Breaking down an electric motor for copper

Here is a pic of the motor as it weighs whole 27.8 lbs
First as you can see there are 4 screw/bolts that you need to remove and then both ends of the motor will pop off. Center shaft can then be pulled out .

Here you can see the center shaft out and the outer casing with all the copper in it.

Here is the center shaft. On the end is a cast aluminum fan. Just wack it with a hammer and it breaks right off. Ended up weighing about .25 pounds.

Here you must cut this weld or grind it off like I do and remove the outer metal case.

Here is the weight of the copper and metal together. Now you have to cut off one side of the copper looped wire with either a metal cut of disk or sawsall.

Here you can see the end when its been cut off. Now use a punch and hammer and push the strands threw the motor housing or pry them out threw the other side. I pryed this one out using a screw driver and channel locks.

Here is all the copper removed from the housing. Total weight of copper is 3.5 pounds the metal popcorn tin the copper is in weighed 1.1 pounds.

So it started out at 27.8 LBS at $.41/lb = $11.40
Broke down we had 3.5 lbs of copper at $3.50/lb = $12.25
.25 lbs of cast alliminum at $.52 = $.13
24 lbs of steel at $.10/lbs = $2.40
Total after tear down is $14.78 for a difference of $3.38

Now this motor took me about an hour to tear down because I was taking pictures. This one really was a pain in the but to get the copper out because I didnt have a small enuff punch to just punch the copper out so I had to pry it out with screw driver and channel locks. So all though there wasnt much money gained from it I hope this will help the rest of you on how to tear a motor apart for the copper.

Yes very informational thanks. I have been tearing up appliances lately for the moters. (one of them being a thrift store heater I got for Christmas.) I turned it on for the first time went to sleep and felt for some reason to wake up and saw it was on fire.) And it is suprising how many things have moters.

I have found that it is not profitable enough to break down motors and such for copper, based on return. I do not even separate motors out. I’m small scale so others may have different options/opinions. Shred price vs motor price vs copper price vs time........only you can decide . And learn.

I want to update the pricing as follows:

Price from the original post -

So it started out at 27.8 LBS at $.41/lb = $11.40
Broke down we had 3.5 lbs of copper at $3.50/lb = $12.25
.25 lbs of cast alliminum at $.52 = $.13
24 lbs of steel at $.10/lbs = $2.40
Total after tear down is $14.78 for a difference of $3.38

Price today - (actually price is from a few months ago, and may vary by location)

So it started out at 27.8 LBS at $.12/lb = $3.33
Broke down we had 3.5 lbs of copper at $1.90/lb = $6.65
.25 lbs of cast aluminum at $.12 = $.03
24 lbs of steel at $.0365/lbs = $.87
Total after tear down is $7.55 for a difference of $4.22

Big difference between the two percentage wise. You can more than double your money now. (correct my math if I am wrong anywhere)

Thanks for the post. Where did you get that cool scale?

ebay 15 bucks.

Btw, I get the stator from the casing usually by punching the casing with a hammer few times, very hard. It breaks easily when it's cast iron. It doesn't work, when it's aluminium - then I try to knock out the stator with a hammer and a chisel (when it's possible to hold in vice, it's better) - it gets out very often.

Wow??? Just read this post of yours from back in 2011. Might just be the single best tip i've read here since joining this forum! Using the oil from the compressors (or within the cut radiators) to "grease" and loosen the cooper windings, might just be the trick for a much easier task of removing the windings from all the electric motors I get. Thanks!!

Originally Posted by injunjoe

Also a nice job! When I run into bolts that refuse to come out from being snipped off during installation or just rust and abuse, I just go ahead and cut outer jacket and peel apart. Then you can just use bolt cutters on all four of the bolts. The rest pretty much falls apart for ya.

Most of those motors you have in photo are condenser fan motors. I find they are exposed to the weather more then the air handler and tend to be a bit harder to pull the windings out! This is where my "recycled" saved up compressor oil comes into play! I Like to " baste" them in a shallow dish with my saved up "marinade" after I cut the one side and find them being a problem. That make the copper slide out'athere like ..............

Hope this helps!

Originally Posted by miked

I think I figured out how to post pictures. Here is my break down of the four smaller motors.



Here is a link of the break down of the motors above, Mike.

http://s597.photobucket.com/albums/t...medium%20mtrs/

Miked, Great idea of using a chisel on those newer style motors. I have a few i was putting off cause i didnt want to unwind them. Ganna give it a try!!!

Thank you for the pictures and showing your method. I have the same experience about copper volume as miked said. In a heavier ones is less percentage of copper per weight than in the small ones. It's getting to 7% in some heaviers and the most I got was from 24lbs one, similar as you posted (14%). When we know this, it's easy to calculate the profits and what should we pay for them. In my country (Czech), usual price per kg of unstripped motor is $0.40. I would never pay so much as you, it's not worth the time, as you perfectly documented.

Right now I have about 30 motors of similar size. My yard pays about the same as yours. So my profit would be about $101.40. I break em down on rainy days so all in all I guess it's worth to me. Thanks for the breakdown. Now I know about how many to do at a time. Great job!

Thanks to those that contributed, very informative. On motors that have carbon brushes, I noticed the contact surface that rubs against the brushes is copper, about 1/8" thick, set in a sort of plastic material that can be busted out with a hammer. Not sure what that part is called.

Starting at the beginning, in the third photo, is there copper inside the dark part? The part is located above the fan.