How to Scrap Ballasts for Copper

Awesome video and awesome mail call!

I get 44 Cents a pound for them, Not worth stripping for me

Freezing is the way to go . I have done it that way for years .

Never had to scrap ballast yet and hopefully I never will 😅

I scrap every little piece that’s possible 🖖.

Man, yall videos are so inspirational keep up the good work I love scrapping with my dad 😊😊

That was messy!

Love the prayer at the end. That’s awesome.

Not sure I will be doing ballast anytime soon.

Hello. Do you have an Email address, where I could ask you a private question?

Congrats on 10k friend.

Nice job God bless you brother

Scrap Art ❤❤

Nice job 👍👏👏

Awful lot of work and mess for penny's.....but interesting 🤔

That’s the same temperature I like to do my extracts, because, boom.

I upgraded a whole school district to electronic ballasts and just threw them away until we bought a new building for remodeling for administration building. There were so many ballasts that I decided to recycle them. Just use the diagonal cutter first to open the end, then unwrap with hammer and lineman’s. It’s much faster and also safer .More effective to use the hammer head than the claws. I processed the transformers about 100 at a time after the hammer cleanse with an improvised out door oven .After the residual tar was burned off the copper slips off the core with only your hands. Everything comes out clean.The core and wrapping steel brought probably $.20 or less ,but the copper paid well as #2 .

Didn’t learn that process on the first batch but found it was cleaner and faster. I should have focused on working in my profession as electrician but come from a proud line of dumpster divers .

I believe that “tar” is actually a type of epoxy used to pot electronics!

Great video!

I'm pretty sure that what you're doing there is illegal. The material that's in the ballast are supposed to be disposed of properly. And knowingly disposing it incorrectly is prison time I believe.

If you read the label on the ballast it should say "PCB Free" if they are the newer ones. If no label toss into the shred. I got 375 of them from a electrician who didn't want to bother with them any more.

I just sold 91 LBS of them today. Got $0.01 a pound 😂😂

🤷‍♂️ Seems that sometimes one’s gotta break things, eh?…
</sigh…>

Man made organic ? I’ll have to check on that one…

Awesome. I have a deep freezer

Thank you for sharing your knowledge on scrapping. I am just getting started. Happy Easter. Praise God we serve a risen Savior !

That’s really nice they sent you gifts

Are ballasts ever labeled to tell us if it contains an aluminum or copper transformer? That way we'd know ahead of time.

Thank you for the leads!! Subscribed to both!!

AMEN

I may have missed it, The copper windings from ballast or any other component with a minimal amount of tare coating on them, is classified as?

im trying to get an e waste business going in my community i would appreciate any advice

what a humble man i hope i can accomplish somthing like you boss your awsome

Lots of nice goodies!😄

The scrap yard that I deal with take some whole. I don't bother with them. I save them up and take them in. It's a lot easier than playing with all that black tar like you said. Not everybody takes them but my scrap yard does. 👍👍🙂🇨🇦

Interesting. God bless.

My thoughts exactly, but I wanted to know before I said anything, take off the metel shell before you freeze, dont let it warm up should shatter easily

Cool, im going to continue giving them to the recycling depot . Nice to see what is inside them though

Got started busting one of these open from a pile from a retrofit job I was on with a sawzall, smelled so bad I stopped. Turns out I think the production date was not 1989 but instead 1968. Now I’ve got a small stain on my workbench that I think may be PCB? Thankfully none got on my hands, found out about the yellow label rule the hard way. What should I do? 😅

Sing that song by Styx, " I got too much time on my hands ".

Someone else had a great idea of wrapping the item your going to wack in a used towel or rag. Keeps the pesky flying parts in one place .

I break that tar off both ends in 2 chunks and only have little bit that that messy

Thanks @Scrapitall

I’d sooner be in my man cave scrapping than watching you. But im not but think I need a monitor in there so I can both at the same time Man cave heaven

For 30 cents why even bother

Venison jerky oh my!

Nope. No ballast recycling for me. Too messy and not worth the waste cleanup. Not even if copper were $500 per pound. I did, however, enjoy the video.

Does your scrap yard actually accept those coils "as is" as #2 copper? There is a lot of paper and tar still in them. I've been unwinding them quickly while passing the wire through paper towels and the wire still has tar stains on it.

I am curious about the Utah candy bars, are they made in the US?