Why buy the E2000x when copper prices are down
Article Summary
Using the E2000x to strip the following cables will pay for itself in the following times:
- Pays for itself in 58 minutes stripping 2/0
- Stripping 500MCM you make your money back in just under 15 minutes
- Stripping 2000MCM you make your money back in just under 12 minutes
Your business is serious about making money from scrap insulated copper wire (ICW). As a large electrical contractor, building demolition expert, or
professional scrap metals reseller, handling ICW efficiently and extracting the largest value from the material is often part of the lifeblood of your business.
But up until now, you’ve been leaving money on the table. Either you’re still stripping your ICW manually – a costly and inefficient process – or the wire stripping equipment you’re using isn’t well suited to the large volume of ICW that your business handles. Maybe you’ve outgrown tools that are better suited for an individual scrapper, or maybe you’ve lost time and money trying to repair a substandard wire stripping machine that just isn’t well made.
What Happened to Scrap Metal Prices?
In the meantime, you’re feeling the pressure that the shrinking scrap metals market has brought to bear on your bottom line. Scrap metal simply isn’t worth what it was even two years ago, and you’re moving more volume than ever before just to keep up. Maybe you’re in the position of having had to let some material go as ICW that you would have stripped back when prices were better and you could still afford the labor to do it. Maybe you’re even facing some tough decisions about cutting back on payroll in order to keep the business afloat at current prices, all the while sweating which way the market seems to be going. You’re not alone; even some of the biggest scrap metal handlers have been drinking Alka Seltzer® instead of their morning coffee as they watch the futures prices head over the cliff.
Now that old, tired, hobbyist level wire stripper you keep out in back is getting in the way of your productivity. Your guys just can’t produce stripped wire using it or the manual methods any faster than they already are. You need a major increase in productivity, but you’ve got a limited budget to make improvements. How will you get this situation back under control, and start earning profits from your ICW again?
Professional Grade Equipment
You need a wire stripping machine that can handle large volumes of wire in many different sizes. One that far outpaces the clunky old machine you might already have in terms of productivity and reliability, and one that significantly improves the productivity of your employees many times over what they’re capable of by stripping wire with a sharp knife. You know you need a machine that’s precision engineered and made out of sturdy, corrosion-resistant materials, capable of working just as well outside as inside. You’d certainly feel better about buying a machine that was made right here in North America to extremely high standards instead of cut-rate junk from overseas made as cheaply as possible and likely to break by the end of the first month. You need professional grade equipment, but it has to be affordably priced and it has to pay for itself quickly!
The StripMeister E2000x
The StripMeister E2000x Industrial Wire Stripping Machine is professional grade equipment, built for businesses like yours that handle large amounts of scrap insulated copper wire. Priced at a reasonable $1649, it’s made to exacting ISO-9001 standards in a world-class, North American factory. It handles both stranded and solid copper (or aluminum) wire from 16 gauge (1/8”) all the way up to 2000MCM (3 1/8”)!
Based on a powerful, 1 HP DC electric motor, it features a sophisticated Pulse Width Modulated speed control and a gear reduction drive that delivers quiet, smooth and efficient operation and also features a large Emergency Stop button for enhanced safety. Improved over our previous StripMeister E2000 machine, the E2000x has our new spiral groove technology feeder drive and a new, quickly reconfigurable double slider front guide which includes a Romex wire adapter to speed up stripping America’s most popular wire by 33%.
This machine is our very best design, and we stand behind it with a full one-year warranty against defects in materials and workmanship. Cutting tool changes, which only come once every 8,000 pounds of wire, are a snap, and the machine realigns itself precisely after you change the blade, with no adjustments required. What’s more, the cutting tool is a precision CNC machined rotary knife made from hardened, heat treated tool steel, and is reasonably priced at $99.99, making the cost of consumables very affordable.
But How Quickly Does It Pay for Itself?
Let’s look at three of the common types of scrap ICW a business like yours typically handles, and see what kind of prices it brings when sold with the insulation still on and with insulation removed at a typical scrap yard in the United States. We’ll show how long it takes to remove the insulation manually, and compare this with how much more quickly it goes with the aid of a StripMeisterTM E2000x automatic stripping machine.
For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that the worker stripping the wire manually one of your best people. You know the one, she wields a perpetually sharp knife, doesn’t waste her time standing around the water cooler, and is strong enough to strip hundreds of pounds of heavy, insulated wire at a steady rate of 300 feet per hour unassisted. We’ll put her approximate labor cost to you, if you pay her $10 an hour, conservatively at $14.35/hour, benefits included. We’ll also show how long the same employee takes to strip the same wire using a StripMeisterTM E2000X.
Case Study #1: THHN/THHW 2/0 Copper Wire
Original scrap material | 100 feet of THHN/THHW 2/0 copper wire |
Weight of wire with insulation still on the copper | 46.2 pounds |
Scrap Yard classification | 80% wire, $.90/lb |
ICW Selling Price, 100 feet | $41.58 |
Copper Weight, 100 feet, Insulation Removed | 41 pounds |
Bare Bright Selling Price 100 feet @ $2/lb | $82.00 |
Manual time to strip 100 feet | 20 minutes, at a labor cost of $4.78 |
E2000X time to strip 100 feet | 1.33 minutes, at a labor cost of $0.32 |
Employee productivity/hour, manual stripping
(300 feet stripped price – ICW price – labor) | $106.91/hr |
Employee productivity/hour, E2000X stripping
(4500 feet stripped price – ICW price – labor) | $1,804.55/hr – 16.88 times more productive! |
E2000X ROI | pays for itself in 58 minutes stripping 2/0 |
If your business handles scrap 2/0 Copper Wire in significant quantities, your E2000X could pay for itself almost twice before you would need to replace the blade for the first time! The E2000X is capable of processing this material at 75 feet per minute, which is almost 17 times faster than our “perfect” employee can do it by hand, and it will do so at a much lower overall cost.
But the real story here is how much more productive the worker is while operating the machine than they are while manually stripping wire. They add $106.91 in value to the unstripped ICW in an hour, stripping 300 feet of it by hand. The same worker, operating the StripMeisterTM E2000X, would add $1,804.55 in value to the 4500 feet of 2/0 ICW they could strip bare in an hour.
Case Study #2: 500MCM Insulated Copper Wire
Original scrap material | 100 feet of 500MCM insulated copper wire |
Weight of 100 feet of wire with insulation still on the copper | 165 pounds |
Scrap Yard classification | Insulated Wire: $1.22/lb |
ICW Selling Price, 100 feet | $201.30 |
Copper Weight, 100 feet, Insulation Removed | 154.38 pounds |
Bare Bright Selling Price 100 feet @ $2/lb | $308.76 |
Manual time to strip 100 feet | 20 minutes, at a labor cost of $4.78 |
E2000X time to strip 100 feet | 1.25 minutes, at a labor cost of $0.31 |
Employee productivity/hour, manual stripping
(300 feet stripped price – ICW price – labor) | $308.03/hr |
Employee productivity/hour, E2000X stripping
(4800 feet stripped price – ICW price – labor) | $5,143.73/hr – 16+ times more productive! |
E2000X ROI | stripping 500MCM you make your money back in just under 15 minutes. |
Once again, the efficiency of the worker using the StripMeisterTM E2000X is dramatically higher than the same worker manually stripping wire at 300 feet per hour. 500MCM wire, being inherently more valuable than 2/0 wire, picks up an additional advantage in that it is actually processed 5 feet per minute faster by the E2000x than 2/0 wire. Manufacturer rated to process this material at 80 feet per minute, it powers through our 100-foot sample of 50MCM in one minute, fifteen seconds of operation, costing us only 31 cents worth of our worker’s time. How quickly could this machine pay for itself? Well, if you’ve got a significant quantity of scrap 500MCM, it will strip enough of it in just under 15 minutes to cover its purchase price, labor costs included, even after deducting what the value of the insulated source material would be if it was turned in unstripped.
As for our worker’s productivity? Once again, they are almost 17 times more productive operating the machine than they would be stripping that wire by hand. Their also far less likely to suffer injuries because not only is the StripMeister E2000x much faster than using a sharp knife, it’s inherently safer, too! And remember, if things start to get out of hand, the E2000x features an Emergency Stop switch that shuts it down immediately with a single blow. Does your current wire stripping device strip this much wire this quickly, economically, and safely? Probably not!
Case Study #3: 2000MCM Insulated Copper Wire
Original material | 100 feet of 2000MCM insulated copper wire |
Weight of wire with insulation still on the copper | 880 pounds |
Scrap Yard classification | Insulated Wire: $1.22/lb |
ICW Selling Price | $1,073.60 |
Copper Weight, Insulation Removed | 617.5 pounds |
Bare Bright Selling Price @ $2/lb | $1,235.00 |
Manual time to strip | 20 minutes, at a labor cost of $4.78 |
E2000X time to strip | 1.11 minutes, at a labor cost of $0.27 |
Employee productivity/hour, manual stripping (300 feet stripped price – ICW price – labor) | $469.85 |
Employee productivity/hour, E2000X stripping (5400 feet stripped price – ICW price – labor) | $8,701.25 – 18+ times more productive! |
E2000X ROI | stripping 2000MCM you make your money back in just under 12 minutes. |
Given that 2000MCM (2000KCMIL) wire is 70% wire, the StripMeisterTM E2000X could theoretically pay for itself in about 12 minutes if you had enough 2000MCM wire to run through! After it’s done paying for itself, it will be ready to turn a profit for you for many years to come on wire and cable of all different sizes and yields.
In the meantime, your worker will have multiplied her average hourly productivity by over eighteen times using this very reasonably priced, high quality investment in industrial wire stripping technology.
Remember, the return on investment here assumes that one worker can handle hundreds upon hundreds of feet of extremely heavy wire by herself; that she can slice through a heavy jacket of insulation as quickly as a thin one, can move the scrap wire around the shop herself using a forklift, and never needs new utility knife blades or work breaks. If you factor in the reality that the job here could easily occupy two or three people, that injuries using sharp tools to manually strip wire are common, and that 300 foot per hour productivity manually stripping wire likely represents the peak, rather than the average, productivity for a single worker, you will find that your StripMeister E2000x machine offers efficiencies and profitability enhancements that go well beyond what we’re able to describe for you here.
Quick Change Artist
Of course, most businesses like yours don’t have thousands of feet of the same type of scrap wire laying around, perfectly sorted and lined up, just waiting to be stripped. You might take in hundreds of different types of scrap wire per month, each with a different recovery rate, and most of it in random lengths! It will likely be twisted and tangled together on top of it all. Handling all of this efficiently by hand can be a nightmare! Is your old wire stripping machine really up to the job?
Fortunately, the StripMeisterTM E2000X automatic wire stripping machine makes taming this jumbled assortment of wire types simple. It features a two-piece front wire guide that makes quick work of adjusting the machine to different sizes. The motor speed can be precisely adjusted to a feed rate that produces the best results, too. It can handle everything from 16 gauge wire up to 2000MCM, and it has the ability to precisely change the cutting speed to the rate that best suits the material. With a little bit of sorting, you can quickly set the machine up to process wire in batches, get through your scrap wire piles and turn them into profits quickly!
Most of our customers report back to us that their StripMeisterTM E2000X has paid for itself in a matter of a few hours or days of operation with the typical jumble of different wire sizes via its huge improvement in their productivity.
Your investment with us
The E2000x Automatic Wire Stripping Machine is more than just a tool you buy to do a job. It represents our very best piece of wire stripping equipment for our most demanding customers. We have given it our premium electric motor drive, our finest wire feeder design, and built it to last for years out of high quality materials that can withstand a very tough environment. We back all of this up with a full, one-year warranty against manufacturing or material defects, and support it with prompt shipping of consumables when you need them and replacement parts should they become necessary.
Really, in these days of declining scrap metal prices and increasing costs, you can’t afford to do without one of these machines and the tremendous increase in productivity it brings.
Quick Facts
- Constructed of aircraft grade aluminum and stainless steel hardware, it will never rust
- Powerful, 1 HP PWM variable speed controlled DC motor (runs on 60Hz 120V AC)
- Strips all sizes from #16 wire to 2000 MCM, Diameters from 0.11″ (2.7mm) up to 1.4″ (35.5mm) including ROMEX and braided (stranded) wire.
- Handles Romex with a built-in guide in only two passes.
- Blades last for about 8,000 feet or 8,000 pounds of wire apiece
- One-year warranty against manufacturer defects, and a 30-day, money back return policy
- Prompt shipping, and ready availability of replacement parts