Breaking down copper aluminum fin [video]

Originally Posted by Filthy

thanks, joe. it jumped the wheels a few times but i found if i held the back of the rad up a little so the teeth went in at an angle rather than laying flat, it cut through the Al a little easier, so i had the guard up to make the cuts go faster.



i do like the idea of cutting strait down the pipe and pulling the two halves out. that's how i clean my brass, and i don't know why i hadn't thought about doing it on these. glad to see this post resurface, too

@gtlfindings, my yard takes all refrigeration lines as #2 pipe. so they will pay copper price, but i dont bother seperating it from the soldered joints. i made the mistake of trying it once too, and every time i feel "taken" i learn how to avoid the mistake again.

When I first started scrapping AC units a few years ago I also took the time to trim and separate all the brazed,(HVAC is brazed not soldered) joints out.
I loaded up the truck with 800 pounds of compressors and all my pedicured copper in separate buckets and headed to "a" scrap yard. The guy first grabbed the copper buckets and dumped them into one container, my jaw fell to the floor thinking of all the time and beers it took to separate those buckets. Oh well lesson learned! Then they hauled all my compressors off on a forklift around the building and came back with a weight, not a accurate reading in the least! My math is very good, they ripped me off bad!. I had got paid for 450 pounds of compressors.
Never went back to that yard, lesson cost me hundreds.


After that first trip I was very disappointed to say the least. I then learned to open the compressors and get my copper, that was a huge move!
I had taken a coil and did a weigh in, cut it up and did a weigh out. This was a while ago and I can't find my figures but at the time I did not have a place to sell the foil/fin, now I do! I will do another test run with my numbers at current market values and see what's up. When I only figured in the net of the clean #2 copper was such a small profit I felt it was a waste of my time, and I strip everything! Now that I can sell the Aluminum fin ( Yard called it turnings) it may just make it worth wild for me to cut them down. The yard payed me $0.20 lb.

What I have started to do is cleanup the single row coils that is easy to just slice with the razor, just to make room . I am up to about 1200 pounds of just coil. I may start to cut them all down soon, still sitting till the market turns back around. I am out nothing but time at this point.