There are three practical ways to separate copper and aluminum from radiators:

• Manual teardown for occasional units
• Radiator stripping machine (300–600 kg/h) for small yards
• Full recycling line (500–2,000 kg/h, 99% purity) for volume processors

The right choice depends on one number — how many kilograms of radiators pass through your yard per day — because bonded copper-aluminum assemblies only pay clean-metal prices once the two metals are physically apart.

Why separation decides what a radiator is worth

Modern car radiators, AC condensers and heater cores are built as bonded composites: copper (or brass) tubes sweated or crimped into aluminum fin packs, sometimes with steel brackets. A buyer at the yard cannot melt a mixed bundle, so mixed radiators trade below either metal’s clean rate. Separate them and the copper tube fraction moves up-grade while the aluminum fins sell as their own pile — which is the entire business case for mechanical separation.

Method 1: manual teardown

Saw the end tanks, pry the brackets, pull tubes by hand. It works for one or two units a day, costs nothing in machinery, and stops being profitable almost immediately: bonded joints resist prying, tubes bend and shorten (dropping them from #1 tube grade toward #2), and hands, saws and refrigerant residue make the station slow and injury-prone. Manual crews are what our machine buyers are replacing.

Method 2: a copper aluminum radiator separator (stripping machine)

A radiator stripping machine does in one station what a hand crew cannot do at speed: it peels copper tubes free of the fin pack while keeping tube length intact. The working sequence is three steps:

1. Cut open. A 345B cutting saw (tool steel blade, 3 kW) slices the frame and welded joints so the core opens.
2. Strip. Rotating 9CrSi alloy blades grip the bonded pack and peel the copper tubes out — 65 blades on the 300–400 kg/h model, 110 on the 500–600 kg/h model.
3. Split into two piles. Copper tubes and aluminum fins discharge separately, ready for the scale.

One machine plus the saw draws 10 kW total and a 2×3 m floor corner — the standard answer for scrap stations and small factories processing a ton or two of radiators a day.

Method 3: a full six-stage recycling line

When the requirement is not “copper out of aluminum” but “three certified fractions — copper, aluminum, iron — at 99% purity,” shredding and sorting takes over. Our copper aluminum radiator recycling machine runs six stages: dual-shaft shredding, hammer-mill grinding, air separation on the density gap between the metals (copper 8.96 vs aluminum 2.7 g/cm³), magnetic removal of iron, color-sorting finishing, and pulse dust collection — 500–2,000 kg/h under PLC control, with one operator replacing ten to twenty hand crews.

For cleaning fine mixed chips rather than whole radiators, a standalone eddy current separator recovers non-ferrous fines from shredded streams — a different tool for a different stage, explained in our comparison guide.

Which method fits your volume

Your radiator intake	Right method	Why
Occasional units, under ~100 kg/day	Manual teardown	No capital; accept grade loss on bent tubes
1–5 t/day, small factory or scrap station	Stripping machine (850 or 1200)	300–600 kg/h, 10 kW, tubes stay long and sell at higher copper grades
Above ~2 t/day, or smelter/trader purity contracts	Six-stage recycling line	99% Cu/Al fractions, iron separated too, 500–2,000 kg/h

FAQ of copper and aluminum radiator recycling solution

---

Tell us your daily radiator intake and we will match the method — stripping machine or full line — with a quotation and layout plan.