i am new to the scrap metal business, and i need help please!!!

My name is Jose and I live in Miami Florida. I am new to the scrap metal industry and in need of help and advice. I currently buy cable #1 to strip with two BLUE Rock wire strippers.

I started around 3 weeks ago with a plan, which that plan went to the garbage in a week. I was inform that I was able to have an output of processed copper #1 of around 100 pounds an hour. I based my plan with that theory. Based on what I was told, I bought two BLUE ROCK wire strippers, forklift, and Flatbed truck and rented a warehouse.

I hired for around 5 days 4 people at $8.00 an hour. I wanted two have one person on each side of the machine and processing 1000 pounds a day with each machine to have an output of around 600 to 750 pound per machine a day. I tried to improve the production in different ways but the output that I have end up is with 30 pounds an hour per machine. With that output it is not even able to pay the salary of the employees.

The cable that I am able to buy is from 10- 18 which is really thin. To make it worst a lot of the wire is stranded instead of all been solid which is faster to strip.

I have watched a lot of videos of cable wire granulators. My concern is that a lot of people say that they are not worth it and I wonder why. The European and American granulators are around $60,000. I have research and Chinese granulators which claim to have an output of 600 to 800 pounds for around 20,000. If I am making such an investment I want to make sure first that it has the output they claim the equipment has.

Most of the companies are willing to show the machine working at their factory, but from all of the companies only two would be willing for their past clients to show their machines working. I wonder why.
I also would not like to travel to China since it is a costly trip and I might not me convinced with the products they have to offer. If I buy a granulator I expect to input at least 4000 pounds of cable #1 a day.

The granulators that seemed to work are around 200,000 which is out of my price range.

I would like to know if there are any other materials that might be profitable without having to make such a big investment of $60,000 or more for a machine.

I have watched videos of a Korean hydraulic blade that is able to split in half the electric motors. On the other side of the machine it has to separate the copper from the steel. I wonder if by buying this machine or something similar would it be more profitable that owning a wire granulator. The electric motors I should be able to get them for less than .35 cents a pound. The machine is around $20,000

I am open to any material that would make me succeed in this industry. I am willing to pay someone in the United States that is willing to show me the profitable side of this business. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. I was brainstorming and ended up here. Thank you!

Copper seems to be a bad market to be in right now...........Im my humble opinion to much capital spent at the first of this venture........The start up for a scrap biz can be minimal.........I understand your desire and goals but scale it down a bit before you go belly up.........Let the employees go and do it yourself to start with.........Either way good luck

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.

I would not buy a Chinese machine based on their projection of output. The quality will be inferior overall and subject to breakdowns. You get what you pay for.

If you were to actually run #1 wire I would think your output would be much higher. You'll have more labor involved with the small stranded stuff.

Very good points there sawmilleng.

Thank you all for taking the time to read my post. I will follow your advise. Rookie mistakes.

I don't understand why you would invest all that money and hire employees to start a business that you know nothing about. You said you watched video's and went by what other people told you. This like 17 year old fresh out of high school that never work a job in his live going out and buying a restaurant and saying i've eaten in them alot so I thought I would buy one and make a killing. There is alot to learn in this business and you can't learn it by watching video's. Start slow and learn about what you want to specialize in and make sure you'll be able to make money at it before investing alot of money. We had one guy on the forum that had a good business going doing just the thing your talking about. He had ( I think ) 6 granulators and several employees but ended up going out of business. Good luck and happy scrappen