I am a HVAC service tech and wind up with a lot of bad contactors, I have heard the contacts are silver but have had no luck finding any info on them. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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I am a HVAC service tech and wind up with a lot of bad contactors, I have heard the contacts are silver but have had no luck finding any info on them. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Most anything that has a switch will contain some sort of silver, sometimes gold contact. Most of the time the large silver contacts will be alloyed with other base metals, tungsten,cadmium,tantalum etc. the problem is getting the contacts off of the buss bar. Depending on what it is alloyed with if you try to use heat to remove them from the buss you may wind up having noxious fumes coming off.
What you can do is find a refiner that will process them for you. Some will either buy them outright or refine them. There are a few people here that are refiners and you can reach out to them. I have done business with Noblemetalworks who is member here. Check out his buyers thread as I have written a review for him there.
I will be glad to help you with them too.
I can not PM you so email me at eric@recycletantalumcapacitors.com if you are interested.
Eric
The older contactors are mostly silver, but like brass said they may contain cadmium which you do not want to breathe in. Most newer contactors are tungsten carbide, or a proprietary alloy. I wouldn't even bother with the newer ones as it would take a lot of them to make any real money, unless you're talking size 3 and up. Good luck!
Have to disagree with you, Scrapping. Any contact is going to have silver as the majority of the metal in it. The other metals that are alloyed with silver also have values that are worth getting paid on. The key to refining them, as with any material is to get paid out on ALL the metals. That is where alot of people get burned refining ewaste. They get paid out on the pgm's but not the other metals.
Remember the buss bars are solid copper and sometimes they are plated with silver. Silver is the best conductor of electricity so it has to be the majority metal so they have a low failure rate.
Get an assay done and see what you have. You will be pleasantly surprised.
I didn't intend to imply contacts now do not have silver, some do. I agree that silver is the best conductor of electricity. However, after purchasing motor starters, and circuit breaker with the intent to break them down for the silver I saw something completely different. I found that most high end brands like Allen Bradley use silver, but cheap brands like square d do not use silver. Consider you're buying a new contactor one costs $30, the other $130. How many of the cheap ones would hit the scrap market vs the expensive ones? Obliviously this is only speculation.
The older contacts had pads of silver, and the new silver contacts have small specks of silver. This is also a gimmick by the company to sell more product. Older models you can remove the contacts, and replace them when they go bad without damaging the unit. With the new contactors you can't get to the contacts without breaking the unit completely down rendering it useless. Older Size 1 starters typically yield 6 grams of silver vs new under a gram of silver. Also, older units have more copper. This is just my $0.02
What you are referring to is A WAg contact. This is a tungsten silver they run anyway from 15%-40% Ag.Quote:
Originally Posted by scrapping
Also a good rule of thumb is if it is a contact you can repair it will MOST LIKELY be a high Ag content contact. If it is disposable the it is most likely CuAg clad or a WAg.
I have taken apart both square D and AB and I found the SD will have the Ag alloys or the WAg but the ABs seem to really like the CuAg clad style. The only thing that is for sure is that there is SOME PM in contact points.
As far as being paid on all metales this is sometimes possible if you have a lot but this is a volume game small amounts you get paid on the largest PM amount.
Eric
As far as being paid on all metales this is sometimes possible if you have a lot but this is a volume game small amounts you get paid on the largest PM amount.
Full article at Scrap Metal Forum: http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/scrap...#ixzz2f5yPbxdf
If you have material assayed so you know the content then you should have no problem getting paid on all metals. I have discovered that knowledge means power AND leverage. Yes I do agree that the more you have the easier it is to get paid on all metals but why give something away for free when you know what the value is. Just because you speak to one refiner doesn't mean you have to take what they say as gospel. Shop around and get yourself the best deal. Find the one you are comfortable with and is up front and honest. Ask questions and build a relationship. You will get an idea pretty quick on those that are honest and those that blow smoke up your behind.
Look for the match heads, thats the contacts
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg41/...pg&res=landing
Yeah, all the internal components are silver. Silver has great electrical property, but sometimes I feel, is there enough silver. As, when I took all the parts, sure they look like silver but maybe it's just silver plated. I'm little confused here. I know everyone in this thread are professional enough to clear my doubt. I even ask similar question to my ac tech guy from amtekair, and his answer was "maybe". According to him, it all depends on the nature of the load the device was specified to switch.