Realcent.org

I am curious the best way to go about melting down small metal pieces for the purpose of separating their base metals and making copper and zinc ingots for stacking and ultimate sale to scrap yards. Is a special furnace needed to get it up to 700 melt temp of zinc then up to 1900 melt temp of copper. Would it be better to buy such a furnace or to build your own. Would these special
coins need to be cut first before melting so one metal would separate more easily. Would you need to refine the twometals to get the maximum sell value. Or would separating the metals at various temps be sufficient. When pouring what is the best form for the metal the be in....stackable ingots...blocks...sheets. what would be the best metal castings to use. Any info would greatly appreciated.

Metal Monkey

You can't separate copper from zinc by melting, your talking about refining, unless you do tons, it will not be profitable to do at all, sell your brass and buy silver.

If you want to melt metals, it would be better to find stuff that was already pure or very close to pure.

it is best to have the metal in as small pieces as possible......like previous posters said, you would need to do tons at a time to make it worth it, but if you just want to melt stuff, you can buy silver shot from a refiner, and melt that fairly easy with a butane torch.

been melting wheel weights and casting 12 gauge slugs for reloading.... been making buckshot too......

Producing pure or nearly pure copper ingots from scrap alloys and mixtures? We obviously produce them from rock ores, I assume the process from mixtures of purified metals should be much simpler but possible on a small scale......interesting. Keep us informed.

I think you need to cut or at least scratch the special coins so the zinc flows out when you get to its melting point. Otherwise the liquid would be stuck inside the copper shell. I assume the zinc they use is nearly pure so there would be no need for refining.

melting US cents is illegal. so I hope this conversation is about melting foreign coins of zinc and copper.

frugi wrote:melting US cents is illegal. so I hope this conversation is about melting foreign coins of zinc and copper.

I had a guy call me a while back about buying come copper and when I realized his brother runs a scrap business had to say "thanks but no thanks". I reminded him of the same thing but his only response was "suit yourself, I've never heard of anyone getting busted for it... " I'm sure there are a few making it into the pot but it's not worth it (yet ). Big brother can put your head in a vice and squeeze away any time they want. So in response to his comment, I guess I haven't heard of anyone getting busted yet either. Who wants to go first?

I don't see anything wrong with discussing the process for sake of when the melt ban is lifted if there is a chance there is some additional value to be picked up. Right now it doesn't seem to be efficient enough on a small scale for it to ever happen though. I like to watch some of the YouTube videos of the mega producers in action. Pretty cool how they take ore that contains around 2% CU and have a way to make it 99.9% pure. The electrolysis refining process is what I found most interesting. Who the heck dreamed that one up?

You can separate zinc from copper by melting it. You have to raise the temperature high enough to melt the copper. Then you have to hold that heat long enough until the zinc boils off. IF you are smart, you will do this in an enclosed environment to capture the vaporized zinc to collect it and keep from inhaling toxic copper/zinc fumes. Those fumes can cause permanent nerve and brain cell damage. Don't screw around with you health. It is do-able, but way too costly.

A better way, as mentioned before, is to separate the two metals via electrolysis. I have read up on it, but have never done it. There are some tricks to learn to keep the two metals pure.

There are some on line websites to read up on. I can't think of their names right now. They deal with refining and plating.

Good luck and be safe!!!

It is much more complicated than you think it would be and would not be very profitable at anything but a very large scale.

This forum will tell you how to do it - http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/index.php - However, they are inundated with people whose first post is "how do I do it" and don't appreciate newbies asking that without looking at the website first. Read through the postings before asking anyone any questions.