Granulator/wire stripper help

Originally Posted by miked

We have couple members who do granulate wire and thats how they make a living. My experience is your priority is to make as much money per hour possible, thats true for all. So I would take advice from others with a grain of solt. On a small scale like me I can strip any wire I want and since I consider my time nearly worthless its always an increase in money in my pocket. It seems that you are in a different ball park than I so there are people who will tend to guide you into a direction that may benefit them. Having said that if I was considering that large of a purchase I would take a substaintial representative load to the sellers location and check your recovery rate for real. One individual who is a wire granulator told me that how the machine is adjusted determines how effective it operates and determines the rate of recovery. I believe there are many buyers of the output from the granulators but I would expect you to have to contract to delivery certain amounts.

Volume should talk so you may need to find another buyer while you get more info on the granulators and potientional buyers of the granulated Cu. I know the videos on youtube would make you believe that the copper just drops out all the same size and clean and the insulation side only drops out insulation. If it works that way why are others using seperation tables with water and vibration? Best of luck, Mike.

Mike is dead on. If you granulate and they reach in for a handful and find contamination you're screwed. By no means am I trying to misguide you. We're the largest recycler in the world and can't get the pricing to buy granulated copper from larger yards to make it profitable. But the bottom line is if your doing the volume you should be making the money, enough to buy from the small guy who strips even if it's at a nickle or dime a lb profit

Originally Posted by tombuysscrap

Mike is dead on. If you granulate and they reach in for a handful and find contamination you're screwed. By no means am I trying to misguide you. We're the largest recycler in the world and can't get the pricing to buy granulated copper from larger yards to make it profitable. But the bottom line is if your doing the volume you should be making the money, enough to buy from the small guy who strips even if it's at a nickle or dime a lb profit

Tom,

I don't do enough volume to make enough profit (and I mean a decent living) at a nickle or dime a lb profit. So, I must come up with an alternative to just buying, bailing, selling.

As I said, I've been stripping. Not by hand, not manually. With a machine. Now, my machine is nothing too fancy. It cost about $2k and does a good job. The problem is, I need to speed up the process, otherwise, I'm not making a whole lot per hour of work. If I could work 24 hours a day, I guess it wouldn't matter. But, I do have a family and a life and I would rather not be working all day long.

Can you tell me exactly why you guys can't make money on granulated copper as opposed to #1 copper? I'm not trying to start a debate, I'm just really curious now.

For example, if I come in and sell you 1 ton of copper #1 - you would buy it and profit, right?
But if I come in a sell you 1 ton of granulated copper - you can't buy it because there is no margin for you?

WHat I can't figure out is how there is no margin for you after granulation? What does consistency have to do with exporting it? I'm just confused.