Theres mainly two sorts of floresent ballasts.
The older ones are in a steel box & are filled with tar stuff. I don't bother with them.
The other sort are the later models & you can see the copper wire & iron plates, they are normally painted white.
With a bench vise you can peel back the backing plate on them, then peel it off completly.
That leaves you with the iron core & the copper winding.
This bit of info is very usefull>
The iron core on these are 'Stacked'. They are not 'Interlocked'. Very Very important.
Once you have peeled the back off.
Lay the core down flat & using earmuffs & safty glasses & a hammer & a wide cold chisel put the chisel face edge into the long gap/Vee down the center, bash it with the hammer.
The little iron plates will start to seperate a bit, leaving a small gap, start at one edge & work towards the other end.
do that on both sides. The gaps probably about 1/4 inch wide now.
Now you can see the individual plates easy like.
Now start bashing the plates off the copper wire spool/windings or use a screwdriver & start at one end & pick the plates off.
Do that over a bin or something as when the plates fall off (theres hundreds & hundreds!!) they end up on the floor.
I grab the bunches & put them aside & leave the odd ones to hit the floor & sweep them up afterwards.
Once all the side iron plates are off you will notice theres smaller iron squares inside the winding.
Bash them out too.
That leaves you with a copper winding. On a normal size light fixture these windings weigh 100 grams each.
ie, 1/10th of one Kg @ NZ$7.00Kg = NZ$0.70 cents each.
Normally I find these in rubbish skips when a shop is changing their interier design, normally there are about 20 or more.
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