Equipment for Crushing Jewellery?

Hi guys,



Really quick question here - do you know of any equipment that can be bought to easily crush jewellery?

My father occasionally buys in scrap gold jewellery - but it needs to be broken down (all the stones and such removed) before being passed on to the merchant - but he currently breaks it by hand, which is pretty painstaking (literally).

(tried 'a big hammer' among other things, but as the gold/silver is so soft, it often just mushes stones,etc into the metal)


Any suggestions?


Cheers,

jewelers' needlenose pliers. there is no good alternative to bending the clamps open and simply taking out the stones one at a time.

besides, i'd imagine there is a market for those stones at any jewelers' shop. you might not want to smash the thing down. take your time and get more money

Cheers for the reply.

He's using needlenose pliers at the moment, but when you're breaking down 40+ items a day, it's getting to his hands (60+).

I was hoping there was some form of metal chipper or crusher or something like that.

Most of the small stones are worthless, even diamonds - up to about 0.3mm - even then it depends on the quality.
98% of items with stones can just be crushed (including the stones) simply because scrap gold is so insanely high.

Hmm, might have to look down the melting/furnace root - similar to how the smelters who process scrap gold use.
(chuck it in a pot, heat it up...)


Cheers

Originally Posted by dherik

I would try a ball mill. I made a home made one, it's fun to crush stuff in that.

That looks pretty spot on!

Great Will give it a look.

Cheers!