Generally no. That said you’ve got two depopulation concepts. For the majority of people Computer boards post 1996ish DP never work out in your favour for services like Boardsort. Late 80s to mid 90s. Ceramic IC era. 50/50. Just keep an eye on telco pricing. A server or minicomputer motherboard that would be $10 per pound can quickly fetch much more for gold pin dip ICs. Unix minicomputers and servers are popular with refiners AND scrappers because they can have a fair amount of soldered gold-caps you can flip to boardsort at the lowest gold cap rate even without the pins. Mid 80s and older. Mixed . Could be worthless junk low grade which is generally worth dissecting anyway if you have the time anyway. Or a gold mine. Or If you have a scrap buyer for each individual component you’ll often make more stripping on anything lower than low telco/Gold finger card. CMCs at up to $18 per pound. Canister capacitors at 45č. Resisters at 30č. Plastic ICs at $1.25-$2.50. Ceramic ICs at $2-$6. Transformers at 30č-60č. Go far enough and CLEAN gold flashing at $400 per lb. silver flashing at $4-$6 per pound. Nickel runs $4-$6 per pound. Silver at $8 per ounce. Tin at $2-$3 per pound. Copper at $1-$4 depending on class and form.
My answer, then? For the vast majority of people don’t strip boards. You’ll loose money. If you have time and are into refining and cleaning materials... I suggest striping low and mid boards. You can melt copper and tin etc with a high powered heat gun. Anyone with a MAP tank (rare now) can melt just about anything, and with current MAAP and MAPP torches, commonly mis-claimed to be MAP, very little of what is on a computer board is out of melt reach. Some caution and knowledge (check out gold refiners’ forum) you can clean down most metals. I don’t deal with gold, it’s too much red tape. Brass is a pain in the arse as it’s an alloy, and I’ve not the knowledge nor care to refine that. But I do melt copper, tin, silver, etc. Thing I know from some minor chem-testing are clean or mostly clean.
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