Free Copper - Copper Bar from a Microwave Oven

our grace grabbers three copper it's a question I get asked about a lot is where do I get copper from to make myself some bars or for my own copper metal projects so I've done a video on getting free copper from televisions well and some people are saying oh well televisions are running out you can't get the old-style TV much anymore although I've I see quite a lot of them still but your second alternative to get free copper is from microwave ovens now microwave ons are just about in every house so there's no shortage of scrap microwaves and so today I'm going to scrap out and make microwave and see how much copper we can get out of it and then I'll turn it into a copper bar so I'll just start scrapping this out and we'll get the transformer and any other copper pieces out of it and we'll see how we go okay so we've got a little bit of wire here obviously we'll take that but I'm not going to include the wire in the copper melt so this we just sell as insulated copper wire don't generally strip it but if you are just after pure copper and you didn't want to sell your copper wire you could strip this and add to your copper stack so here we've got the transformer and that's pretty much basically the main thing we want we also want this little fan motor up here and obviously we'll take the transformer and stuff there's a little relay box that we can get a little bit of copper so there's yeah really three main parts you've got the transformer the fan motor and a little relay inside with copper so that's that's all we're we're looking for today just to get the copper so we'll just I'll take out the stuffin so let's have a look just disconnect few of the wires out of the you've got the magnetron here which is also got a little bit of copper inside but I don't recommend scrapping out the Megatron's just leave them as they are they can have a residual power in there they can have you know possibly one in a thousand might have beryllium inside it and it might be cracked and powderized so as soon as you open that up you might get bits of dust coming up and that might contain beryllium so I don't open these up for the little bit of copper you get in in them it's not worth it so just leave them don't worry about the magnets if you want magnets get them out of hard drives okay so oh that's one nice big heavy copper transformer now there are three types of transformers in microwaves you'll see the two pieces of copper here now most cases this one so this one at the top the thin wire is always copper but sometimes it could be aluminium this one it could be both aluminium or copper so what you need to do here is this one Scott bad this one's always copper so if we scratch with her screwdriver okay so underneath I can see it's still yellow copper color so that's copper it was white and bright and shiny it would be just a loo mininum and if it was aluminium it almost wouldn't be worth scrapping it out you're better off just selling it as a transformer and in other cases it's so the three styles you got in this case this is the good one copper copper other times it's copper aluminium and then sometimes it's aluminium aluminium that's really bad so then you just want to sell it as a transformer you get much better value out of it but in this case we've got copper copper so it's a good one that we can scrap out and we can get that copper out all right so I've got some wires I want this fan motor okay so there we go that's all we want and we just want this piece of copper here which we'll take out I'll show you how I do that nice and easy and then we just throw the rest we can take a little bit of copper here if you want to pick at it I might try but I don't work on that much this is basically it all right and now we just want this little relay down there because also for those that like to keep a little bit of solar stuff the relays also have a little bit of silver so just in here this little black box okay so that's the copper spool it's only very small but there's you know quite a bit of copper wrapped around that we'll get that here we've got this is just brass and then under here you see these little contact points there will be a little bit of silver on these contact points so some people like to keep these break these off and keeping the silver contact points it's up to you it all adds up okay so we've got three pieces now we're ready to go the small spool the fan motor and the big copper copper transformer so let's take it into the workshop and see what what copper we can get out of it so as I said there's still circuit board here we've got an IC chip and a Transformers duel we can take the whole board still have to clean up this much wire I leave the capacitor inside I don't touch the capacitors and then we should have underneath we should have a a motor for the turntable and that's it so that's just and like I said if you are wonder to strip this wire you're not going to get a lot of copper out of it but if you want to add to your if you're just into looking for copper there's copper in this wire as well alright let's get to the workshop okay so we'll start off we've got that little little copper spool that's already kind of fell apart so it's our first bit of copper nice and easy that one okay this is really nice it's actually Millbury copper see if you it's bright and shiny there's no very little lacquer on it so that's the first piece second one is the fan motor so I'll just knock this out in the vise just pop it in there nice and tight and I just want to knock off this copper and that's it we removed the spool and so this part here because it's a thick steel this can actually go as high grade steel otherwise just throw it in scrap steel but like I said there's a little bit of copper here sometimes we can pick it off sometimes it's just too tight can't do it cry I mean if you're trying to get as much copper as you can from what you're getting then yeah you would spend a little bit of time and try and get as much as you can out of here I'll just put it back in a vise get some leverage leverage however you want to say it okay so just cut off a bit there we go more sometimes you can pull the whole whole lot through okay so we've just got a few pieces not much there the other side we'll also got some in there too so if you want to spend time you can get that little bit of copper but I'm happy with that now we just want to get the copper from this and again this piece of steel inside it's a whole series of plates stuck together but as a whole complete it's thick so it gives us heavy grade to deal if you like if you got that it does split up into pieces though all right so we got our little doodle okie all we want to do is just break off the edge of the plastic nice even cut and then we just pull this all out so yeah there's a lot of microwaves out there there's a lot of free copper if you're looking for copper I get so many people asking me where I can get it and so you know everyone's got a microwave oven and everyone you know eventually replaces that oven so just ask even if you don't see many on the street ask your friends if they ever throw out microwaves you want them go for the copper you know but you know everyone you know everyone froze there if you go to apartment blocks and places where there's a very dense population there's always someone throwing out a microwave all right so that's a really good weld of copper here from just that fan motor really nice will melt that too alright so finally we've got the transformer and well there's really only one way you can I'll just get this rubber bit off there's only one way you can really get the copper out of this this transformer and if you can see down the bottom you can see this seam and it goes runs all the way through it's like a weld seam going along here and so we want to remove this block from the rest of the transformer in order to slide out the copper so it's all going to come from this direction where the seam is so we want to cut down this seam as there two ways you can use an electric saw of some kind or just a hammer and I just use a chisel like this you can use any kind of chisel this one's probably not the best it's not very deep it's very shallow but that's all I use and all I want is just to cut along there okay we just want to get break that seam or the weld that's all we'll try and line it up this is going to take a few bulking so I just want to get it lined up because if you don't get it like you know otherwise I'll be bit bashing it to nothing okay just make a start okay let's you get us started now leave it with me and see how I can see when get into it okay yep looks like we're online get down I had a bit of chisel probably get through quicker that was it just enough to crack the seam look sorry about that okay so there we go I just go up a bit so we've got our main plate a nice clean removal so this again high-grade steel very thick almost an inch thick right even though it's just plates because it's all together you get better money for it okay so now we just got the copper okay so that's the copper piece there we want to get that out of the block and then start knocking at the second piece okay well this transformer is operating a little bit easier than most transformers so here's our first piece just remove that cardboard and there we go some nice copper so all I want to do is just remove the terminals put that into a brass most likely could be aluminium okay this sticky tape I mean the sticky tape will burn off into the melt but you know just to give it a clean we've got a little bit of glue got a little burn off alright so that's our first piece and we did it before but I'll do it again just scratch it and that's just bright copper underneath it would be really shiny because not copper it would be aluminum but even just holding it I can feel that it's copper alright so that's one more last one now before we take this one out we're going to turn around this way and you see the two steel plates here got to remove the plates before we can take out this last bit of copper and there's also a bit of wire so all I do here is I just put a screwdriver against the edge and just bash it out there we go we've gotten rid of one there we go it's just a bit of Steel that's on top of the wire now we just get rid of this insulated wire that's in the layer in between the two pieces of copper again if we don't take it out it's going to be very hard to get that copper out it's just going to be wedged in so we get rid of this okay so we've got more this just goes straight into insulated copper wire a bit more there now we're ready to go let's get that second one turn it back around we can actually go like this if we like it's a little bit awkward alright okay so we just get the second piece out and that's just a matter of getting it out of the wedging that's it again cardboard now with a bit of glue you can clean this off as much as you like but a lot of it will burn off but you're best off to try and clean as much as you can I'll just remove these terminals so it's a really easy job and it's and it's fun so even getting your free copper the process of getting it is fun too it's not hard work and you know if copper is something that you want well why go out and buy it when you can just go and pick up an old microwave up the street okay that will just about to us there we go another beautiful piece of copper as I said if the is this first one is copper second one usually always copper yep it's only when the first one is aluminium then sometimes the second one can be aluminium this is the fine one very fine wire a lot of copper here but definitely copper just get rid of it look at really nice chunk of steel here high-grade steel really heavy beautiful you might even want to use these for other things okay so here's our little Kellie the main transformer two really nice pieces of copper now what I'm going to have to do to put this in a crucible obviously it's not going to fit in my crucible because mine are very very narrow so I'm going to have to cut these in half in order to melt them but that's no problem the piece from the fan motor a little bit from the pan motor and that little copper spool from the relay so there you go I'll wire up and see what we got there okay Wow so quite a bit more than from that really nice television that I did last time so here we've got one point three four kilos so it's it's almost you almost I think it's almost three yeah it's three pounds one point three four five kilos so about three pounds of copper it's beautiful let's melt her a so it's a good value from one microwave three pounds of copper again you know some people are going to say ah but how much is that worth what's it worth for ten bucks you know it's it's not the point the point is that people want free copper people want copper to melting to bars to do whatever they want regardless what they want it for and so this is a way to get it for free that's as simple as it is I'm not saying they are you going to make a million dollars out of scrapping out microwaves but if you just want copper that's here this is how you get it just find a microwave or an old TV and then you've got copper what you do with it after that is up to you so right now at 3:45 13:45 this copper will call it burnt copper so it's about here in Australia it's about five dollars fifty a kilo okay so 550 a kilo seven dollars forty worth of copper okay so that's it now if you want to sell these copper you just want the money you don't want the actual copper then you can just take it in just like that you don't have to do anything else and you'll get your $7 40 that's it so you know again for those people saying Oh what's the point of melting it and turning it into a bar and you know like that and and going through all that and wasting energy you of that but not the the idea this is just what I like to do with my copper is turning into copper bars but you don't have to do that you know I do it as a hobby not not as a to trine value-add because this copper bar is worth the same as this copper in scrap there's no difference so there's no point in you know turning this into anything else but just leave it like it is if you're just taking it to the scrapyard to sell because that's what they buy they buy scrap copper it doesn't matter how it is so like I said if you want just the money $7 40 I want to bar so I'm going to do that right now okay I've got one crucible filled up let all this melt down and then I'll just keep adding more more copper as we go we'll let that get up to temperature melt that down we'll keep adding more okay well just about to pour all the copper is inside and it's red-hot and looking good going to burn the camera that's it beautiful molten copper so let's let's get pouring I'll just zoom in a little bit you that little bit is the just carbon and dirt and all that and there's still a lot more in there it's sort of stucked at the bottom it's going to be a whole lot of impurities and stuff that I didn't use virtually no borax I don't like to use too much borax in with copper when I'm melting copper wire it's different when you're melting solid pieces then there's not much impurities but yeah with some copper wire there's a lot of impurities still left in that but it looks like I've got all the copper out of it anyway and it turned out to be a really nice pour actually it's quite beautiful then turn off the crucible oh yeah that look Sun looks fantastic I'll let that sit for a couple of minutes before I tip it out it's still a little bit volatile when it's at this stage I reckon it looks to be cool enough underneath Wow got to clean it up but jeez it's heavy hello well it should be one point three kilos at least here we go okay there we go so I'll just clean it up a little bit remove some of the spore acts that's on top and just polish it up a few little craters there that was probably where I was pouring and oxygen was getting in but wow really nice bar so I'll clean it up and see what it weighs okay I'll just put it in the vise polish it up [Music] okay now that's that's a bar Wow look at that that's absolutely beautiful it's got a really nice textured top not too bad really good sides no you know pronounced layering not much anyway a little bit of a crater here but overall really nice very nice that's way up 1.3 2 kilos so if we didn't really lose much I think it was one point three four five so we might have lost thirty grams which is you know the still be a little bit in there but it would have been just the impurities from the wire like say Y like that you know see that's Brown it should be like almost like Goldy color so that's all lacquer and shellacking in and a coating so once you remove all that and you bring it down to pure copper you're going to lose obviously a little bit so there we go and now we've got a pure copper bar ready to put onto our stack okay well that was it guys microwave oven free copper you can pick them up up for the streets there's billions of them in the world so there are billions and billions of pounds of copper waiting for you to go and pick it up obviously the cheap microwaves are mostly going to be aluminium transformers or ones but you know most good microwaves will give you free copper and then you can as I said you can sell it as wire if that's if you're looking at just making money or if you're looking at making bars microwave simple as that 1.3 kilograms of copper pure copper or our guys well had fun that was a little bit of interest for you and keep scrapping and I'll catch you next time

Channel: eWaste Ben

Views: 831,501

Rating: 4.6803608 out of 5

Keywords: ewaste ben, ewasteben, recycling e-waste, Copper Ingot, melting copper, scrap copper bar, Free Copper, Free copper from a microwave oven, ingot, electric melting furnace copper, scrapping a microwave oven, copper bar melting copper wire

Id: 92XIafi7Cg0

Length: 34min 32sec (2072 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/squiremarcus]

awww.. am i the only one who thought this was another giveaway?

[u/catallus2]

Am I the only one whose first thought was "Wow, I can melt copper in my microwave!?" ?

[u/kriscad]

Do they sell any smelters like that in the states anyone can suggest?

[u/bacon_is_just_okay]

That's aluminum.