let them know you buy compressors at .20 cent/ pound and still make a decent profit.

Originally Posted by lvservicesolutions

You can easily do 4 of these in and hour. with practice you could probably do up to 10 in 1 hour. So if you like to work for a minimum of $17.30 an hour, you are throwing away money if you dont break them down Hope this helps some people out.

Good info. Always curious how much copper was in there. But at 26 cents a pound that I got the last time I took them in, the difference falls to about 2 bucks.

I have just done a lot of those fridge motors & found out that...

I cut around under the rim of the compressor with a 9 inch angle grinder & cutoff disc, this leaves me with a 'Top hat' shape of metal bowl.
Later these are going to be turned in ornimental garden cannons, I hope.... to make some more money off them.

I pull out the motor, its still joined to the casing with 3 wires & its electricial plug, & a thin steel-copper coated tube.
That gets cut & hopefully the oil dosn't leak out.
I check the other pipes with a magnet, some are copper, most are steel.

The case gets put over a bucket so the oil gets saved.
Theres got to be a good way of using the pressure in the can to drive the oil out of a certain pipe fitting.
I think, if the case is horizontal, by cutting the tube with the crimped & soldered end, the oil should all squirt out into a bottle somehow.
I guess thats how they fill it up with gas, so that tube should go to the bottom of the case & therefore drain the case when the oils taken out.

I undo the 4 bolts (of various head sorts) holding the laminations & copper wires off & using the cutoff disc I cut the end of the copper windings & then pull the rest of the copper out.
I rip off the plastic insulation, cut thru the strings & dump the wiring into a bucket that I have filled with the hot waste water from my dishwasher (recycle-recycle) to get rid of most of the oil.

The compressor, I undo the 3 screws holding the bearing flange on, remove it & the motor cylinder & remove the piston & conrod & remove the metal tip on the other end of the shaft.
Then bash the shaft out of the laminations.
Undo the bolts holding the valve caps on, they look like 'eyes' & would work with my 'Probots' (men made from old gas bottles)

Theres different compressors.
Some need to have the shaft or the conrod broken to get them apart, some conrods are ali, some of the heads are ali, some don't have removeable valve caps, most have a copper tube connected to the head.
Most have some extra metal curves added to the ali around the motor laminations to balance the shaft etc.
Some have a metal protusion on the end of the shaft, some are ali, most are steel tube - tapered.

I have removed the shafts from the shaft laminations & removed the weights too, that leaves a ali & iron lamination cylinder.

So basicly I have several piles of..
Square metal laminations (copper wire removed) - Thousands of metal plates, some stuck together.
Steel castings, compressor bodys, shafts, bolts. - All clean & solid.
Steel casings from around the compressor. - Painted 3mm or thicker.

Shaft laminations with Ali cast around them. - I think these will have to be seperated from other metals before selling.

Whats the laminations classed as? Solid iron or sheetmetal?
Whats the steel/iron lamination with the Ali cast into it classed as? Mixed metal ferrous?

I'm thinking that the more sorting I do, the more money I get, in theory.

Originally Posted by injunjoe

Eesakiwi the tops also make for a nice bell or string up a few and you have some cool redneck wind chimes! Some very loud wind chimes.
If you notice some ring pretty nice. I am saving all the best sounding ones for a redneck scrapper percussion instrument.

Haha, I KNOW what you mean.
I have found that some washing machines & most clothes dryers have a short motor & a 4 prong yoke holding it all together, along with the bearings & the round mounting bit.

They are magnesium & I have always known that Mg has its own 'Ring' when you tap it.
The other night I picked one up & held it on a string & tapped it.
45 seconds later its still ringing..... wow! I could do something with it.

burn it. magnesium is fun when its a pile of filings....

one hour to break them down gives you a copper winding, coated and glued in a steel casing of sheet metal, which needs to be burned, and then cut from it's casing.
still worth the work to get #1 copper. other wise you only get around 0.60 cents a lb.