"Wow this bag of phone chargers is heavy"

Thats exactly what i said to myself earlier, in a drunken state. (drunk thoughts, for the win)

It was a bag of miscellaneous chargers, and plugs (ya know, with them big black boxes at the end that are usually unreasonably heavy)



In my drunken stuper, i thought itd be a good idea to cut em in half, to see whats inside, and low an behold, a HUGE winding of copper in each one.

I tore apart just over 100 of them (who has that many of those, right?!) I now have over 100 copper windings. The smaller ones weigh maybe, a quarter pound? Something small. But the large black boxes weigh something like 1 pound.

My advice, spend the 2 minutes to break them apart, and unwind all that copper! Who knew thats what was in there?

Just thought id let yall know somethin i just found out. Hell maybe yall already know haha.

This post makes me sick to my stomach and at the same time, I'm thankful. Why does it make me sick? Because I tossed out a bag of these recently myself! But now I know, and knowing is half the battle.

Shoot, I've always assumed there wasn't anything inside those. I've always stopped at snipping the wire and pulling the brass prongs. Thanks lol.

No problem yall haha. I'm going to garage sales tomorrow to see if i can pick up a bunch more of these things.

Whodathunk?

Makes sense. It's a transformer to step down the voltage from 110 to what...4, 5, 6 volts?

You'll find these everywhere. On answering machines, cordless phone bases, etc.

I remember on the old Nintendo the power plug was pretty heavy/solid. Wonder how much is in one of those.

Originally Posted by bigryan

this post makes me sick to my stomach and at the same time, i'm thankful. Why does it make me sick? Because i tossed out a bag of these recently myself! But now i know, and knowing is half the battle.

goooo joe!!

The drunken "I wonder" can turn out great or really, really, bad.

I usually just turn them in with my insulated #2. The yard has not said anything about them being in there.

I watched my buddy, again in a drunken state, say exactly this tonight, "Them TV tubes, they're heavy. Bet theirs gold in there....*SMASH*.....Theirs glass in my forehead now. Fantastic"

Cant fix stupid.

Originally Posted by Patton

The drunken "I wonder" can turn out great or really, really, bad.

I usually just turn them in with my insulated #2. The yard has not said anything about them being in there.

Some places will pay for the transformer per pound. I break off the plastic. I have yet to take the copper windings off completely, not sure of the most efficient way to do that since they are wound tight and sort of pressed in.

I could cry. I take in 40lbs of stuff like this per week. Thanks though lol.

I thought everybody knew this. I can't believe this is such uncommon knowledge...

Har har har

Originally Posted by TheIrrationalist

I thought everybody knew this. I can't believe this is such uncommon knowledge...

wow didn't know this.

Thanks!

This is why if I find something that has a cord running into it, I take a few apart. Just to see what's inside.

Though I do have a "Wow this is heavy story"

After reading a post on here about picking up boxes of junk and seeing what can be ebayed, I found a pile of trash outside of a house that looked like the residents we're evicted or what have you.

Sitting in the trash was a suitcase, I picked it up to move it and about gave myself a hernia. This piqued my curiousity, so I tossed it in the truck and went about my business.

Got back to the house, first thing I did was open that suitcase and found a computer tower sitting inside.

Old sewing machines look like suitcases too. I fooled myself on the first few thinking it was light luggage.

Ok so i broke the black box apart after reading this earlier. But for the life of me i couldnt figure out a way that is time efficient to take the windings out. I tried breaking the metal retainers around it, to no triumph. Do they pay good for just the transformers and if not? Do you have any suggestions to get the windings out?

While were on the subject of windings. What about compressors and electric motors. These are way to difficult to remove the windings from for the amount of copper you can scrap. Are these just best to take in as is with as much externals removed as possible? Thank you. Im new to the forum please dont run me off ill get the hang of it.

On some of these transformers I run a thin cutoff wheel through the metal brick, then separate it that way.

On motors and such, I cut the windings level with the "brick" on both sides, then use a punch and hammer to drive them through.

For me, since I don't have a grinder yet. I use wire cutters, cut one side, then use needlenose pliers to pry up the other side, grab the wire from the top and bottom, roll to one side, then roll to other side, gradually pulling it out.