Machine sellers publish top-five lists. The useful question is which tier your volume justifies, and that depends on today's copper price. This works it out from the live board.
Gains use this site's live copper grade prices and move daily. Recovery percentages are typical for each cable type and vary by construction; weigh a sample of your own to check. Machine prices are 2026 street prices. Burning insulation is unlawful in most jurisdictions and downgrades the copper.
Where the gain comes from
Stripping moves the same metal from one grade to another. Insulated wire is priced on recovery, meaning the share of total weight that is actually copper. Bare bright is priced on the metal alone.
The gap between those two rates, multiplied by your recovery percentage, is the whole return. Nothing else about the machine changes it.
Recovery by cable type, which is what the calculator applies:
- Heavy cable and thick single conductor: about 90 percent
- THHN building wire: about 75 percent
- Romex sheathed cable: about 65 percent
- Communication and data cable: under 50 percent
Live rates for each grade are on the THHN, Romex and communication wire pages.
The 48 percent break-even
Below roughly 48 percent recovery, the copper you free does not cover the time it takes to free it. That is why the calculator refuses to recommend a machine for communication cable however much of it you have.
Fine-strand wire is not a stripping problem. It is a granulation problem, and the granulator guide works out the volume that justifies one.
Capacity decides more than speed
Two specifications matter more than the headline feed rate.
The upper diameter limit. A machine rated to 0.98 inch will not take heavy service cable. If you ever get service entry or armoured cable, buy 1.18 or 1.57 inch capacity from the start, because no amount of speed compensates for a machine that cannot accept the material.
Channel count. A single-channel machine needs re-setting for every diameter. A ten or eleven channel unit runs mixed cable without stopping, and on mixed scrap that is the difference between an hour and three.
The stripping machine guide covers both, plus what these machines cannot do at all.
Weigh your own sample first
The recovery figures here are typical, not guaranteed. Cable construction varies, and a five-minute test settles it for your material.
Cut a foot of your cable, weigh it, strip it by hand, weigh the copper, divide. That is your true recovery percentage, and it is worth more than any published table.
Above 48 percent, a machine pays at the right volume. Below it, sell insulated.
The granulator payback calculator works out the material volume each tier needs at today rates, and says so when stripping is the better answer.
What a stripper cannot do
Knowing the limits before buying prevents the most common disappointment, which is a machine that handles less of your pile than expected.
Fine multi-strand wire. Cat5, Cat6, phone cable and automotive harness have conductors too thin to grip and feed. That material is granulation work, not stripping work.
Copper-clad aluminium. It strips perfectly well and then grades as aluminium, so the work earns nothing. Cut a strand and check the core before feeding a spool.
Short offcuts. Most machines need a length to grip and pull. Anything under about a foot tends to jam or pass through unstripped, and short pieces are worth sorting out beforehand rather than clearing a blockage.
Flat and irregular cable. Round channels do not grip flat twin or unusual profiles reliably.
Armoured and heavily sheathed cable beyond the machine's diameter rating, which is a capacity question rather than a type one.
Keep the bare bright bare
Stripping produces the top grade on the board, and it is easy to lose that grade after the work is done.
Keep it in its own container from the first pound. A mixed load is paid at the lowest grade present, so one length of tinned or soldered wire in a bare bright drum regrades the drum.
Do not let it sit outside. Oxidation moves bright copper toward number 1 and then number 2. Weeks matter here, not months.
Keep the insulation separate. It is waste rather than product, and mixing it back in adds weight the yard will deduct for.
The gain calculated above assumes the copper arrives as bare bright. Careless handling after stripping is the quiet way that gain disappears between the workshop and the scale.
Never burn it
Worth stating plainly because the question comes up whenever stripping looks tedious.
Burning insulation is unlawful in most jurisdictions, produces toxic smoke, and downgrades the copper to number 2 or worse. You destroy the grade you were stripping to reach, so it fails on its own terms before the legal question arises. Burnt strands also attract scrutiny at the scale, because that is how stolen cable is commonly presented.