Help; Car copper wiring granulator startup business in Ireland :-)

Hello all,

Thanks for allowing me join the community. My name is John from Ireland. I've recently purchased a copper wiring granulator machine. It processes about 200-300 lbs of copper per hour.
I have a 3 Phase diesel generator to power it

Unfortunately I'm not authorised to post links. The machine can be found online- "Sure Origin, Integrated Copper Wire Granulator".

I am buying scrap automotive wiring looms and processing them in this machine which produces clean copper granules/strands. The plastic is separated also.

First I need to chop off any parts which contain hard metal (which will damage the blades of the machine). During my first trial run with 1000lbs of wiring looms it took me five hours to laboriously snip off all the fuse boxes etc. using hand snips. I'm thinking of buying a set of heavy cable shears, what do you think? Is there an easier way?

Does anyone have a similar sort of business?

if so I would appreciate any advice you might be able to give me on how to quickly cut off the unwanted parts from the looms and cut them into smaller pieces (max 18 inches long approx) to feed them into the machine. Perhaps some kind of bench guillotine?

Kind regards,

John

Hi John and welcome to the forum from Las Vegas. Can think of a couple different solutions. The first is a prechop shredder that creates smaller pieces. You can pick the pieces you don't want granulated off the conveyor belt that feeds your granulator as they exit the pre-chop. The second would be a pedal operated pneumatic shear. With practice you can get pretty quick, quick enough to keep up with 200lbs/hr probably.

Dear JJinLV,

Thank you very much for you kind reply.

Would you be able to point me towards a pneumatic shear online by any chance? And/or a prechop shredder?

I tried to do some more work yesterday and it's clear that these wiring looms take an enormous amount of time to prepare for the machine. There's so much snipping off of metal clips, ECUs, Fuse boxes. I saw a Milwaukee M12 electric shears. Those look interesting as a means to quickly cut off parts of the loom as hand snips aren't powerful enough

I'll probably buy a set of larger (2ft long arms) set of cable shears as an interim solution as my hands/forearms can't handle this workload :-)

I see you're a very experienced contributor so I thought I'd share some numbers with you too. I'll convert to USD:

I've been getting the scrap looms for $3.4/kg or approx $1.50/lb. The Major Metal recyclers, "United Metals, Limerick" will pay $3.60/lb for clean copper.
From my first test of 65lbs of looms it seems like I'm getting 60% copper from them by weight

So 1.67 X $1.50 =$2.50 'actual' cost of copper in the looms. If that makes sense. Which suggests perhaps just under $1/lb profit after expenses(?) I imagine it shouldn't be unreasonable to expect to be able to process at least 2200lbs (1 metric ton) in a whole month

My goal is try to get this machine working such that I can employ a man to operate it and have a small income from it each month. If you have any thoughts I'd be similarly delighted to hear from you, Sir :-)


Thanks again for your help

Kind regards,

John

Hi John,

Sounds like the shear will be your best option. A search for "alligator shear" will give you lots of options to choose from.

Be careful with your math there. If you're getting 60% recovery (which seems about 7% high to me for harness wire) and Limerick is buying your copper at $3.60/lb, 60% of that is $2.16 which would be your wire's inherent value. So your maximum pre-expense return will be $.66/lb, not $1. Also make sure you're basing your recovery off the whole weight of what you buy and not the weight after you cleaned off all the heavy stuff. While there is some harness wire that recovers over 70% copper, some of it is also as low as 35%. On average you should assume 47-53% recovery for harness.

You can sell the ECUs for $1/lb at least to any good electronics recycler!

Hi JJ,

Thanks again. I think you're right;

When I did my test using 65lbs of wires they were without ECUs and Fuse boxes etc. So 50% recovery seems more realistic as you kindly pointed out.

I have found the Alligator Bench shear, thanks again

Kind regards,

John

No problem. Please keep us in the loop with your results. And we all love pictures when you have them to share!

Hi JJ,

Thanks. I'll try and remember to do that. So far I am informed that I don't have authorisation to post photos. Maybe it's a new joiner thing

By the way yesterday I weighed all the cutoff fuse boxes, ECUs etc and did some arithmetic- I came up with 49%. You were bang on :-)

I'm looking for a partner to do this with me as I don't have the time or expertise. I'm hoping that there are contractors out there (eg Electrical) who would be happy to get paid much more for their copper that the price given by the big scrap metal dealer in the city. And I have the machinery to provide such a result

Kind regards,

John