Recycle speaker magnets?

[Axtman]

I have a 12 unrepairable inch speaker. The magnet shifted and pinched the voice coil. Can I put the frame/magnet in the metal recycling bin?

[x-pro]

In Russia, such a defect is repairable. They remove/unscrew the magnet, determine the degree of damage to the coil. If necessary, they rewind it. Then they glue the magnet back in place and reassemble the speaker.
The cost is 3-4 times less than buying a new head.
Well, throwing it away is the easy part.

[Axtman]

I have a message to my recone guy to see what he can do. I bet someone dropped the speaker. The speaker was completely seized up. I cut the cone and spider and pulled the voice coil out. It was really pinched in there. I probably ould buy a new speaker for the cost of magnet reset and recone. The speaker is a 1983 Emmience, probably 70-100 watts.

[glebert]

I usually don't put them in the curbside recycling bin because I figure they will stick to the side of truck or somehow otherwise screw up the recycling process. I usually drop mine off at the local recycle center that has an electronics dumpster and I try to get it to stick to some other metal in there. I doubt a generic Eminence is going to be worth the $ to fix, but that doesn't make it the wrong thing to do either.

[Mark Hammer]

A workshop I was in until recently had a neodymium magnet stuck to the "trunk" of the drill-press. It served to hang unto the chuck key at a standard location, so you could always find the key when you needed it.

[J M Fahey]

You can unglue them easily by heating top and/or bottom plates to pressing iron temperature: you splash water with your fingertips and it sizzles.

Then apply a wooden dowel/6" section of a broomstick to pole piece and hit it hard with a hammer.

Somebody has to hold the frame by the edge so movement is possible.
Use oven gloves/mittens.

Lt it cool down and remove Epoxy adhesive by "shaving" it with an x-acto cutter.

Tie magnet donut to 20-30 ft of strong fishing wire and go gun hunting.(fishing).

[Mick Bailey]

You could always make a table lamp from 2 junk speakers.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Tie magnet donut to 20-30 ft of strong fishing wire and go gun hunting.(fishing).

The fellow who did excellent recones for me in the 90's did exactly that. But he only needed a couple magnets for treasure hunting, so all other rejects discarded.

Discard speakers, definitely recyclable. BUT likely not welcome at the recycle depot. I can just imagine, speaker shows up with twenty pounds of tin cans & whatnot stuck to it. If all that went right into a smelter, no problem. But no - it's all gotta get sorted proper-like. Big magnet like that I reckon would gum up the works something awful.

In these parts every household recently received a reminder, what's acceptable in the recycle bin. Be nice now, only "empty clean cans, bottles, plastic food & other containers. Plus cardboard broken down flat only please, and newspapers tied neatly into bundles. No foam plastic either, no no no. Don't give us anything besides what we can easily handle - put all else in regular trash bin." OK then, speakers and everything else, there ya go, OUT, woof!

[nevetslab]

I didn’t find out what CenterStaging did with large collection of damaged loudspeakers found in all the “bad” bass speaker cabinets I was going thru the end of 2022, finally digging into all of the various bass cabinets from every mgr in our inventory. There was an ever-growing pile of them.

I had wondered which mgr’s motors were worthy of being repaired rather than being just outright replaced. I suspect those still being owned by the amp companies’ products in CenterStaging’s vast inventory that fresh replacement speakers were being provided.

l only got part way onto the second shelf where most of the 410 cabinets were kept, that requiring additional staff to help fetching them to the floor to allow hand truck to move them to my rolling loudspeaker test station I would set up (and have in place in that warehouse for future resumption of that on-going task). Haven’t even started into all of the wide assortment of different mfgr’s guitar cabinets. Fun project though!

[Axtman]

My speaker recone guy said he can repair the magnet placement. So I gave him the speaker. Stay tuned!

[The Dude]

Normally, if the glue has let loose and the magnet is still intact- just shifted, they can be repaired. If the magnet itself is cracked or physically broken, not so much. They demagnetize the speaker, re-glue the magnet, re-magnetize and recone it. It's a process only recommended if you have proper tools. When I was much younger, I tried re-gluing one myself without demagnetizing it. I would NOT recommend trying this. Those magnets are STRONG and getting your fingers pinched between magnet and basket is hard on the digits!

I use these guys for magnet repair and they do great work.

https://www.midwestspeakerrepair.com/

That said, you want to inspect the magnet yourself, first. As I said, if it's cracked, broken, in pieces, etc., there isn't much that can be done and I wouldn't bother paying freight to send it in.