What is inside a cordless drill?
A cordless drill is a compact electric motor, a gear train and a removable lithium-ion battery pack in one housing. It is worth taking apart because three streams meet in it: the battery metals of the pack, the small permanent magnets of a brushless motor, and the steel and copper that make up most of the tool.1
Materials in a cordless drill
| Material | Where it sits |
|---|---|
| SteelMost of its weight | Gears, chuck, stator laminations and cell cans |
| Copper | Stator windings and board tracks |
| Nickel | Cell cathodes and pack connecting strips |
| Graphite | Anodes of the pack’s cells |
| Aluminum | Cell foils and the gear housing |
| Manganese | Cell cathodes, in many chemistries |
| Cobalt | Cell cathodes, in many chemistries |
| Lithium | Cells of the battery pack |
| Material | Where it sits |
|---|---|
| Rare earths | Four magnets on the rotor |
| Tin | Solder on the controller board |
| Gold | Chip and connector contacts |
| Silver | Solder and trigger-switch contacts |
| Palladium | Ceramic capacitors on the boards |
What a cordless drill of this kind most likely holds. Amounts are given in words, not weights, because content depends on the design.
How a cordless drill is recycled
The battery pack slides off first and is recycled apart from the tool, by a recycler set up to handle lithium-ion batteries.2 Its cells typically hold lithium with nickel, manganese or cobalt, depending on the chemistry; packs are commonly discharged and shredded, and those metals are recovered from the powder that results.3 The tool is then dismantled or shredded. Magnets lift the steel of the gears and the chuck out of the shredded mix, and the copper goes on to smelting and refining.45 A small motor that is not broken apart tends to follow the steel and take its copper windings along, so the motor is better separated first; whether its rotor magnets, commonly neodymium, are recovered depends on that step and on the recycler.16 The controller board, which carries traces of gold, silver and palladium, typically goes with other circuit boards to a copper smelter.7
More on each stream: magnet rare earths, battery metals, steel and aluminum.
Find it in the games and recycle it
- Mine the houseCordless drill (garage)
- Sort the device wallCordless drill (tools and mobility)
- Find a recycling program near youCheck what the program accepts before you go.
Sources
- Rare earth elements, end use and recyclabilityUSGS
- The Importance of Sending Consumers' Used Lithium-ion Batteries to Electronic Recyclers or Hazardous Waste Collection FacilitiesUS Environmental Protection Agency, Sections "About Lithium-ion Batteries" and "About EPA's Report"
- Lithium-Ion Battery RecyclingUS Environmental Protection Agency
- Metal Recycling: Opportunities, Limits, InfrastructureUnited Nations Environment Programme, International Resource Panel (2013), Section on separation of shredded material, p. 99 (PDF page 101): sorting by magnetic properties, conductivity and density, and the small-motor example; stainless steel statement, p. 74 (PDF page 76)
- Current recycling innovations to utilize e-waste in sustainable green metal manufacturingPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, vol. 382, 2024, doi:10.1098/rsta.2023.0239 (peer-reviewed, open access, CC BY 4.0; PubMed Central copy PMC11531906), Section 3 'E-waste recycling strategies for metal extraction', subsection (a) 'Pretreatment'
- Rare Earth Permanent Magnets: Supply Chain Deep Dive AssessmentUS Department of Energy, Section 2.2.5.1, printed page 20
- Metal Recycling: Opportunities, Limits, InfrastructureUnited Nations Environment Programme, International Resource Panel (2013), Section 3.4.1.4 'Copper and nickel scrap smelting as part of a primary copper smelter' and Figure 42 (printed pages 112 to 113)
Reviewed