I am in the process of disassembling almost a 1000 hard drives and some of the platters are set to the motor by a pressed on ring instead of the screws holding the stack of platters. To remove the ring is no problem as I just press the motor out the back of the case, but in the process it has bent a few of the platters.
Can I include them with the flat ones going to Boardsort or should I scrap them to the yard. Right now I only have a few but til I get done with the mountain of drives I am not sure how many more I will have.

ty Joe

No problem with slightly bent platters.

Are these the ones where you need to smack the motor through from the bottom as well.
One trick I found that works most of the time is flip it upside down. Place a nickel on the motor, hold a 1/4 inch punch above the motor, and smack it.
Most of the time the whole assembly comes loose that way.
Though about 1:5 I have the motor’s copper ring stick in the drive shell.

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42 6F 61 72 64 73 6F 72 74 2E 63 6F 6D

I have a hydrolic press in the basement and I press the motor out from the rear then press the center from the front of the assembly and it usually falls apart but a few have bent.
As for the ones where the screws hold the platters. After removing the disc's I press the motor out from the rear holding the punch just off center a little and it breaks out the ring holding the copper field with the motor housing. The loss of that little bit of aluminium is minor.
ty Joe

You may already be doing this, but it is faster to do the hard drives assembly line fashion. The best way to do it is to sort them all out into the different styles and only do one type at a time. 50 to 60 drives seems to work well for me, it takes about 90 minutes to do all of them completely.

Only work on 1 part of the drives at once, like the boards, covers, platters, magnets, read/write arms, motors, etc...

I agree with the assembly line method, but after I pull all the boards it's hard to get back around to taking the drive apart and separating all the bits. It almost feels like the board has as much value as the entire stripped drive.

Those motors that don't just unscrew out or pop-out, try unscrewing them counter-clockwise. They're sometimes tightened the reverse way.

Another tip, if you move the platter or rotating circle around to where the little holes line up with the screw on the inner side; unscrew and it will pop out.

Plus on another note, pop the ring out or pressure ring on some of them and they will fall out.