Stainless steel has been discussed many times but always warrants a revisit. There are different types of stainless steel, but one of the biggest things we stress is making sure the stainless steel is CLEAN. Cleaning stainless steel is one of the bigger problems when it comes to scrapping. Let’s take a dishwasher, for example.
Clean Stainless Steel
Dishwashers have a rubber/plastic liner around them, but sometimes the inner shell is clean. You may take a dishwasher apart and find a rubber that was sprayed on, and you may think that the scrap yard will not consider that dirty because there is not a lot of weight to it…but it will be dirty, and that will be a problem for you when you go to cash in.
Dirty Stainless Steel
Dirty stainless is priced between 50-90% below the clean stainless price because of all the attachments and contaminants to the stainless steel. You should never waste too much time cleaning stainless when it has been pressed on or riveted together because even those small pieces of steel will still downgrade your pricing.
Remember, there are many different grades of stainless steel scrap, but the more common ones are 304 and 316. If you don’t know what kind of grade you have, ask your scrap yard if they can test your grade so you know how to separate the different kinds before they are weighed up.
Questions on your stainless steel?
Just let us know, and we will help you get an answer soon.
