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 Post subject: Good sources e-scrap
PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 11:12 pm 

Joined: Fri Jul 01, 2016 6:55 pm
Posts: 742
Location: Texas
What are good items aside from computers and servers to scrap?
Apparently there is a huge demand for computers and servers. I am guessing referb. buyers are paying top dollar. I seen a small lot of 11 trays only Dell rack servers sell for $2450.00 today. Grant it the were listed as working obsolete and hard drives removed. About 3 years ago I bought three pallets aprox. 60 of server trays with hard drives for $135.00.


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 Post subject: Re: Good sources e-scrap
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 2:42 am 
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Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:57 pm
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Location: Low DOS
The refurb market will kill you on scrap pricing. With c19 it’s even harder. Prices have goon through the roof vs just last year for computers.

So:
Usually

High end A/V: excluding power board peripheral to high telco

Security and cameras: peripheral to high telco

Old cell phone lots. The bigger the lot the better. For every 100 phones I tend to find 10 I can refurb without taking them apart. Just bricked by stupidity or bad updates. Or even working fine. Quick turnaround sales there.
With a quality toolkit you can strip a phone with a removable battery in minutes.
Even with a junk kit ($20 tech kit from Meijer or walmart will work) you can yank main boards from old and mid range phones in just a minute or two. And toss the rest of the phone in the phone collection box at Best Buy, ace, lowes, Home Depot etc when your done.

Portable media players. Peripheral to high telco. A select few make cell class.

Memory cards and storage. Eg PlayStation memory, USB: low telco to high telco
More?
The following all come with risks. Including life long suffering and death. Proceed at your own risk.

Electric personal grooming and hygiene: eg tooth brushes, razors, water picks.
Most peripheral, sometimes low and high telco

Legally auctioned/sold hospital equipment
Beads, chairs: peripheral to high telco
Remotes, intercoms: low to high telco
Barcode scanners: low telco to cell class
Read outs and monitor units: midgrade to high telco
IV controllers: peripheral to high telco
Fluids controllers: peripheral to cell class
Air controllers: midgrade to high telco

Vital statistics monitors eg blood pressure cuffs, thermometers: peripheral to high telco

Note pads (tablets): low telco to high telco
Pagers: peripheral to high telco
Communicators: low telco to high telco
Status displays: midgrade to low telco
Dispensers: low to high telco

More?
Automotive
A/v: midgrade to high telco
Computers: auto box with aluminium to high telco
Pressure gages: peripheral to low telco
Sensors: peripheral to high telco
Most modern automotive boards start at peripheral

More?
Back into dangerous territory
CFL and led lightbulbs
Vacuum cleaners
Modern Dimmer switches
Irrigation controllers
Battery powered tools.

Hell the gallon jugs of Raid home defence and Weed b Gone with the battery powered sprayers have peripheral boards. Which I sent to boardsort after careful and excessive cleaning (hot water bath).

Want to get bizarre a bit? Organs are a great source of crap boards and silver. Electric guitars. Peripheral boards plus copper, nickel, and silver
Speakers give you junk low grade boards but a nice bit of copper
Scales
Chainsaws
Lawnmowers
...
If it is self powered it has at the least copper. That’s a fact. Boardsort buys copper.
Look up my what’s inside it photo posts for truly bizarre boredom ideas.

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 Post subject: Re: Good sources e-scrap
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:46 am 

Joined: Fri Jul 01, 2016 6:55 pm
Posts: 742
Location: Texas
Lost.....

With my hours being cut and being furloughed one day every two weeks. I am looking for different sources of material to scrap in order to help offset what I am loosing from work.
You never fail to amaze me :) When I or anyone for that matter ask a question you always seem to have an answer.
I have seen some of your "what's inside post and videos" and love them. You have helped me tremendously over the past few years.

As always thank you for all your help.


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 Post subject: Re: Good sources e-scrap
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 12:18 pm 
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Joined: Fri Feb 07, 2020 3:25 pm
Posts: 156
Easy to overlook, but every portable radio with a CD player will (most likely) have 1 CD-ROM grade board, and they're probably the 2nd most common trash electronic after TV's, you can ride around any city on Trash night and find close to a dozen ranging from the cheapest junk to boomboxes that probably used to be nice,

You'll need a 6" #2 or #1 Phillips driver for all the deep pocket screws you'll encounter, those alum or stainless speaker covers can be pried out with a flathead screwdriver , the CD deck is basically a CD drive packed differently, you can pull the little motors and bits of brass if you want, I just take the boards and Chuck the metal bearing portion of the carcass into the shred pile, keep moving

And there are places you can find massive lots of these things thrown out, meet return lquidators in your area, theyll havea warehouse space somewhere they can get power to plug everything in and make sure it works, everything that doesn't gets piled up outside, find those piles of broken electronics and ask if you can take it, also prison systems have (or had) stocks of clear cased radios and CD players, if you can find where they show those out they have boards too

Edit: TV's are a good source of scrap because so many are available but all TV's contain hazmat, so the process of breaking them down endangers yourself and the environment, crt "box" TV's have all that leaded glass , and flatscreens have poisonous organic compounds in the screen glass, and it's bad news, I got poisoned by it recently and it is extremely unpleasant even compared to heavy metal poisoning, and lost here was the only person in the whole internet who could provide any meaningful information about what poisoned me, and apparently there's nothing that poison control could have done for me, so very serious bad news,

That being said I've been breaking down flatscreens in small numbers for years and in the past few months have processed so many I've handled litterally tons of lcd glass and that was the only time I've poisoned myself, all I can suggest is you decide if you think you can handle dangerous materials safely, if you personally have a problem following safety guidelines, work without gloves, ect. Then maybe you shouldnt, I've just decided to implement safety in my personal workspace and prevent anyone helping me from handling the glass, only I handle the glass, they haven't been bit yet so they're not cautious

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 Post subject: Re: Good sources e-scrap
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 3:05 pm 
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Kaiser613 wrote:
: TV's are a good source of scrap because so many are available but all TV's contain hazmat, so the process of breaking them down endangers yourself and the environment, crt "box" TV's have all that leaded glass , and flatscreens have poisonous organic compounds in the screen glass, and it's bad news, I got poisoned by it recently and it is extremely unpleasant even compared to heavy metal poisoning, and lost here was the only person in the whole internet who could provide any meaningful information about what poisoned me, and apparently there's nothing that poison control could have done for me, so very serious bad news,

Everyone is aware of the CRT lead issue. The thing many people forget us the phosphorus.
Without going into a scientific aspect I don’t fully understand; when a crt finally truly dies some sort of chemical reaction happens over time that makes the phosphate in the screen grill break down into its bare elements.
Phosphorus goes boom.
Only once, but I had a screen go up in a VERY hot fire once due to sweating over the bare phosphorus. Luckily I had the fire extinguisher (chemical certified) and put it out but damn that’s hot. That’s why white phosphorus matches work best.

LCD screens... !
The makeup falls into the same category as plastic sorting. No two manufacturers use the same chemical composition.
Poison control is really nice but they just scratch their heads and ask if you want an ambulance.
I’ve been poisoned twice in my life from them. Both times very different reactions. The first was burning. Like this is what hell is like burning. Inside me. I heard one vet describing it as like drinking napalm. All the burning but inside.
The second time was an iPhone or iPod touch screen. I don’t quite remember which. But I spent 3 days feeling like I was in the Mojave desert. No mater how much water I drank I felt so dry and dehydrated.
It all passes. Unless you lick up every last drop your unlikely to die. But I use gloves now always, when handling screens.
I’ve done a lot of really stupid stuff in the name of science and experience and understanding!
From every part of my being: you do NOT want LCry poisoning. I’ve heard others tell of convulsions, euphoria, straight up acid trips. Extreme pain. Complete motor control shutdown.

Oh. And here’s an internet fable for you. I can’t find any legit record anywhere so authenticity is doubtful but even if it didn’t happen it could:
A man in his 40s was scrapping monitors when one split and he somehow ingested lCry. He dialled 999 and and said what happened and gave his symptoms. But he didn’t get an ambulance. Instead the local government went all ET on him and his house. Men in space suits tapped up his whole house. Left him in bed to suffer. And remove and disposed of all his possessions.
It’s obviously not real but it falls into the be careful type old wives’ tale.

You are highly unlikely to come across a split lcd screen but always use caution and care. If one does split apart. Bag it! Tag it! Bring it to fire or hazmat. Say your sorry and pay any fees for disposal.

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 Post subject: Re: Good sources e-scrap
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 4:28 pm 

Joined: Fri Jul 01, 2016 6:55 pm
Posts: 742
Location: Texas
I try to stay away from crt’s be it monitors or tv’s, because of the leaded glass. I have tore down a few flat screen monitors they do not seem really worth it time vs return. I would think tv’s would be about the same just a little larger. On the other hand I will try most anything once.


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 Post subject: Re: Good sources e-scrap
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 4:49 pm 
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Joined: Fri Feb 07, 2020 3:25 pm
Posts: 156
Lost... Crt grills are a source of white phos? Now that's really interesting,

Rdw... 1 may not seem like it's worth the time but when you have 1000+ doing them in batches of 100 at a time, (and you get fast at it) you get a nice scrap run out of the steel and wire, plus periph boards by the trashcan full, I strip low grades with an air chisel so I suss out every bit of value there too, it all adds up, and honestly, if it weren't for scrappers we'd all be drowning in the dang things

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 Post subject: Re: Good sources e-scrap
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 6:42 pm 
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The very first time I learned about it was when I came across a late 70s tv.

Taking it apart I found what I thought was actually someone’s coke stash! Lol.
At the time I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how they got it inside there but it wasn’t exactly the top of my concerns when faced with that kind of oh crap moment. I called the cops.
Turns out it wasn’t coke at all. So I did my research and eventually dug the methodology out of some journal at the library.
Since then I’ve seen green, orange, etc but most of the time it’s white.

I don’t touch CRTs any more. I had a buyer for many many years for the lead glass if I broke it into non-tv shape. They couldn’t buy TVs but could by and sell lead glass scrap. And as long as I took the tube electronics out it wasn’t a tv anymore. (I sold the tube end to a PM buyer).
The state eventually closed the loop hole.
And to shut it down further they blocked free hazmat collection sites from taking the glass alone without the rest of the tv.
I have a few working ones that I use for retro gaming and 8-bit computing but I won’t scrap them.

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 Post subject: Re: Good sources e-scrap
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:13 pm 

Joined: Fri Jul 01, 2016 6:55 pm
Posts: 742
Location: Texas
Kaiser,

Good point doing 100 at time I can see getting faster at it.

Here is my dilemma on striping low and mid grade boards what in the world am I going to do with the striped components.....?

I know what to do with these items: But not much else thats on the boards.
Aluminum capacitors...dirty alum.
Heat spreaders...clean alum
Copper wire mostly insulated

Transformers...shred as no one buys them as transformers short of going to Houston 4 hour trip one way or possibly Dallas / FT Worth 3 hour trip one way.
Transformers at $0.05 to $0.15 lb not worth the trip to Houston or Dallas.

I have found a scrap yard that buys ALL circuit boards for shred price which is why Chris gets everything peripheral and up. I have not taken any low and mid-grade boards to them yet since they are 1-1/2 hour trip one way.


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 Post subject: Re: Good sources e-scrap
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:20 pm 
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Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:57 pm
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There’s photo essays posted of my depop setup.
Two minutes per board at most with a v nozzle on a heat gun at 800•

Much much faster at higher heat but more dangerous. I personally use mine set at roughly 1200•-1400• depending on the Amount of surface vs pin through components. Takes about 30 seconds to heat and “drop” everything on a modern motherboard at 1400•
But heat needs caution on all boards as fumes are toxic.
Brown boards tend to tolerate up to around 300• or so of directed heat before smouldering.
Lower end green boards like midgrade, and modern boards tend to tolerate up to around 800•-1000•. Defence/aerospace stuff will often tolerate heat beyond any bench level heat gun can put out. My hottest HG gets to 2600• which I use to mould little copper etc animals and monsters.
And the ‘classified’ solder they use on some of this stuff won’t melt and the boards don’t ever catch so I gave up long ago on ever doing depop on it. No matter what it is I want to recover. If I can’t cut or chisel It it stays.

There’s lots of metals on boards. And the lower end can be a mineral mine for the right person. But it’s SO difficult and expensive to go from board to commodity that the price stays low. Unless your yard’s rates suck (steel shred or worse) if you can get more than 5č pp for a brown board take it.

The only way you can make mad money from depop is if you find a yard who’s main intake is electrical and/or industrial. Where transformers fetch 30č+ and terms like tungsten (everywhere), compressed silica (coil bases), sodium tricarbonate (electric sinks), and hematite (everywhere) make people smile.

Honestly unless your after PM for refining, or working component recovery, there’s no real benefit in depop except in extremely rare circumstances.

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