My husband and I own a recycling yard, and lostinlodos is right, bring samples, not the whole load if you are not sure what you have or what they buy. And he is right about not showing up just before they close as they will not give you the full attention you need. When someone comes in by us not knowing things, we will explain it until they understand but not if they show up just before closing. And yep, the mornings are the best time to arrive. Our yard has a really great start rating, and that is because we treat people as people, but yes most yards just don't care, you will have to find a yard that treats you right.
I tear apart all my hard drives, the shell will go into cast aluminum, but make sure you get just about everything off of it or it will be put into a lower class material, maybe even in breakage if you leave too much other stuff on it. If you don't sell the magnets on your own, they will be just steel, the platter will be something on their own and most yards will not buy them, we don't as our buyer does not buy them. Ask your local yard about the arms, for us I throw them into dirty sheet aluminum, dirty means, there are other materials on it other than aluminum. The screws are usually stainless, but there are times they are steel so it is good to run a magnet over them as you take them out. The rings are usually aluminum, but some I have found were stainless.
The way to tell Steel from "true" stainless is that stainless will not stick to a magnet. Now with that said, some stainless will stick to a magnet but that is because it is cheap stainless and the magnet barely sticks to it, but it is still steel. Stainless can not stick to a magnet at all. And to tell the difference between stainless and aluminum, first is the weight stainless is much heavier, but since we are working with such small pieces scratching it is best. Stainless pretty much does not scratch like aluminum does. When you scratch aluminum it pretty much digs into the metal, but it will not with stainless. If your yard does not buy the motors, they do sell on ebay, robotics creators sometimes buy them.
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