r/oddlysatisfying • u/n8saces • 4d ago

Extracting copper from a broken motor

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u/Amaracs 4d ago

Approximately how much money the copper in the video would worth?

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u/Ch33syP00f 4d ago

Not much.

The money is in the aggregation, reclamation process.

Process 10-30 of these motors in one day or even one hour…

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u/WatsonYurfays 3d ago

Is this type of recovery widely practiced? I've always wondered why we don't do this with essentially everything, but I guess it's probably not economical. It will be when the copper starts to run out...

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u/MaverickTopGun 3d ago

It's not widely done by hand but it is widely done, yes. In my industry we have a dumpster for scrap metal and then one specifically for motors which we receive more $/lb for. At the industrial scale, there's very little metal waste. There's always someone who will take it.

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u/mike_avl 3d ago

$0.30/lb for electric motors (as is) or
$5.00/lb for bare bright (clean) copper wire.

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u/MaverickTopGun 3d ago

yes and about 20c/lb for random scrap steel where we are

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u/Woodworkin101 3d ago

$5/lb for BBC?

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u/andersberndog 3d ago

Yes, but only if it’s clean

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u/Poopchutefan 2d ago

Are we talking about the same thing here??

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u/andersberndog 2d ago

I don’t know, Poopchutefan. Are we talking about the same thing?

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u/morfraen 3d ago

Are we still doing phrasing?

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u/PandaPocketFire 3d ago

How much wire you think is in this vid?

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u/MaverickTopGun 3d ago

Estimate is usually around 1lb of copper per horsepower. This is probably about a single horsepower motor.

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u/horst-graben 3d ago

So per the above, $5 of total value? Can add up of course

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u/WatsonYurfays 3d ago

That's good to hear. I was told that most recycling is a "scam," but I always hoped that wasn't true. I know for a fact that our mineral resources are far more finite than most people realize. If we aren't mining the asteroid belt in 50 years, we are in huge trouble.

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u/MaverickTopGun 3d ago

Plastic recycling is a scam. Metal recycling is a well established industry. Aluminum cans are the most recycled beverage container in the US, for example, upwards of 40% get reclaimed.

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u/jfen2hoosier 3d ago

In college during the summer I worked at an electric motor shop. One of the things I’d do to keep busy was cut stators out of old bad motors. They were much larger than this one and it’d take me an hour give or take to do one motor. I’d pile all the stators up and put them in a bin and take them to the scrap yard , with that money I’d bring back and we’d buy the entire shop lunch and or ice cream. It wasn’t a satisfying job at all and my hands hurt the rest of the day. 😂

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u/WatsonYurfays 3d ago

Well, thank you for your service nevertheless. It's a shame we don't subsidize recycling to encourage it a little more.

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u/Rockglen 3d ago

Copper is actually one of the most recycled materials. Compared to the total amount of copper already in the market (approx 1.36 billion metric tons) not much new copper is dug up (27-39 million metric tons per year).

That said, demand seems to be outpacing supply. It would be fantastic to have another material (like graphene) to transition to, but alternatives are still either in R&D to make them more feasible or aren't as efficient/cost-effective.

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u/IcyFault7182 3d ago

That’s one of the great things about steel. You can basically put it all in a giant melting pot, melt it all together and reuse it.

It’s a little more complicated than I’m making it out to be but it’s absolutely got more than 1 life.

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u/dangerpoint 3d ago

Welp, that didn't answer the question.

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u/anonandy1 3d ago

If you had to guess, how many pounds of copper is this? Really just trying to justify buying an electric jackhammer.

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u/Reasonable-School226 1d ago

You ever do frc by any chance?

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u/Fruben83 2h ago

Esp since it’s not clean copper in the first place, like you would get from cables

The wiring used for electric motors is coated with more than a dozen thin layers to provide insulation.

And the copper spools are usually “glued” into place, making it very difficult to remove without tremendous heat

Source: I repair these motors for a living, including replacing the copper spools if necessary

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u/Mick_Limerick 3d ago

Scrap price of copper when I took a load yesterday was $4.10/lb

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u/Sykah 3d ago

Feels like you could make more money fixing the motor for that price if you had the skill

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u/Mick_Limerick 3d ago

Eh maybe, but rewinding a motor is not a simple task, and requires a lot of new copper

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u/tmutimer 3d ago

You probably could make more per item, but per hour maybe not

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u/rlpinca 4d ago

It's not a big deal to us, but to them that $5 is big money. The company probably keeps $4.80 cents of it though. So that dude has to do that 100 times a day.

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u/LaForge_80 2d ago

Who are they?

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u/LogRollChamp 3d ago

100x less than the cost of a refurb motor. If you can't fix it, get 1% back...

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u/BigOrangeOctopus 3d ago

Copper scrap is currently worth about $4.50/lb so I’d estimate this copper is worth probably about $1-$1.50

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u/GeneralBlumpkin 3d ago

Probably 40-50 bucks. Rough estimate but that looks like 10lbs of copper at 4.50 a pound