I'm kinda mystified.... you said you can buy No. 1 insulated but you are talking about a mix of No. 1 and 2 when you are talking 10-18 guage wire. And if it's all stranded it is definitely No. 2. Big difference in how fast you can strip. And how much you pay for the raw material.
Regarding granulators, search on this site for posts by Foamnone. He apparently has managed to purchase a good used granulator for cheap and built his own vibratory separator. Maybe he will spot this thread and chime in, as he can tell you the straight dope on what works and what doesn't since he's been right in the middle of it.
The big risk is a good firm source of wire if you get a granulator. If you are buying from scrapyards, you need to know the business and what can throw a wrench in your gears. Scrapyards are notoriously fickle and if they think you are making a dime they might just stop selling to you. On the other hand, once you get going, you might be able to start buying wire from the general public, as you should be able to pay a little more for it than the competition if your are upgrading it with a granulator to No. 1 bright copper.
Shearing motors apart for the copper sounds like a good way to starve to death. I assume you are talking about bigger 3 phase industrial motors , which will be heavy and have a fair amount of copper in them.
The downside to these bigger motors is that the copper wires need to be restrained from moving in the heavy magnetic fields that are generated when a motor is running. Therefore the windings are usually impregnated with stuff like varnish or epoxy which mummifies the wire into place in the stator slots. So even if you cut a motor in half the wire isn't going to fall out at your feet!! And if you cut the wire off one end of the stator you won't be able to drive it out of the stator slots! About the only way to get this wire out of the motors is to do what the motor rewinders do....bake the motor in an oven and essentially burn the crap off the copper. The wire is easy to remove once this is done. I doubt that is cost effective in North America because of the fuel costs and the costs to treat the gases coming off the furnace, which will no doubt be loaded with crap that will make an EPA inspector have a rectal hemorrhage over.
That being said, if you could find a heating process that you could legally use to burn electric motors you possibly also use it to cook the insulation off of copper wires as well. But the $ required probably makes the $60K granulator look cheap.
The process of separating the motors from their copper is only part of the equation. You need to consider separating any aluminum from the motors as well, as the extra value recovered here could make or break the economics of the operation. This will be usually on the rotors but also can be in the cooling fan and sometimes the end bells are made from aluminium. A furnace might be the best to remove the aluminum from the rotors, which is usually cast right in place and hard to remove.
I'm not being very encouraging, but pointing out the details of what you need to know and research ahead of time before you part with any more cash. Go see what others in the business are doing.
I'm a bit surprised that you jumped headfirst into manual wire stripping without doing a lot of homework except for listening to the suppliers salesmen. You could have found this out in your garage by testing a machine yourself with no significant cash out the door!
Jon.
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