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Industrial containers — 55-gallon steel drums, IBC totes, pails, and spent fire extinguisher cylinders — are among the most common categories of metal scrap generated by manufacturing, distribution, and industrial maintenance operations. They are also among the most poorly understood from a shredding standpoint. The...

A portable car flattener doesn't process scrap — it processes logistics. A whole end-of-life vehicle occupies roughly 150 cubic feet on a flatbed. The same vehicle after a single pass through a portable hydraulic flattener occupies 12–15 cubic feet, and stacks. A load that moves four whole cars to the shredder moves...

Slag and dross represent two of the most consistently undervalued recovery opportunities in secondary metals processing. Aluminum dross — the oxide-rich layer skimmed from the surface of molten aluminum during melting, alloying, and casting — still contains 20–65% recoverable aluminum metal by weight, depending on h...

Protecting Your Eddy Current Separator Against Ferrous Fines Did you know: Ferrous fines can remain affixed to an eddy current rotor indefinitely, heating up and damaging the belt and rotor? Crossbelt magnets and magnetic pulleys cannot remove ferrous fines because ma...

Why metal contamination quietly destroys plastics value Most reclaimers know that residual aluminum is "bad." What is less well understood is how steeply the value curve drops once contamination crosses a threshold a typical buyer's spec already calls out. Three economic pressures compound: Resin downgra...

Rubber is the industrial feedstock most at odds with the basic mechanics of size reduction. Shredders cut by concentrating force at a geometric point; rubber responds to that force by deforming, absorbing energy, and returning to its original shape once the knife passes. This isn't a design flaw in the equipment — i...

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Post-consumer carpet is one of the hardest feedstocks in the recycling stream — not because the fibers lack value, but because nearly half of every carpet by weight is calcium carbonate filler, and the rest is a sandwich of nylon, polypropylene, and latex bonded into a layered geometry that punishes any machine aske...

The decision between a fixed shredding installation and a portable or trailer-mounted unit is fundamentally a question about where the value capture happens. In a scrap yard or industrial facility processing consistent daily volumes, a fixed plant almost always wins on cost per ton. But in a demolition project, a fi...

ACSR — aluminum conductor steel-reinforced cable — has been the backbone of North American overhead transmission for more than a century, and the volume of it coming out of grid modernization and storm-damage replacement projects is accelerating. On paper it looks simple: concentric aluminum strands wrapped around a...

Automotive radiators are one of the more straightforward non-ferrous scrap items by appearance — a rectangular assembly of copper tubes and aluminum fins, sometimes with brass header tanks, worth a predictable amount per pound once the metals are separated. The difficulty is in the separation itself. Copper and alum...

Electronic scrap is the fastest-growing waste stream in the world by weight and arguably the most materials-diverse feedstock in industrial recycling. A single load arriving at an e-scrap processor may contain aluminum laptop housings, lead-tin solder on circuit boards, neodymium magnets in hard drives, cobalt-beari...

IMPORTANT WARRANTY INFORMATION & TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF SALEAs used herein, the term “Seller” shall mean Alan Ross Machinery, an Illinois corporation, who for the purposes of this agreement may also be referred to as the “Broker” in those instances where it does not hold title to the equipment at the time of quotat...

Mixed aluminum and steel machining chips are one of the most undervalued scrap streams in industrial recycling. Foundries, job shops, and CNC machining centers generate them continuously — a 10-machine shop running two shifts might produce 200–400 lb of mixed turnings per day — but the combination of cutting fluid c...

Long aluminum turnings from lathe and turning operations present a specific logistics and processing problem that is distinct from mixed chip handling or general aluminum scrap preparation. The chips themselves have good alloy purity and high recovery value — but in their unprocessed form they are nearly unusable: t...

Titanium scrap commands some of the highest per-pound values in the non-ferrous recycling market — mill-certified Grade 5 (Ti-6Al-4V) turnings and cut-offs trade at multiples of what aluminum or copper bring, and demand from aerospace tier suppliers for revert material has been consistently strong. The reason more s...

The decision between a fixed shredding installation and a portable or trailer-mounted unit is fundamentally a question about where the value capture happens. In a scrap yard or industrial facility processing consistent daily volumes, a fixed plant almost always wins on cost per ton. But in a demolition project, a fi...

Fiberglass reinforced plastic has been accumulating in landfills and long-term storage for decades — and the decommissioning wave is accelerating. First-generation wind turbine blades, 1970s and 1980s boat hulls, legacy construction panels, and bathroom fixture scrap are all entering the recycling stream in growing ...

Hard drive shredding is the only size-reduction application where the regulatory requirement — a defined maximum particle size — is as binding a constraint as the material recovery objective. NSA, NIST, and most enterprise data destruction standards specify that HDD magnetic platters must be reduced below a certain ...

The decision between a fixed shredding installation and a portable or trailer-mounted unit is fundamentally a question about where the value capture happens. In a scrap yard or industrial facility processing consistent daily volumes, a fixed plant almost always wins on cost per ton. But in a demolition project, a fi...

Alan Ross Machinery has North America's largest in-stock inventory of used and new solutions for spent bullet shells. Call us now at 847.480.8900 for more information.

Steel shearing is the oldest size-reduction method in the scrap metal business and, in many operations, still the most economical. A properly maintained hydraulic shear cuts heavy structural steel, plate, and prepared scrap into mill-ready lengths with lower consumable cost per ton than any other process — when the ...

Alan Ross Machinery has North America's largest in-stock inventory of used and new solutions for plastics  recycling. Call us now at 847.480.8900 for more information.

Auto shredder residue — the fraction that exits the hammermill after ferrous and bulk non-ferrous recovery — accounts for roughly 25% of end-of-life vehicle mass and is arguably the most compositionally unpredictable feedstock in the industrial recycling stream. One load is mostly polyurethane foam and fabric. The n...

Wire and cable recycling is one of the few industrial applications where the value of what you're separating — copper conductor at $3–4 per pound — is high enough that small differences in recovery efficiency translate directly into large differences in operating margin. A granulation and air-table line achieving 94...