What happens to 'mixed metal'??

I'm at the recycling yard today, and I see truck after truck (OK- there were 3 of them) with dryers, fans and other appliances going to the tin / mixed metal area. Near the pile I also see large commercial fans that still have the motors in them.

My question is- at some point are all the metals separated out from each other?

i was thinking that there are hundreds of pounds of yummy copper going into the misc. pile everyday.
I wondered if it would be worthwhile to off to rent a small spot in the yard so i can cull out things with motors, extract the motors and copper wiring and then sell it to the yard for say... half price from what they're paying now.
Basically, I'd supply the labor and we'd split whatever I pulled out- electric motors and copper wiring mostly.

If I had to guess, it goes through a shredder and gets separated. Can't hurt to ask to do what you're proposing, but I'd be surprised if they agreed to it.

I'm doing just that... except I do it at my house and I do it at my own pace... I just let them know a day or 2 ahead of time when I will come in and pick up more stuff to work on....

If the yard has a shredder, than the shredder seperates everything.. if not then i would assume the operators/labor's pull out the goodies and clean/seperate/burn.. thats what we do in our yard.. we recover everything we can!

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Originally Posted by BigIgg

If the yard has a shredder, than the shredder seperates everything.. if not then i would assume the operators/labor's pull out the goodies and clean/seperate/burn.. thats what we do in our yard.. we recover everything we can!

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I assumed that at some point it had to be separated out, but doesn't that happen at the smelter or foundry??
Can the yard separate out - say aluminum and copper from the steel, and do it onsite??
Or do they just sell bales of mixed (s)crap to the foundry?

(I've seen the yard employees cutting steel with torches, but I've never seen them pulling copper wire or motors from appliances.)

Here the yard I use.
I can see the big pile of unsorted stuff near the drop off area
and there's a pile that looks to be shredded steel- judging from the color.
But I'm not sure where the shredder is.
and I don't see a foundry of any kind.

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/7977/lhre.jpg

One of my local yards sends the mixed metal to their main yard half an hour away. There they have a shredder that they just throw the metal in and it gets sorted. I don't think they bother pulling out anything.

Ok in our yard, we have a ground crew that when a load gets dumped they pick thru it, or the operator radios them over if hes sees something good, and he does his part and picks out big things. Honestly we dont bother with taking the motor out of a washer/dryer.. if we see brass valves,wire,larger sized motors,stainless,alum.etc. we pick it out and throw it in our recovery pile.. and when we have time we pick thru it, burn/clean and weigh up the recovery.. and the bails of light iron and appliances that get sent to the shredder, when they go thru the shredder they also get picked but the shredder does most the work.. i forgot the name, but special magnets and different conveyor belts seperate all the different kinds of metal, after the bail gets shredded.

When the metals go thru the shredder it separates the metals or some yards send the mixed material away to companies that do..The local company i deal with even send out the insulation and foam from cars to another yard to get recycled.

Here's some violent shredding. You wouldn't want to fall in one of these.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZDngpTmpzQ

I paid closer attention today when i went to the yard.
They use a lot of labor on the ground to sort and disassemble everything. I saw large containers of electric motors that they employees has pulled out, and they have separate piles of stainless.
So it looks like they buy most of it at 9 cents a pound and then separate it and grade it. makes sense that they'd do that- I would think that's one of the basics of running a yard.
Individual scrappers do the same thing, it just wasn't obvious at the yard, until I spent some time looking around and watching the employees.
But again today- truck after truck of guys that didn't sort their material and got paid tin prices fro the electric motors full of copper(and probably some aluminum).
I'm going to start targeting technicians and employees of contracting companies with some advertising soon.

I also came across a small lot that was offered for $500 down and $150 a month that had high fencing, and might make a decent little scrap yard. But I don't know if it has electric and water, and the aren't any building on it. I wonder if it'd be better to rent a small cheap space in a warehouse instead- mostly for security.
Lot is outlined in red- and is currently empty.

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/2030/scraplot.jpg