Milling tools from scrapyard

[Tokarev]

Was at scrapyard today and they had a couple of buckets of end mills from about 1/4" to slightly over 1". Some looked like new, just ground and heat treated. Some were TIN coated and also looked new, some had wax on the flutes.

They are asking $20 per lb and have about 50lb, for a total of $1000. Question is that worth it? $20 sounds too steep.

I did not have a micro with me, but most of the mills did look new.

[akajun]

YEs, very much worth it, especially if still in the wax

Hell even scrap carbide gets $14 a pound

[dragonrider]

Inspect them first if you can, the ones with the wax could be new but most likely resharpened. The other will have corners chipped, or dull edges. Just banging around in a bucket ain't good for them.

[largom]

You can't buy too many new end mills at $20.00 each. I would pick through them and take the ones I wanted even if I did'nt need them.

Larry

[zuke]

good swapping stuff there

[Tokarev]

Just one question: there were quite a few very small cutters there with 2 straight flutes.
I looked at them and thought they were router bits. But now I realize they could be mills too.
They sat in a box with the small approximately 1"x3/4"x1/8 plates with a hole in the middle and two cutting edges. What could those be? I am not familiar with those tools. The best way to describe them would be like extremely short planer blades.

[MBTcustom]

They could be piloted counter boring tools. Not much good for anything. Any of the traditional endmills less than 3/4" are worth grabbing. Take a set of calipers with you and measure the size of the ones with the dip coating. If they are right on the money, you hit gold. If not, they are re-sharps and very few companies do that correctly.

[Frank46]

Could be wrong but those plates sound like spade drill or something like that. Do they have an angle sort of like a counterbore?. Frank

[Tokarev]

The plates had cutting angles on two opposite sides facing the same flat side.

[mold maker]

What you describe sounds like router bits. We used millions of them in the urethane mirror mfg. They were used to cut the rabbet for the mirror glass. I also prepared miles of moldings with straight and shaped bits like that. Most had i/2" or 1/4" shanks. Many had a bearing on the end to guide the cut.

[W.R.Buchanan]

I'd figure out how many I could get for $100 and that would give you an average price per cutter.

Anything over about $2-3 each for resharps is too much, however for the new ones it would be a steal.

If you can pick and choose and buy what you need it would be a deal. If you have to buy the whole lot for $1000 it might be a real long time before you got your money out of them.

I just paid $28 for a 2 flute 7/16 single end mill last Friday. I could have done better price wise elsewhere, but "elsewhere" couldn't deliver on Friday, and I needed it then. The job is worth so much it doesn't matter.

Randy

[Tokarev]

To get their asking price I have to buy whole pounds, as that's what their scale increment is.
But my question is why would the new tools end up being sold to the scrap yard for scrap price? Something is fishy.

[dpaultx]

Probably a shop somewhere that went out of business, or maybe someone died. I've bought lots of "new" tooling for pennies on the dollar at "going out of business sales", "estate sales", "clearance auctions", etc.

There is very little demand, in the general population, for the type of tooling that your're talking about. Doesn't matter if it's brand new or well used, most folks don't even know what the heck it is.

[waksupi]

I've seen lots of new tooling at scrap yards. No idea why, but suspect it has something to do with inventory time.

[bowfin]

I've seen lots of new tooling at scrap yards. No idea why, but suspect it has something to do with inventory time.

I worked at a factory where I was told that it was more economical to throw away smaller taps and drills than to take the time to sort out the unused ones. I told them they were full of shinola, and I could prove it to them. I went and grabbed a handful of recently thrown away tooling and proceeded to sort out over $100 of unused taps and drills in less than ten minutes...

...next day they had a lid with a padlock welded on to the top of the scrapped tools tote, with a hole in the top big enough to throw away tooling, but not see or retrieve anything thrown away.

The company (Appleton Electric) has now moved to Mexico, since help like me made it too expensive for the company to be competitive. Fortunately, I had moved on to another job before they pulled up stakes for the greener side of the Rio Grande.

[waksupi]

Pick most any big company, and you can buy a lot of that kind of stuff directly. Boeing used to have a huge warehouse of surplus stuff dirt cheap. Here is a current online page for stuff. You never can tell what will be available at any company.

https://active.boeing.com/assocproducts/surplus/SearchResults.cfm?scl=t

[afish4570]

Probably a shop somewhere that went out of business, or maybe someone died. I've bought lots of "new" tooling for pennies on the dollar at "going out of business sales", "estate sales", "clearance auctions", etc.

There is very little demand, in the general population, for the type of tooling that your're talking about. Doesn't matter if it's brand new or well used, most folks don't even know what the heck it is.

Around 15 yrs. ago I got an invite to go to a fellows house that was being sold and put on the market in the next few weeks. The deceased was a local gun club member and his brother was the executor and a hunter in his younger days......My friend that invited me bought alot of cast boolits and primers etc. I was invited because of the lead.....and related stuff. I got a !000# or so lead ingots, Lyman 450, Lyman trimmer, Lyman Melter furnace and a few 4 cav. Lyman molds for 38 and 45......for $100. The executor told me afterwards that for him to pay someone to clean out the "junk" was going to cost him more than $100 so he was happy to get my $100 bucks.....You can only wish for deals like this. When you are looking for them you won't find them. All of a sudden ..."here they are." Keep some cash ready for this and one day it will happen.afish4570:castmine::castmine:

[W.R.Buchanan]

Good deals do come along now and then.

The trick is to be at the right place at the right time and know what you're looking at, and have some idea of the value.

I have gotten quite a few in my life so far, and intend to get as many more as possible.

Clean living helps. At least that's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

Randy

[Artful]

I once knew a guy who had some problems - diabetes and drinking - he also like to buy / swap guns - one day the drinking put him into a diabetic coma and I got his reloading and casting stuff - that's what put me on this road to trouble.

[jhrosier]

I've seen lots of new tooling at scrap yards. No idea why,.....

Companies have to pay taxes on everything that they hold.
I recently helped to throw about $250,000 of new but unneeded tooling into dumpsters. The tax liability of the tooling was reduced from its' value of tooling to the few cents a pound of its' scrap value.
The whole business just about made me ill.

Jack

[Tokarev]

I recently helped to throw about $250,000 of new but unneeded tooling into dumpsters.

I am not sure I will be able to sleep tonight.

[fatelk]

When my previous place of employment shut down, putting myself and 1400 others out of work, I saw millions of dollars worth of stuff thrown away or scrapped. Millions.

I helped dump hundreds of gallons of new, unopened photoresist chemicals into drums for haz waste. Some of that stuff cost well over a thousand dollars a gallon.

[Tokarev]

I keep telling people that outsourcing is killing North American economy by creating negative cash flow in the countries doing outsourcing and that any benefit is only short-term.

Indeed, if we look at the cash flow before and after outsourcing, then the scenarios would look completely different.

Before outsourcing the business would use revenues to pay taxes, salaries and contractor wages. The taxes would be used by the government ideally for infrastructure. The salaries would be spent mostly locally and in turn generate taxes spent locally. Some of the revenue would be invested into local economy. Even the money wasted by the government would still circulate mostly in our countries economy, except of course aid we send to the black hole of the 3d world. Cash flow is positive overall.

After outsourcing the taxes and salaries would be paid mostly overseas, to the foreign government and staff. Some revenue would be repatriated, but not 100%. The foreign government and staff would invest some of those money into our economy, but not 100%. They will spend on their infrastructure, build up their military, finance terrorism and piss away funds as the 3d world countries usually do. Cash flow for the outsourced country is therefore negative - money leaving our shores.

On top of negative cash flow, there is decline in variety of skills in our countries, as the workforce that knew how to make things retires and the occupations outsourced never get filled by the young generation. Even if we wanted, we will never be able to repatriate those industries because there will be no one able to work in them.

Sorry for a rant, this was burning in me for the last 5 or so years.