Scrapping a treadmill battery.

I'm think you meant to say "motor" rather than battery. Many motors do have copper windings and can be profitable to break down. You have to determine if it makes sense for you to continue breaking down motors rather than sell them as is. The time it takes to break down motors and separate the different materials could be spent acquiring more scrap material.

There are many threads on the forum about breaking down scap and where and how to get more material.

There are lots of 73, Mike

Originally Posted by Tincastor

Thanks. Do you know whether these things last forever, or become 'spent' like batteries? Because I'm seeing online they fetch up near $200 in full form, and that's more than the visible copper I can see, but I don't know the operating condition.

Generally their are being purchase to be put into a homebrew windmill. Because the wind turns the shaft the motor now produces electricity. Do some googling and you will become a google expert like me. Hahaha. Mike

It's just an electric motor. Most of them aren't too complicated. There are a whole bunch of youtube videos on how to test an electric motor with a multimeter.

Probably wouldn't hurt to try putting em' for sale on ebay if they test out good. Most generally ... i don't get more than a couple of pounds of #2 copper out of a motor that size. Two hundred dollars sold as used would be much better money.

If you had a manufacturer and model number on the motor ... you could probably look it up on-line to see what it sells for brand new.



Later edited to add: Did as miked suggested and Googled em'. Learned something new today. I never knew that most were DC motors.

For whatever it's worth ... i've scrapped out a few DC motors and wouldn't recommend it. It's hard to get the copper out of those ones.