h a l f b a k e r y
non-lame halfbakery tagline
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Basically an automated chop shop/junk yard. A factory with machines to handle every part of removing parts from a car. It would remove all paint, oil, grease, battery fluid, elephant semen, and so forth, grind down or weld up the parts that deviate from specs, trash the parts that are unrecoverable,
and output all possible parts sealed and ready for resale. One factory per brand of car.
Recyclable car
Maintenance-Free_20Recyclable_20Car
Can use with this [Voice, Apr 14 2008]
[link]
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"But we built the factory for the '99 model, and you've brought us the '03" [-] |
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This already happens, Just without the cleaning and bagging. |
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This already happens - there was a fascinating piece on it on "How do they do it?" (UK television programme - Channel 5, Monday night - required viewing for Halfbakers). All fluids are drained or siphoned from the car (e.g. the sump was drained by drilling a big hole in it) and collected for recycling. The car was then put in something like a massive paper shredder and then the small chunks of car sorted first by magnets and then by people picking out different things as the chunks of car went by on a conveyer belt. |
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But one car destroyed the machine because someone left a paperclip in the back of the car. |
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[hippo], I worked at one of those facilities for a short time. Imagine something that is 40t & rotating at 600rpm, with 40-odd 200kg hammers free to rotate on 4 equally spaced shafts. Insert one car and a few seconds later a pile of shrapnel appears underneath. I always thought it was a good way to get rid of car bodies, and any other type of bodies that happened to be lurking in the boot.
Occasionally there was a petrol explosion. I remember a 4t roof, which was bolted every 300mm with bolts as big as your arm, being blown completely off. Crankshafts used to come out in a series of blue balls at immense speed. A demolition ball put the machine out of action for a week: the rotor came to a halt in about a quarter of a turn. |
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Non-ferrous metals used to be sorted out onto one line, and I set up the linear motor separators so that all the coins came out on one conveyor. As you now know, the only way to get the coins out from the back of your car seat is to send the car to a shredder. |
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Automobile manufacturers are required by most countries to document the material content present in each nut, bolt, bearing, bushing, fender, and whatnot, right down to the coatings on them due to material regulations and restrictions. For instance, Europe is imposing a regulation on the amount of lead content in alloys, which has driven development costs upwards lately. Some components like bushings are getting a by for now as the removal of the lead is currently technically infeasible. |
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For the bits of electronic junk, lcd panels, and whatnot, I'm more fuzzy on what the rules are. |
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I believe it is actually cheaper to break up a car and then re manufacture the parts from raw material than to take it apart and recondition the parts. The Auto recycling industry is focused around the recycling of only the highest value parts(most often this is engines, Glass and body parts that are easily removed and normally only on the newest vehicles. |
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Yes that's usually the case. In many cases, reconditioning is impossible anyways. |
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[-]Most cars have over 1000 parts that range from something as large as the engine block to something as small as the little clip that connects the door handle to the latch. Used parts are more efficiently stored on the cars themselves allowing the customers to pick off what they need until it becomes an empty carcass. |
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As you say, it may actually be cheaper to break the car into raw material and go through the entire manufacturing process again. Similarly, it's probably cheaper to ignore road traffic accidents and industrial risks except for the high profile court cases, and pretend there's nothing that can be done about it. |
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Supposing, however, that legislation forced the decision from being a purely "what's cheaper" path, to one of following regulatory constraints. Suppose manufacturers of machinery and ICT hardware were in effect compelled to not only accept back the end of lifecycle items, but also dismantle, and, perhaps, (ahem), actually, "fix" things where possible. In a not dissimilar way that road safety is a beneficial extra expense that we all accept, and adhering to industrial safety standards and inspections is accepted as a good thing, in modern societies, despite the initial overhead. |
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In many cases, this is happening anyway. Hard drives, for example. But suppose it was more widespread and acted as a deviation force from the purely market decisions in recycling. At first, it might hurt, financially, but I'm sure that ways could be found to strip, dismantle, fix and refurbish as a generally accepted procedure for almost everything. A knowledge industry may form regarding how to fix extant things, and how to repurpose parts into new sustainable designs. If manufacturers were compelled to do so, and also weren't really likely to go broke as a result of following such legislation, I'd be interested to see new markets form around the globe that are actively disinterested in obsolescence. |
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Perhaps it may become cool to boast about your new thing that you've bought that is leading edge technology, nice and spiffy, and of course contains the expected and by now socially demanded smattering of 'vintage' parts with their refurbishment certification and other systemic metadata. |
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It's a nice thought, but cars have parts that turn into rust, tiny metal shavings, and bits of fiber that you can't do much with in terms of reconditioning. Wires burn out, fasteners rust, many parts are attach-once only, etc. |
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Forcing manufacturers to 'buy back' their cars is a proposal that is on the books somewhere and not a terrible idea, imho. |
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