Might not be worth pulling compressors from fridges/freezers

Depending on where you are located, there are buyers of compressors. You may have to drain the oil to get the best price though.

i get 0.16 / # on them drained.

i have to remove them anyways to get some goodies and make some appliances scrapable as very few places take them intact due to regulations reguarding coolant.

just a suggestion most are still good and you may be able to sell a few to appliance repair stores /ebay.

although you will need to leave a bit of copper on them and they rarely go bad, they resale for around $40-75 easily for a new replacement.

just a thought.

also not many people find it worth the hassle but 98% of fridges just need a recharge on coolant. a small investment may return a usable / salable item worth much more than scrap.

My yard pays Shred price with oil, and 0.2 more drained.

I pull them but I don't cut them open any more. I found any profit of the copper was eaten up by the grinding wheels to open them. they are pretty thick and sometimes it takes 2 wheels to open them. Now I just turn them in whole for 10 cents a lb.

Originally Posted by newattitude

I pull them but I don't cut them open any more. I found any profit of the copper was eaten up by the grinding wheels to open them. they are pretty thick and sometimes it takes 2 wheels to open them. Now I just turn them in whole for 10 cents a lb.

You might look at the way you are cutting them open. When I first started cutting them open I would just cut straight thru the shell, and it would usually take around 1 1/2 wheels to cut them open, but then I started looking at other ways. Now what I do is make a shallow cut about one fifth of the way around, then make a little deeper cut, one more a little deeper, and the fourth cuts thru the thin metal left easily. Then repeat for the rest of the way around. Now I can usually cut two compressors with one wheel, instead of one compressor with 2 wheels. And this is with the cheap Harbor Freight wheels (10 wheels for 8 bucks, before the 20% coupon I usually use).

I have a old stack of abrasive cutting discs that I received years back with some railroad lights. The lights are long gone, but I still have the cutting discs. They are about 20 inch or so wide discs.

They were used for cutting RR track. That is what I mostly want to use them for. I have some 10 foot sections of track that I had cut down from 30 foot with a cutting torch as a friend needed a 10 foot piece of track. I want to cut pieces of track to 1 foot as they can sell for much more then scrap as hobby anvils. RR track is not that hard to cut, grind or drill. But it will take a good beating. Some people will take a 8 foot or so piece of heavy track and stick about 4 feet of it into the ground of their shop and cement around it. You can hit the end and it won't "flex or give" a bit. SOLID... Look it up anvils made from rail road track. Check out the eBay sold listings. It brings $25.00 or so for a foot of it. Been holding that price for years.

I have thought of making a cutter set up to use them as I have all the parts to do it. Even the proper materials for safety features and such as I wouldn't want to be any where near the cutting discs when they were spinning as I realize that it's a dangerous machine that I would end up with with the proper RPMs. Figured for cutting the track I would have a moving bed to clamp it to so that I could slowly feed it toward the cutting disc and use oil or water, what ever would work best as I have the required parts to make most anything around the yard, and what I don't have I'm sure I can get in trade or for a fist full of dollars.'

Sorry to bud in on your topic, but it got me thinking as I read over this thread. That if I could cut RR track with it, that I can cut other things with it until I ran out of cutting discs.

I'm just putting my plan together as it gives me something interesting to think on.