Machine Turnings Recycling in Austin

Whether you’re a contractor responsible for a whole fleet of laborers or simply an amateur handyman looking to upgrade your toolkit, chances are you have plenty of machine turnings laying around that are ripe for the scrap yard. Read on to see why you should never throw away even faulty or broken machine turnings.

What Is a Machine Turning, and Why Would I Recycle It?

You’re probably already familiar with turnings, whether you know the term or not. In short, any piece of machinery that cuts through a rotation process, or turning, is considered a machine turning. Most often, these are drill bits.

While drill bits are pretty sturdy by design, depending on the quality of your bits, you will be faced with wear and tear that requires you to change out old bits for a new set. Even with professional equipment, time will eventually come calling, or some other incident might necessitate a replacement. Perhaps your bit broke or became damaged through exposure to some other material, like water or a corrosive substance. Or maybe you just want to upgrade your tools and aren’t sure what to do with the old equipment. As tempting as it can be to throw away damaged or duplicate gear, you’re much better off recycling it.

What Is My Machine Turnings Scrap Worth?

As with any sort of scrap metal, the value in machine turnings recycling will vary depending on a number of factors. That said, compared to a lot of scrap metal, machine turnings can have a fairly high recycle value. Not all drill bits are created equal, but given the need for a strong, sturdy piece of machinery in cutting through things, they tend to be made of higher quality metals, which in turn have a higher scrap value.

Additionally, most bits are coated in other substances—including diamond, cobalt and titanium—many of which are quite valuable. While the coatings themselves aren’t significant enough to let you retire off of machine turning recycling, they absolutely shouldn’t be thrown away.

Without professional recycling help, it can be difficult to get an exact idea for how much your turnings are worth. As with any scrap recycling, be sure to sort out your metals, weigh them, and consult the most recent national scrap values to get a better idea of what sort of money you can expect.

How Can I Prepare for the Scrap Yard?

Always sort your scrap! If you throw everything in one batch, most scrap yards will pay out based on the lowest-value metal in a given container of scrap, so keep your metals separate as much as possible.

With turnings specifically, it’s important that you do a bit—pun intended—of extra prep work to get your best price. Make sure that the turnings are free of any attachments, paints or oils and avoid any pieces larger than 12 inches in length. Most scrap yards will be able to take care of most of the processing beyond that, but a small amount of cleaning before recycling can help add to your bottom line.

Get Help from the Recycling Experts at Gardner Metal Recycling

Now that you know how to recycle machine turnings, Gardner Metal Recycling is happy to help you get the most value for your bits! Once you have your scrap ready to go, Gardner Metal Recycling will give you fair value and take care of all the recycling. And if hauling your scrap in is too much of a headache—maybe you don’t have the time or the transport readily available—we can arrange a pickup for your scrap as well. Really, there’s no reason you shouldn’t get some extra cash for the spare turnings you no longer need!

To learn more about recycling scrap and get a price quote for your scrap metal recycling, contact us today.