Out-Sourcing CU Wire Processing:"First time I am seriously considering Out-sourcing"

For the first time I am considering out-sourcing the wire processing. Obviously I'm trying to weigh out all the factors.

I hope to get some feed-back and if there is anyone out there that has sent their wire out for copper recovery I would really appreciate if you could share your experience.
I tried searching the forum's past threads for such information but could'nt find what I was looking for.



In the past we have always done the stripping / processing ourselves, but this particular load is rather large and contains a wide variety of cu wire types and sizes ie;
Romex: 14/3, 14/2, 12/2, 12/3, 12/4, 10/3, 8/3, all solid core. Then single braded type wire -and- large gauge 1/0 2/0 3/0 & 4/0
Your feed back and advice would be greatly appreciated!

I bet highvoltage would be the one you need to talk too.

In fact I did contact him via his website this past Thursday and within a couple hours I recieved a couple replies, the first one was the standard auto-robo reply -and then highvoltage sent me a reply stating that he was out of the country on business for a few weeks.

Please Note: There was a coupel key points that I did'nt put in the original thread. Being that I am so Gung Ho about this Forum, I decided that I would make all attempts to pass along general out-sourcing opportunties to and within the Forums community. -And-Secondly I should of listed the quantities and weights of this load. Keeping in mind that in the whole scheme of things I am a smaller time scrapper who Gratefully lucked out with a wonderful site opportunity. So my point is simply this; In my books this is a huge load of cu wire, since up until now the largest load of wire I ever had was more in the range of 250 -to 300 lbs. at any one time, and I always thought that was a lot.

This particular load total scaled in at 1380 Lbs. Now I realize to a big company this quantity may be considered small and I'm not at all sure that a wire processing company will even deal with such a quantity?

Once again, I really appreciate any idea's feed back.

If it was me I would be looking into this as an opportunity to automate and start researching wire strippers. That stuff would be perfect to get you into a new piece of equipment and what you save in the outsource might pay for the machine. That's all based on if you have the time to devote to it.

I live in iowa and get to the fox valley 2 to 3 times per month...i would pay you in the range of 1.80 to 2.00 per lb for your insulated..cash!..lemme know

Very cool how those wire granulation machines work,throw your birds nest of insulated wire in the chute out comes stripped bits of clean stripped copper(or aluminum). How does it separate the plastic from the metal,forced air ,gravity, or vibration? Who makes a mini version of one of these machines for home use,it would be worth its weight in gold. Check out those wire stripping machines on youtube,it'll make you wish you had one. For a small scale experiment i thought about using a heavy duty blender with sharpened blades and throwing in some 3-4 inch pieces of stranded copper wire and chopping it until its about the size of sand and then pouring it into a bucket of water to float the plastic for separation,or vibrate a dry bucket of this to see if the copper will settle to the bottom,or an ac electromagnetic process to pick up the small bits of metal to separate from the insulation,then dc to sepatate from the iron. Has anyone tried something like this.