Water Heater Elements - Nichrome $$$$$$ - Page 2

The best I've found for stove burners locally is .30 a pound as dirty stainless. No local buyers for nickel/chrome wire. Found a place in Portland that is .45 to .55 for stove burners (they grade them as stove burners) and they buy nickel/chrome with no minimum weight. Going over to talk to them at the end of the month.

Found one of the sites I was referring to.

http://www.nialloys.com/nickel_alloy...kel_alloy.aspx

I have no experience with this company.

I did call them and the minimum they accept is 500 pounds.

Scrap 304, 316 and 409 are all stainless steels with differing percentages of chromium and nickel. The percentages are 18/8, 16/10, 11/0.5 and 12/0.75 respectively. You can see that the price of 409 and 410 is lower because it has less nickel in it.

Iconel is a brand name for different types of nickel/chromium alloys, with nickel normally making up the largest part of the alloy. There isn't much rhyme or reason to the names, but for reference Iconel 600 is 72% nickel, 15% chromium. 625 is 58/21 and 718 is 53/15.

Inconel was developed in the UK - over here we call it 'Inco'. You normally find it in places that have high temperatures and pressures, such as gas turbine blades. 718 Inco has 5% niobium in it, which is next on the list.

If you find any fairly pure niobium it would be good to hear where you got it from because that stuff is normally only used in places where scrappers don't tend to get their hot, sweaty little hands. Places like seriously tasty jet engine and gas turbine blades and components. I don't know what it's like in the US, but over here if you roll into a scrap yard with the guts of a Eurofighter Typhoon jet engine on the back of your truck it would tend to raise a few eyebrows.

Hastoloy C and Hastoloy X are brand names of a different company. There are different grades of C, but most are made up of 20% chromium, 15% molybdenum and most of the rest is nickel. X is 22% chromium, 9% molybdenum, 19% iron and the rest is nickel. Hastoloy is used in corrosive, high temperature applications such as valves that can get very very hot in chemical plants, or in bits of jet engines.

Basically, a lot of these are speciality alloys, and unless your yard has an xrf they are not going to want to pay out any significant sum of money for your jet engines and chemical plant valves It's good knowledge to tuck away in the back of your mind though - who knows what you might come across one day. Just take a picture for the glory, that's all I ask

Originally Posted by Divemaster920

Water Heater Element= 1.5 inch socket.

Thanks. Biggest socket I have is an impact at 1 1/8".

I looked 'em up and now that I see one, I am certain I have seen one amongst dads tools. I noticed it before but didn't know what it was for.

I dunno. It's what I found in images when looking for an element wrench.

If its gonna be scrapped.
The element flange is probably brass anyway, I use a cold chisel & hammer & bash the brass nut anticlockwise untill its loose.

I called two local yards today for prices on Nichrome. One yard said $2.00 lb - Second yard said $4.00 lb. Funny thing is, they are both owned and operated by two brother's that have gone their seperate ways.

Originally Posted by Big Tex

I called two local yards today for prices on Nichrome. One yard said $2.00 lb - Second yard said $4.00 lb. Funny thing is, they are both owned and operated by two brother's that have gone their seperate ways.

Maybe you can get them to bid against each other. Brother 1 probably doesn't want to be one upped by brother 2 and vice versa.