melting copper

hey yall i have an idea that i would like input on. im thinking about buying a small foundry i can melt copper in. i was thinking that i could buy light copper scrap and melt it down into heavy copper scrap and then sell at a profit-per-pound. i would be doing business with scrap yards at first, or anyone who can offer me good prices. thoughts?

have you done a cost analysis? does not sound profitable to me at all clean copper is clean copper, the only difference is density between light and heavy?

Another problem would be that no yard I know of will buy homemade copper ingots.

just another hoop to jump through, having to get your output assayed, not worth it

Maybe he's planning on melting pennies.

Yea it would be profitable if you could sell 1 ounce .999 rounds, the problem is making copper with a purity of .999 from scrap copper. Correct me if im wrong but you have to go thru a plating process to do that, a foundry wouldnt do it. Melting pennies is a great idea foe 95% copper and 5% zinc but how do you separate other than electroplating or skimming the zinc off the top of the crucible.

Originally Posted by olddude

see the thread "$16 a lb copper"

are you thinking of the thread called the good old ike ? where we debated which was better ike dollars or $16 pound copper in the form of .999 1 ounce rounds, and the $16 pound in copper rounds won the argument?

yep, the kilo copper bars are my favorite

Originally Posted by Bellis0483

hey yall i have an idea that i would like input on. im thinking about buying a small foundry i can melt copper in. i was thinking that i could buy light copper scrap and melt it down into heavy copper scrap and then sell at a profit-per-pound. i would be doing business with scrap yards at first, or anyone who can offer me good prices. thoughts?

Melting light weight copper your going to have to much loss going up the stack, wont be long before the EPA is chomping onto your butt. if your hell bent on trying this your best bet would be the copper cell.

Compress your light copper into cubes or sheets, pickle the cubes in acid to clean them up you can not have any oxides or shellack on the wire then insert these into a titanium basket, this would be your anode then plate your copper onto a stainless steel sheet this would be your cathode.

The electroplated copper peels off the stainless sheet, presto you have 4 nines copper.

From there you can feed the copper through rolls to form nice clean uniform sheet which can now be sized or cut into bar stock. Any waste goes back into your copper cell.

Save yourself come grief forget this idea your pockets are not deep enough to pursue this project.