Breaking down an electric motor for copper

Here is a pic of the motor as it weighs whole 27.8 lbs
First as you can see there are 4 screw/bolts that you need to remove and then both ends of the motor will pop off. Center shaft can then be pulled out .

Here you can see the center shaft out and the outer casing with all the copper in it.

Here is the center shaft. On the end is a cast aluminum fan. Just wack it with a hammer and it breaks right off. Ended up weighing about .25 pounds.

Here you must cut this weld or grind it off like I do and remove the outer metal case.

Here is the weight of the copper and metal together. Now you have to cut off one side of the copper looped wire with either a metal cut of disk or sawsall.

Here you can see the end when its been cut off. Now use a punch and hammer and push the strands threw the motor housing or pry them out threw the other side. I pryed this one out using a screw driver and channel locks.

Here is all the copper removed from the housing. Total weight of copper is 3.5 pounds the metal popcorn tin the copper is in weighed 1.1 pounds.

So it started out at 27.8 LBS at $.41/lb = $11.40
Broke down we had 3.5 lbs of copper at $3.50/lb = $12.25
.25 lbs of cast alliminum at $.52 = $.13
24 lbs of steel at $.10/lbs = $2.40
Total after tear down is $14.78 for a difference of $3.38

Now this motor took me about an hour to tear down because I was taking pictures. This one really was a pain in the but to get the copper out because I didnt have a small enuff punch to just punch the copper out so I had to pry it out with screw driver and channel locks. So all though there wasnt much money gained from it I hope this will help the rest of you on how to tear a motor apart for the copper.

Thanks for the post. Where did you get that cool scale?

ebay 15 bucks.

Thank you for the pictures and showing your method. I have the same experience about copper volume as miked said. In a heavier ones is less percentage of copper per weight than in the small ones. It's getting to 7% in some heaviers and the most I got was from 24lbs one, similar as you posted (14%). When we know this, it's easy to calculate the profits and what should we pay for them. In my country (Czech), usual price per kg of unstripped motor is $0.40. I would never pay so much as you, it's not worth the time, as you perfectly documented.

Btw, I get the stator from the casing usually by punching the casing with a hammer few times, very hard. It breaks easily when it's cast iron. It doesn't work, when it's aluminium - then I try to knock out the stator with a hammer and a chisel (when it's possible to hold in vice, it's better) - it gets out very often.

Right now I have about 30 motors of similar size. My yard pays about the same as yours. So my profit would be about $101.40. I break em down on rainy days so all in all I guess it's worth to me. Thanks for the breakdown. Now I know about how many to do at a time. Great job!

Thanks to those that contributed, very informative. On motors that have carbon brushes, I noticed the contact surface that rubs against the brushes is copper, about 1/8" thick, set in a sort of plastic material that can be busted out with a hammer. Not sure what that part is called.

Starting at the beginning, in the third photo, is there copper inside the dark part? The part is located above the fan.

Originally Posted by little726

Starting at the beginning, in the third photo, is there copper inside the dark part? The part is located above the fan.

Not in this motor it was solid. no copper winding inside it. It was aluminum with iron outside.

I will keep the oil trick in mind and use it next time I have a tought one. Very generous of you to share that info, Mike.

Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

Not in this motor it was solid. no copper winding inside it. It was aluminum with iron outside.

Thank you, PartTimeScrapper. I've been hack sawing an old sump pump motor and came across this same looking core.

Do some of the motors have copper in that part?

YEs but its obvious. You will see the windings. I throw that part in my breakage though. I think its to time consuming to get it from there but one of the other experienced motor breakers might have a good idea on how to do it.