What happens to 'mixed metal'??

**Rusty Nuts** · 01-28-2011, 04:43 PM

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!

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.

**Scrap man** · 01-28-2011, 08:27 PM

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.

**BigIgg** · 01-29-2011, 02:35 AM

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.