Scrapping, another one of my many interests.

Well I'm not much on this intro sort of thing but maybe it might be wise to give some background for those that might care to look when they think How strange I am!

I have been into running my car on Veg oil for 10 years now and that has lead to another oily Proclivity.
I play around with and have started a YT Channel, Oil burner, which is what I do. Build waste oil burners for different applications. Space/ shed heating, water heating, cooking and.... Metal melting.
The burners seem to be real popular with the metal casting guys and that's sort of thrown me in this direction of scrapping, That and the great pile I crap I have accumulated at home and need to get rid of.

I have done a few vids on using these burners for scrapping purposes, mainly my thought has been metal seperation. Seems That a lot of stuff I want to take to the scrap yard has a lot of valuable alluminium and copper mixed with steel but if it's more than a tiny bit of steel, that's all they will pay you for. Because the burners I build put out ridicilous amounts of what constitutes free heat, It's not hard for me to melt just about anything. I just upsized my latest efforts with a view to melting car engines and gearboxes. The heat to do the job isn't a concern, Had that covered ages back. Did take a bit to work out the physical layout and materials handling though but I think I have it now.

I have directed a 300Kw+ burner into a metal drum laid on it's side. That will allow fairly easy loading of engines and gearboxes into the thing and I can just run off the ally and copper and then scrape out the steel leftovers and load the thing up and go again. The engines will be worth about 5-6 times more as ally and steel than they are whole and in batch mode, I'll be able to process a lot more engines a lot quicker with melting them than I can with dissembly.



Anyway, I'm keen to learn more about scrapping and how to make the most of it as I have a ready supply of materials I can make some bucks from.

Hopefully I can contribute something with my Burner engineering knowledge to those in this game and make things a bit easier for people.

Cheers!

It's always good to have someone with that kind of knowledge so welcome to the forum from Central NY.

Welcome, honestly I know nothing about your expertise. I have read about it, sounds very useful, so I say interesting and welcome.

Welcome. I'd be hard pressed to find a buyer for any metal I melted myself, especially copper. Yards won't touch. However, I am always interested in alternative heat source.

Originally Posted by junkfreak

Welcome. I'd be hard pressed to find a buyer for any metal I melted myself, especially copper. Yards won't touch. However, I am always interested in alternative heat source.

What is the problem with metal you have melted down?

Welcome from the Dakota's. You have already provided some valuable insight and it is hoped the favor can be returned.

Yeah, I'd check with your buyer before you show up with many pounds of homemade ingots or melted Al & Cu globs. Maybe you can develop a relationship that they will take your homemade creations. I've sold some Al globs to my non-ferrous guy but they have been small bits and pieces, not big chunks. Good luck and great New Year!!!

Yeah, the yards around here won't take ingots either, especially copper ones. They think you've been melting pennies.
You've got some cool videos. It looks dangerous but you seem to know what you're doing. I'm ready to see an alluminium engine block melted.

Thanks all for the welcomes and good wishes.

The thing about the yards not taking melted ingots is a bummer! I don't think it will worry me personaly but I thought this may have been something benificial to the rest of you that could save you some work and energy and make things easier. I have seen some of the casting guys make small ingots using cupcake molds so each piece is small and they can get more precise amounts for what they want to do but I'm guessing you guys would want to do things on a more bulk scale. At least the small pieces would have less chance of hiding something. I was thinking of using old 20L tins to run the molten ally in then just peel the tin away when the ally had cooled.... about a day later.

For me the idea with the engine melt is they will only pay steel prices for engines which contain at least 50KG of ally. If they won't take the ally when it's seperated from the steel, I'll sure find someone who will! I can't see it being a problem for me, they know where the ally comes from and why it would be melted. In any case, I'll take a vid of the melt with me on the laptop or get them to see it on YT and go from there. When I do an engine melt I'll put the link to the vid up here. The yard I go to is in the country and pays much better prices than the city yards which surprises me. I take my own stuff locally usually but my father lives in the country so it's not that much to take it with me when I go visit him either.

For mag wheels, I get about $1 Kg more from the country yard than the city yards. Kind of flys in the face of everything else being more expensive due to " Transport" when I know for an absoloute fact, the stuff is trucked back this way 150KM for processing because there isn't anything up there to melt or refine it.

Anyway, Hopefully the melting seperation may be worthwhile to someone out there with a relationship with a yard and can save themselves some time and effort.