How Can Your Business Survive an Economic Recession

Your Scrap business will surely be affected during an economic recession. Fortunately, there are things you can do to keep it afloat.

Remember that the heart of every business is customer service. If you give special treatment to your customers, these people will leave feeling satisfied and always come back. This is something that your employees must understand because if they don’t, these individuals will be the first one to go since you have to cut back on your expenses.

One way of doing that is to reeducate your employees. Give them a refresher course of the products and services that you are offering. You should also motivate them because good morale always achieves positive results. Being the owner of the business, you should lead by example by rendering longer hours at work. If they see you are doing whatever it takes to  stay afloat, they will do the same because again, their jobs are on the line and they could be dismissed if things get worse. 

The objective of any business is to make money so part of surviving an economic recession will be also to lower your profit margins as scrap metal becomes scarce. By informing your customers of this move, they will be able to bring more to you at a very reasonable price. You can raise prices again when things get better since such a crisis is only temporary.

Instead of relying on people coming through your door, you can also look at other ways to promote your business. One of the most affordable ones to date is the internet so create your own website. 

Other businesses are also feeling the crunch and they are also doing their best to stay afloat. Ask around what they are doing and share the same information as well so you will have other ideas and options when the ones you have right now are not working.

We are not yet out of the woods in the recent economic recession. A lot of people are still losing their jobs and their homes, which is why it is important for you to take the steps mentioned rather than doing nothing and hoping for a miracle.

Starting from scrap

Headline Story | equities.com

Great article about a starting business, this is how most scrap businesses, including mine, started.

Extract from the Article:

Oct. 28--YOUNGSTOWN

At a house on Lockwood Boulevard, in a small garage just off the living room, motors are yanked from refrigerators and wires are stripped down to the precious light copper waiting underneath rubber and insulation.

A profit is turned with one small part or by one old rusting appliance at a time.

Dim lights flicker over Michael Kohuth, 20, and Michael Kosach, 19, as they work to build a business from the ground up with their truck, their hands and the word-of-mouth referrals that have thus far given them a running start.

Kohuth and Kosach, both graduates of Boardman High School, have jumped into the country's $100 billion scrap-metal industry, one that employs 137,000 Americans and indirectly supports another 450,000 jobs across the country.

Metal recycling has been around for thousands of years, but with a boom in overseas construction and a dearth of raw materials, prices for scrap metal have surged in recent years, opening a window for guys such as Kohuth and Kosach to make either a simple living or a fortune, depending on how they approach their new profession.

The Boardman natives are known as "peddlers" to industry insiders. They have just one role in an industry with a long line of duties, from the traders on the London Metal Exchange or the New York Mercantile Exchange who set scrap prices by the minute, or the smelters who melt down the junk metal so that manufacturers can turn what were once useless heaps of metal into high-grade raw material with countless applications.

Back in June, Kohuth and Kosach, acting on years of recreational scrapping, decided to start Iron Man Recycling and extend their services, free of charge, to residents and businesses throughout Mahoning County.

The two will pick up almost anything, from an old dryer taking up space in the basement, to a car overrun by tall grass in the back yard. After loading it on their truck, the two will take it to one of several area metal recycling yards for a small or large profit, depending on whatever they haul in a given day.

Share Large Industrial Recycler Convinced By MOBOTIX-Solution

Share Large Industrial Recycler Convinced By MOBOTIX-Solution

United Scrap Metal Inc., a buyer, processor, and recycler founded in 1978 by Marsha Serlin, a single mother of two, with $200 and a rental truck. United Scrap now processes over 250,000,000 lbs. of material each year at their 35-acre processing yard with a team of 180 employees and 2,500 commercial clients across the nation.

An awesome example of the power of scrap...

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Creating critters from scrap metal

Creating critters from scrap metal

An Awesome use for scrap metal and food for thought.

I was taught if you collect scrap metal and someone wants to buy it for something other than scrap, a good rule of thumb is twice the scrap value per weight.  Maybe making critters like these could make that even more than twice.... :-)

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Engineers seek to extract rare earth metals from scrap | News | The Engineer

Engineers seek to extract rare earth metals from scrap | News | The Engineer

Aluminium recycling - brief tour

Aluminium has been recycled since the times it was first commercially produced and nowadays recycled aluminium accounts for one-third of global aluminium consumption world-wide. 


Aluminium destined for recycling can be classified into two categories: new and old scrap.

 


New Scrap

New scrap is the surplus material that is thrown away during the manufacturing and fabrication of aluminum alloys.

Most new scrap comes straight from the manufacturing industry. It is usually of known quality and composition and frequently un-coated. It can therefore be melted down with just a bit of preparation. 100% of the arising fabrication scrap is remelted by the aluminum industry.

Old Scrap

Old scrap is aluminum material that is recovered when an aluminum article has been produced, used and finally thrown away at the end of its worthwhile life. Such scrap could be car cylinder heads, used beverage cans, window frames from a wrecked building or old electrical conductors.

Old scrap comes to the recyclers thru a very well-organized network of metal merchants who have the technology to recover aluminum from household appliances, motor vehicles, etc. This is often done by means of heavy equipment such as shredders, usually together with magnetic separators to get rid of iron, and sink-and-float installations to detach the aluminum from other materials.


Processing of Scrap

Both types of scrap are processed before melting to get rid of any contamination that may exist. They are centrifuged and dried to eliminate the oil and water and then magnetically separated from any existing iron. Used beverage cans are processed to take away the interior lacquer coating and the exterior product display printing inks.

More tips on Processing Aluminum can be found at Life is an Adventure

Weight of Aluminium Cans

Ever wondered how many Aluminum soft drink cans you had to collect to equal one pound. You will be entertained and enlightened by what you'll find out here. 

How many aluminum cans does it take to equal one pound? 

 

How may Pounds in a Kilogram for us Aussies? 

2.2pounds = 1 KG

By this standard we'll need approx 70 Cans to make up a Kilo. 

(around $1.20 AUD scrap value)

Better get to drinkin :-)

Have a great day.

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The Next Generation Scrap Metal Analyser from Oxford Instruments

The Next Generation Scrap Metal Analyser from Oxford Instruments

The X-MET7500 Scrap Metal Analyser is a rapid, reliable and cost-effective handheld X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyser widely used across the non-destructive testing (NDT) industry. Handheld XRF analysers, often referred to as 'X-ray guns' are used within the scrap metal industry to achieve the most consistent analysis results helping secure the best price for incoming and outgoing scrap material. 

The X-MET7500 measures the key elements in a range of metal alloys including Stainless, Tool and Low Alloy Steels, Nickel, Titanium, Copper, Cobalt and Aluminium alloys by placing the X-MET against the alloy, pulling the trigger and after a few seconds the chemical composition and alloy grade is displayed. 

This allows optimum scrap metal recycling and scrap sorting to be performed with ease and confidence.

Scrap-metal masterpieces | London | News | London Free Press

Scrap-metal masterpieces | London | News | London Free Press

You've heard the saying one person's trash is another person's treasure, but one person's scrap metal, another person's . . . art?

It may not look like your typical art gallery, but the entrance way to John Zubick Ltd. Scrap Metal on Clarke Road is lined with sculptures.

A giant praying mantis, a spider and a bumble bee all twisted out of steel sit on towers above the fence surrounding Zubick's. Over to the left a giant squid with rusted chain-link tentacles sits beside a large koi fish.

The sculptures were created by Fanshawe College fine arts students as part of a program the college runs with Zubick's scrap metal.

Food for thought :-)

Fun facts about Silver

Did you know that Silver is one of the most essential components of every electronic device, such as laptops, cellphones, tablet PCs and even toasters?

A few fun facts:   

•     Silver kills bacteria by chemically affecting their cell membranes, thereby breaking them down. Bacteria do not develop resistance to Silver, as they do to many antibiotics.

•     Today, Peru and Mexico are the largest producers of silver.

•     In fourteen languages, the words for silver and money are the same.

•     24,171 silver-coated, quartz tiles protected NASA's Magellan spacecraft from overheating under twice the solar radiation experienced orbiting the earth.

•     A new silver-lithium-aluminum alloy is the strongest wrought aluminum alloy known. It has been used on several of the NASA space shuttle missions.

•     Over 1.5 billion silver oxide-zinc batteries are supplied to world markets yearly, including miniature-sized batteries for watches, cameras and small electronic devices, and larger batteries for tools and commercial portable TV cameras.

•     Throughout history, more people have used silver for money than gold.

•     Silver production and secondary recovery have failed to meet demand each year of the last fifteen years.

•     Silver is the best conductor of heat of all elements. Its uses in solar panels and automobile rear window defoggers take advantage of this quality.

•     Silver coins have the highest degree of optical reflectivity of all bullion. A Silver mirror can reflect about 95% of the visible light spectrum.

    And one of the most important things...

Silver has more industrial applications than gold does, with more uses being developed.
In most applications, Silver CANNOT BE SUBSTITUTED BY ANY OTHER METAL!

Interesting Nuggets (of information)

Another great video I found from Goldnscrap got me motivated to do 
a bit more searching.

Chloroauric acid is the result of dissolving gold in aqua regia.You don't buy chloroauric acid, you make it by dissolving scrap gold-plated electronic parts in aqua regia. It is only gold chloride while it is in solution. Once it is precipitated out, it is gold.

One comment I found interesting

You use elemental mercury to form a gold-mercury amalgam which is easily separated from the sand. You place the? amalgam in a hollowed out potato and throw it in the fire. The mercury part of the amalgam gets absorbed into the potato, leaving behind gold nuggets. I'm curious to see if this would work.

To filter

To filter it I believe a simple coffee filter would work if not than you need a peace of corrugated metal, angle it 20 degrees or so than pour it out since gold is heavier it will just stay on the metal.  Similar principle to panning.

Aque Regis Tip

Aqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid) will dissolve silver as well as gold. So if your jewellery is less than 24 carat gold, your solution will contain silver and the metal recovered will be a gold-silver alloy. Silver is not used in electronic connectors because it tarnishes too easily. So if you recover your gold from that source, it should be almost pure. (i.e. 24 carat)

Drying the gold powder

Before drying, wash several times with distilled water, then decant as much water as possible.

Place on low heat and start evaporating the water slowly, as it dries, swirl and shake the beaker lightly to agglomerate the powder to ball & chunks. When the powder is only moist, turn up the heat to medium and keep swirling every now and then until complete dryness. Collect. Melt. 

New green technology for metal cutting

This Article shows a lot of promise, a cheaper method of cutting up scrap, I don't particularly like the term "Green: though, I wonder how long before we can get this kind of gear in Australia?

Full Article Here



Flint-based scrap metal company to use new green technology for metal cutting,
RJ Torching Inc. of Flint has inked a deal with Florida-based MagneGas Corp. to use a special biofuel for its metal cutting operations. The gasifier uses liquid waste such as sewage, oil and sludge to create MagneGas using Plasma Arc Flow Through Technology.

Essentially, the liquid waste flows through an arc that is submerged and reaches temperatures of more than 7,000 degrees. The waste is gasified, becoming MagneGas, and is collected in a storage tank as it rises.

MagneGas has multiple applications, including heating and powering biogas vehicles.

The product has the potential to be popular with metal cutting facilities in Michigan because MagneGas burns at higher temperatures than other fuels and reduces overhead on gas and oxygen by 20 to 40 percent. “It actually emits oxygen to reverse the effect petroleum fuels have,” he said. “It’s a remarkable scientific anomaly.”

The technology has only been on the market for a little more than a year, but the company has been supplying gas to metal cutting facilities in Chesterfield for the last three months.

“It eliminates storage costs and rental fees on tanks and cylinders,” he said. “It’s really going to save them a significant amount of money and create jobs at the same time.”

Turning trash to treasure

Turning trash to treasure

ONE man's garbage is another man's treasure. No one in Buff Bay, Portland, knows this perhaps better than Neville Webb who operates a collection centre for recyclables at his home in Woodstock.

He has made a thriving business out of buying plastic bottles, tins and batteries from scavengers who rummage the nearby Doctor's Wood disposal site and ferret out the items which are later bagged and transported to a recycling company Kingston where the cans are compressed into loom, the plastic into polyester fibre, and the lead removed from the batteries.

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Turning-trash-to-treasure_11653704#ixzz1xYaZ0EKd

Scrap metal Art

Mikhail Puchkov from Russia built the submarine you see below in his very own attic, using scrap metal to boot. 

The first iteration was pedal-powered, but he eventually upgraded the underwater submersible to an electric system. Mikhail built the submarine at a time when Russia was still a part of the USSR, and used it as a mode of transportation to see parts of his own country that were off limits to the normal citizen. 

During one of these trips, he was actually stopped by the KGB, but surprisingly enough, they didn't arrest him, but rather sent him off to a ship building college. 

Marshalltown’s M. Gervich & Sons Inc. a recycling pioneer - TimesRepublican.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Community info - Times Republican

Marshalltown’s M. Gervich & Sons Inc. a recycling pioneer - TimesRepublican.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Community info - Times Republican

"Preserving the future by recycling the past"  An excellent Moto :-)

One Stop Green now carries reCycle Clocks

An interesting use for Scrap metal

Michole Madden is a motorcycle safety instructor by day, and used her passion for motorcycles and art to create her one of a kind clocks made from old motorcycle parts. Each clock is hand crafted with love and uses parts picked out from piles of scrap metal and old fragments thrown out by mechanics.

One Stop Green now carries reCycle Clocks

SGR is back - Ideas for refining silver.

Something to try using supermarket chemicals.

How to REFINE SILVER using baking soda, Karo pancake syrup, table salt, Caustic Soda and water: 

First dissolve your silver in nitric acid. You can do this in a plastic bucket but be sure to wear protective clothing like rubber gloves and to do it out of doors. 

When the silver is all dissolved, pour the acid into another plastic bucket. Be sure not to pour any particles along with the acid. 

Add ordinary table salt to the acid until the salt stops making white clumps in the acid. Pour off the acid. 

Add baking soda to the acid to neutralize it. 

Do not pour off the white "precipitate" that the salt formed. This is pure silver chloride. 

Rinse the silver chloride with water. To the silver chloride add Caustic Soda (lye) until all the silver chloride has turned black. Rinse with water. Add Karo syrup (Corn Syrup) until all the black material (silver oxide) turns to pure silver

A most intriguing water heater design