DTTAY - How to Reclaim Speaker Magnets

This is my first installment of

Don't Throw That Away Yet

I came up with these for use in instances where I have multiple projects going at once. I put all the magnetic hardware on one of these pucks and pack it away with the project. When I come back to it I have all the hardware I started with.

Now if you have ever tried to reclaim speaker magnets you know the difficulty in this project. Recently I blew two speakers at once thanks to Vinnie Paul's kick drum. After I changed them out it was time to toss out the old speakers. Or was it?

You will need:

SAFETY GLASSES

Speaker

Power Grinder

Cut Off wheel

Vice Grips

Wire Cutters

Exacto Knife

Bench Vise

SAFETY GLASSES - CHECK IT AND WEAR THEM UNTIL YOU ARE DONE

Make sure to do this where you can make a mess. This process is incredibly messy.

Using your Exacto knife cut away the out covering if there is any. Then cut all the way around the speaker cone until it is loose. Flip the speaker over and snip the two wires. Now remove the paper cone. Once you have that done cut the lower baffle the same way and remove it.

I set mine into a bench vise. Do this GENTLY as it is real easy to crack the magnet making it unuseable.

Now use your grinder to grind off the heads of the mounting rivets. Then moving right along grind all the way around the mounting/rivet face. Once you have the grinding done use a sharp flat tip screwdriver and wedge it between the magnet and the frame. Please don't do this with the speaker resting in your hand. This set is most easily done with the speaker placed on the floor magnet side up.

If you must hammer at this stage make sure you just tap the screwdriver into the gap between the magnet and frame. Once it is partly in give it a twist and then tap and twist again as you go all the way around.

Now that you have the magnet released it is time to clean it up. I used a pneumatic air grinder to finish off the rivet heads and smooth out the face. Set it in the vise and be gentle locking it in place. It just needs to touch it, NOT clamp it.

Now with the magnet still in the vise use a high pressure blow gun to remove the magnetized bits of metal left over from the grinding.

In my door speakers there were 2 by speakers that had a small tweeter in the middle. I used the same methods to access the speaker only this time I had to cut out the small tweeter in the middle. I set it aside so that I could also remove that magnet.

Now with the tweeter removed it was time to remove the frame. I cut the frame at the four legs to remove it and then used the grinder at an angle to grind out the four rivet heads. With all the rivets ground off. I flipped the magnet over and pinched the frame carefully in the vise to make it release from the magnet.

Once it started to pull away from the magnet I removed it from the vise and then clamped it with a vise grip to ease the next step. Insert a screwdriver in the opening and TWIST. Do not pry as it will only make the job harder and it could break the magnet. As the magnet starts to free itself from the frame move along the opening twisting each time. Once the frame is off take that bugger and dump the frame bit in the trash. Be very careful as this left over bit is incredibly sharp. Do not fool around about this part.

Now that I had the tweeter free I placed it in the vise with the same care as I had in the past and proceeded to grind the tweeter away. As there was no good way to free the tweeter from the magnet I ground until tweeter cone was gone. Once the cone was gone I carefully removed the rest of the mounting plastic around the magnet. Once it was down to tiny bits of plastic in the mounting lip I locked the magnet into a pair of vise grips and cleaned off the remaining plastic with a bench wire wheel.

You could plastic dip these in the. I chose no aesthetics instead I stayed with functional.

When not in use I also leave the magnet pucks stacked up. Easier to find and I find it strengthens the smaller magnets in the stack.