Scrap Metal Shear Types: Which Fits Which Yard
Four designs, four yards. The previous article mapped what each shear design is; this one maps the yards. The useful question is never “which shear is best” but “which shear is this yard” — and the answer comes from the material, the loading equipment and the output specification rather than from any brochure. This article walks five real yard profiles through the design choice, with the published boundaries that decide each one.
For the design definitions themselves, read the four-designs map first.
Profile One: The Workshop Yard
The operation. A fabrication or demolition workshop cutting pipe, bar and profile to length, a few tons a day, no foundation possible, budget tight, material light and consistent.
The design. Alligator shear. Hand-feeding is not a limitation at this volume — it is the right tool for positioning work — and the absence of a foundation requirement is decisive for a site that cannot pour one. Our Q43-200 and Q43-250 cover this duty, and the alligator guide covers the material boundaries.
The signal to watch. When the material starts arriving in bundles and the crew starts setting pieces aside, the workshop is becoming a yard — and the next machine is a gantry.
Profile Two: The Small Ferrous Yard
The operation. Twenty to forty tons a day of mixed light ferrous — rebar, light sections, flattened shells, plate offcuts — one operator, an excavator already in the yard, a buyer who pays for a charge specification.
The design. Gantry, entry class. The Q91-200 is a one-person machine fed by the excavator the yard already owns, with PLC presets producing the uniform charge length the buyer pays for. The hold-down handles the bundles that defeat hand-feeding, and the 20 to 40 ton band matches the operation rather than aspirational tonnage.
The signal to watch. When plate past 30 mm or heavy sections become a weekly event, the yard is a 315 or 400 yard — the mixed-yard guide covers the sizing.
Profile Three: The Commercial Yard
The operation. Thirty-five to sixty tons a day of sections and plate, dealers and processors buying loose and selling sized, a specification to hold every load.
The design. Gantry, mid range. The Q91-400 carries 40 mm continuous and 55 mm occasional with a duty row written for commercial mixed feed, and the Q91-500 takes the demolition variant with concrete-adhered sections. The trading-yard guide covers the margin math that justifies the class.
The signal to watch. When continuous HMS becomes the weekly diet rather than the exception, the yard is a 630 operation.
Profile Four: The Heavy Processor
The operation. Sixty to a hundred and twenty tons a day, continuous HMS or heavy plate, two shifts, a discharge plan that has to clear at the rate the box delivers.
The design. Gantry, heavy classes. The Q91-630 is the continuous-HMS watershed at 60 to 80 tons a day; the Q91-1000 is the plant entry class at 100 to 120, with bale capability specified because mill intake includes baled material. The mill-grade guide covers what plant buyers ask that yard buyers do not.
The signal to watch. When the operation becomes a line — a baler or shredder stage behind the shear — the purchase becomes a line specification rather than a machine order.
Profile Five: The Mill
The operation. Two hundred to three hundred tons a day, three shifts, heavy plate, a furnace schedule that stops when the shear stops.
The design. Gantry, production and flagship classes. The Q91-1250 is the production machine judged on cut consistency; the Q91-1600 is the three-shift mill class; the Q91-2000 is the flagship at 170 mm continuous. The downtime accounting guide covers the economics that dominate at this scale.
The signal to watch. Nothing — at this scale the operation knows its specification, and the conversation is about build details rather than class choice.
The Common Thread
Five profiles, five designs and classes, one method: the heaviest routine material and the daily tonnage decide the class, the loading equipment and the output specification decide the design. No profile in this list was decided by budget alone, and none by ambition alone. The full range maps every class from 200 to 2000 ton — send your material profile, the three heaviest pieces from a normal month and your loading equipment, and the written recommendation comes back within two business days.
The Yard That Changed Profile
One case is worth walking through because it is the most common. A yard buys an alligator for light workshop work, wins a demolition contract, and eighteen months later its intake is structural steel and plate. The machine has not changed; the operation has. The crew now sets aside weekly what it used to set aside monthly, the jaw tip wears faster, and the buyer has started asking for charge lengths the hand-fed cut cannot repeat.
That yard’s next machine is a gantry, and the class follows the log the alligator years produced — light mixed ferrous at 20 to 40 tons a day is the Q91-200, heavier mixed feed steps up the range. The alligator stays for the workshop work. The mistake would have been buying the gantry on day one, before the demolition contract existed, and spending two years feeding a machine the operation could not use.
The Measurement That Picks the Class
Every profile in this article was decided by the same measurement, and it is worth stating as a method. Take one normal month — not the heaviest, not the lightest — and record the pieces that exceed each candidate class’s continuous rating, with their frequency. Weekly exceedances size for the heavier class; monthly ones keep the lighter class viable with the right blade configuration. The measurement takes one month of attention, costs nothing, and replaces the two most expensive inputs to equipment decisions: tonnage pride and budget anxiety. Buyers who run it land one class higher than their budget assumed and one class lower than their ambition assumed, which is the measurement working correctly.
The Profile That Skipped a Step
One more case completes the set: the operation that skipped the alligator entirely and bought a gantry on day one, before its intake was known. Two years later its material is still lighter than the class expects, the machine runs below its published band every shift, and the wear bill is fine but the economics are not — installed power for tonnage the yard cannot feed, a foundation sized for duty the operation does not run. The machine was not wrong; the timing was. The honest version of that story is the proving year on a smaller machine, or a quotation conversation that sized the class against the material the operation actually had rather than the one it projected.
The Log Is the Method
Every profile in this article was decided by the same instrument, and it is worth ending on it: the log. Material log, throughput log, boundary watch. None of the three costs anything, all three are free to start this week, and together they convert every equipment decision in this article from a guess into a specification. The yards that keep them stop asking which class they should buy and start reading the answer off their own records — which is the only version of this question that has ever had a reliable answer.
Buyer FAQ
My yard is between two profiles — which wins?
Count heavy pieces per month rather than averaging tonnage. Weekly heavy events size for the heavy profile; monthly ones keep the lighter class viable with the right blade configuration.
Can I start with an alligator and add a gantry later?
Yes, and it is a common sequence — the alligator keeps the light workshop work while the gantry takes production duty. Size the gantry for year three, not for today.
Does the box design ever win?
Where dust and safety containment dominate the purchase and the material stays within its force ceiling. For irregular heavy scrap the gantry’s duty rating usually decides it.
What information do you need to recommend a class?
The three heaviest pieces from a normal month, the daily tonnage, the shift pattern, the loading equipment and the power supply. The recommendation comes back in writing within two business days.
Is the recommendation always the biggest class I can afford?
Deliberately not. A correctly sized machine outlasts an undersized one, and an oversized one costs power, floor space and purchase price every day it runs below its band. Whichever profile you recognize, send the material list and the tonnage with the inquiry — the recommendation that comes back within two business days names the class and the design your numbers support. The measurement costs one month of attention and it is the only input to the decision that cannot be argued with — which is why the operations that run it stop second-guessing the purchase in month six. The log is free, the measurement is honest, and the answer it produces is the only reliable one this question has ever had.