Hello! Value in used copper mig welding tips?

Originally Posted by Scrap011266

Hello All,

I know someone who works at large fabrication company. Surprisingly management have no mandatory recycling or accountability program for copper mig welding nozzles and tips. Granted everything you request you need to do your job is logged and audit reports are generated for suspicious high use of items.

They showed me thier stash of tips all loaded with carbon and some have mig wires stuck in them.

Are they worth anything? How much per pound?

Higher grade copper, they are a pinkish color band new?

Melt them down to get rid of impurities and sell bars online?

I told him he's wasting his time as according to Google it looks like copper scrap is $2 a pound.

Seems a waste though to just toss them out or throw them in the general steel scrap bin at work.

Thanks

$2/lb would be optimistic at this time. they would probably go as #2 copper, probably around $1.40/lb at least by me.

Definitely not worth melting or selling online. But idk why you couldn't just put out a 55gal drum and say "hey guys instead of throwing them out put all copper bits in here". then when its full you can take it in to the scrap yard. Not sure how much it would be in weight/money but I would bet at least a couple hundred bucks. Up to you to decide if thats worth it or not.

Edit: after some quick googling (which actually redirrected back to a post here) a 55gal drum of clean copper weighs about 475/lbs. My assumption is that that is coper wire, which compresses better than solid copper tips/bit. So I would guess maybe somewhere around 400lbs would fill a drum. So a full drum at current prices would be ~$560 with some basic back of a napkin math here and estimation. Do with that info whatever youd like. If all it takes is throwing something in 1 bin, vs another (copper bin vs the garbage bin), I would say its worth it. You/the people there may not agree, especially if THEY arent getting a cut of that, what motivation would they have to care, theyll just do whatever is most convenient (probably the garbage)