Metal Recycling Entrepreneur
Ballasts from flourescent light fixtures--what's inside em? Are they worth separating, or are they best left attached to the tin? If they're worth separating, do they need broken down further for optimum value? (Cause they're certainly as heavy as the rest of the fixture...)
Thanks in advance for your replies.
Experienced Scrapper
Ballasts vary, but most have transformers in them, so they can be sold for motor price at some yards. My favorite yard said they won't buy ballasts as motors. Most have some type of glue stuff inside, and if their old enough, they have PCB's. Real nasty stuff. I don't see many, but when I do, I snip the wire off and sell them as tin. It don't normally break my rule of "keep breaking it down" but I never break my rule of "don't mess around with carcinogens."
Metal Recycling Entrepreneur
Thanks. I'll have to ask next time I'm there.
And that carcinogen thing sounds like a good rule...
Metal Recycling Entrepreneur
FWIW...
I was at the scrapyard today and asked about ballasts. The guy there said "shredder". Actually, he said to put them inside an old refrigerator, because they really don't even want them. Another customer there at the scale at the same time commented, "There's too much tar in them".
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I just cut the cord off and throw the rest in the light iron pile. As mentioned before, PCBs aren't something to screw around with. Supposedly they cause cancer. But, it's your call whether cancer is worth that extra 50 cents.
Metal Recycling Entrepreneur
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Theres mainly two sorts of floresent ballasts.
The older ones are in a steel box & are filled with tar stuff. I don't bother with them.
The other sort are the later models & you can see the copper wire & iron plates, they are normally painted white.
With a bench vise you can peel back the backing plate on them, then peel it off completly.
That leaves you with the iron core & the copper winding.
This bit of info is very usefull>
The iron core on these are 'Stacked'. They are not 'Interlocked'. Very Very important.
Once you have peeled the back off.
Lay the core down flat & using earmuffs & safty glasses & a hammer & a wide cold chisel put the chisel face edge into the long gap/Vee down the center, bash it with the hammer.
The little iron plates will start to seperate a bit, leaving a small gap, start at one edge & work towards the other end.
do that on both sides. The gaps probably about 1/4 inch wide now.
Now you can see the individual plates easy like.
Now start bashing the plates off the copper wire spool/windings or use a screwdriver & start at one end & pick the plates off.
Do that over a bin or something as when the plates fall off (theres hundreds & hundreds!!) they end up on the floor.
I grab the bunches & put them aside & leave the odd ones to hit the floor & sweep them up afterwards.
Once all the side iron plates are off you will notice theres smaller iron squares inside the winding.
Bash them out too.
That leaves you with a copper winding. On a normal size light fixture these windings weigh 100 grams each.
ie, 1/10th of one Kg @ NZ$7.00Kg = NZ$0.70 cents each.
Normally I find these in rubbish skips when a shop is changing their interier design, normally there are about 20 or more.
Last edited by eesakiwi; 12-07-2010 at 10:10 PM.
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