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How many people here scrap old electronics?


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Am I the only one that takes apart broken or stuff for the garbage and takes the chips, transistors, capacitors, resistors, chokes, coils, and wire(if there is enough)?  I used to take apart old printers that we had and just take the LEDs, but now I take just about everything(except SMT).  I dont use all of it, but I have already used some(capacitors and a resistor).  My VCR just crapped out, makes blue screen but will has audio, so I am going to scrap that pretty soon.  An old monitor that we have is just about dead and ready to upgrade to an LCD, so I might take that for parts.  I dont know if I want to mess with the cathode in it, dont feel like getting killed too soon, I can just see the news headlines "Cheap kid gets killed when trying to get $1.50 of electronics".

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I wish that I could get my hands on all the electronics in the garbage in my neigborhood. The only bad thing is how to dipose them. U can't throw away a huge TV in the trash. In my town, u have to pay about $10-50!!! so people can pick them up and take them away.  :'( :'( :'(

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I had a small TV that I needed to get rid of. It was dead. The metal scrapper would not take it...the dump would not take it...so, I put it on the curb in front of my house with a sign that said "FREE", and it was gone the very next day.  8)
Love those guys that like to tear things apart!! Maybe nevermind1281 lives in my neighborhood?

MP

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in my teens I longed for parts and things to rip into.
In my 20s I had a whole storage shed full of 'stuff' from old ham radio equipment,
to Personal computers.
In my 30s I learned that my time was worth money so I suddenly realized that
ordering new parts is better than spending hours looking though broken gizmos
to find one that is 'close' to what I need.
Now (my 40s) I keep a nice balance of unique gizmos for research and Reverse engineering and
a shelf of up to date parts supply catalogues.

As for getting rid of old electronics, It is becoming more difficult due to the hazardous chemicals and elements used in construction.  The best advice I can offer is disassemble the unit entirely, and then throw it away a little at a time.  That way you may find a few items you do want to keep and you can toss the stuff you don't need.

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I just took apart an old Sega, there were 31 capacitors, took them all, and they are all 10uF, 47uF, and like 3 100uF.  I need all the 10uF and 47uF for other things I do so that worked out well.  I am on an old VCR right now, I have a bowl filled with caps.  I dont bother with surface mount, and right now I am getting to the power supply and I have to be very careful of all of the exposed stuff.  I wil write back later and tell how much stuff I got, and if I get shocked.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I remove only the parts I can test.  When I was at school, a friend and I salvaged resistors and capacitors, but we found that Rs were usually gone high, and the Cs were leaky.

Now I keep only the boards, and I do sometimes find parts I use, plus motors, relays etc.  The multicoloured wiring comes in handy.

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Dollar stores are great places!!!!!

I found many useful and cheap things there. I don't really care about the quality like gold-plated on many cables, so dollar store always has them. They also sell Door Bells, and other devices that would have an lcd screen, piezo and other speakers. U just take them apart, and get the component out. Buying just a 8-ohm speaker rated for 3 watts cost 2.39!!! at radioshack, but buying a door bell at the $1 store for $1 + tax, you can take the Door Bell apart and u get a switch, 8-ohm speaker rated 5 watts!!, and some resistors, capacitors.

I wish that I could get the music chip out, but there is always a weird black thing covering it.
Does any1 know what this black stuff is?
IS there a way to remove it?


Thanks for ur help!!!!

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