Scrapping in WI-Blog

I figured I'd show you guys what I actually do, the things I find and so on.

Tuesday's Haul:

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and then there is the monster I use for my operations. There is a reason I plan to replace it with a half ton Ram diesel.

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Alright, the day shift is over. And this is what I grabbed.

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This is why you hit thrift and goodwill stores, because they have no idea what they have. Yes most of the time the employees seperate the good stuff like large brass solids and sterling silver...but this here is .7 lbs of carbide wear bar. I got it for a buck...

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A W. Rogers and sons solid silver (not sterling, actual whole silver) salad fork. I got it for a dollar, just it's scrap value is in the 40s. This made my day. I also scored a stack of gold leaf china that will be sold on fleabay with a scrap value reserve. I paid a dollar a plate.

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This is a Sony DSS Receiver WITH the card. I got it for two bucks with a remote that I believe to have a gold plated board (I looked it up prior to purchase) Paid 1.50

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Random Computer parts and a couple Cable/DSL modems which for the most part are heavy gold boards due to the high frequency carrier signal...gold has less signal loss and is ideal for cable boxes and modems, a little fyi.

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Accounting firm had these, a box of cordless multi-line phones, free except for one which they asked five bucks for since it was a six line phone for the receptionist and they knew it still worked...I will resell that one. I smashed one that didn't work at all, handset has gold on the board, probably motherboard grade.

I'm done for now, tonight my cousin goes out for heavy scrap I already lined up a autoshop going out of business that he has to be at around six. They have to clear out everything because of the bank. I offered our service for free in exchange for what we took. My cousin might buy working tools tonight...if they are worth anything so in the morning I may be pleasantly surprised.

Tomorrow a computer store clean out. I offered $.22/lb for whole towers and crt take away for free. The room is stacked nearly to the ceiling, there could be 500 plus comptuters in various stages of dissasembly. I will be buying working laptops as well.

Also, I was at the salvage yard to get a starter for a van today, I saw my first wrecked Tesla. I asked about the batteries...and they said they don't know what to do because it's worth NOTHING since it cant legally be crushed (due to containing hazardous waste). I offered to remove the batteries for free, since I know what lithium ion is worth. The car is badly wrecked and the packs are not resellable which is how the yard came to this problem. For those of you who don't know, the packs consist of the same lithium ion cells you find in laptops. There will be 3,000+ cells.

Lastly...I hit pick n save today and came out with day old bread, 18 lbs of hamburger and 6 bags of bagels (free). I gave my connect a pack of cigarettes and a monster rehab (energy drink) for the trouble. He then proceeded to tell me his parents want his car gone from their driveway since it's sat for the better part of a year. "Is it worth anything to you?" I told him sure, I could probably give him a couple hundred for it. 99 grand am V6...supposing it will have alloys, at least one good major assembly and cat. Gas will likely not be any good if it sat all year, oh well cant have everything. When I go look at it I will post a pic.

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Stripped more electronics after I tested out the resellable stuff and separated the good. I got excited about the multi-line cordless phones until I couldn't find the batteries for them. Anyways, this is the motherboards, high grades and mid grades all ready for Mudlucky to have a go at.

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This is the triple LNB board, ALOT of precious metals on it. I also have more permalloy from the LNB (gunned it at the scrap yard, for those of you wondering, that is permalloy behind each stem. (I cannot say it is on all this one was a directv aka hughesnet triple LNB from 2003.

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Low grade awaiting depopulation. I don't know about you guys but my scrap yard could care less if I depopulate the board, it's .15/lb either way. I will take off the heatsinks, big electrolytic caps and see if any of them have tantalum or MLCCs, after that they are thrown in a bin. I get .25/lb for electrolytic caps and dirty heatsinks (I never take the transistors off I just snap them off the board and toss in the bin. I also depopulate ferrite chokes and transformers, these are smashed with a hammer and separated from the copper. All in all labor excluded most of my low grades I end up getting .38/lb by weight on average. Adds up very fast because I will buy them at yard price in large lots.

On medium grade boards I depopulate ICs and chips only if I cannot find a buyer at a good price, because when you depopulate medium grade your only going to get low grade after the fact.

Lately I've been getting a mix of core 2 boards and these are heavy tantalum and MLCC boards, anyone trying to pay P4 price for these motherboards should get them WITHOUT the Ta and MLCCs since they aren't paying you for them.

Also...who is buying XBOX (original) boards at better than MOBO price since they are populated with both a high grade CPU and a high grade GPU as well as pretty dense with MLCCs? I am getting these more and more and I don't know what to do with the boards, I feel like I'm getting ripped off selling at regular Mobo prices.

Thanks for the shout out :)

My buyer does buy core2 boards as low grade motherboards, but I do take off the tantalum first with their permission. That may change in the future, but for now, I pull it off. My prices assume that I will get the tantalum chips still on the board and then I remove them. :)

Sorry to hijack. Just wanted to clarify and respond since I was mentioned as the one who will receive some of those boards. Looking forward to it.

Great job!!

I scored even more today, and picking up more still tomorrow. P4s almost all, but I have three slot processor boards and three AMD K7s (havent seen those in a while)

You are a talented individual. Not many are e scrappers and burners. Congrats.

I studied metallurgy actually, even if I didn't get my degree I learned quite a bit. I smelt various materials as well. We maximize output.

Long story short when I lived in louisiana I did several dozen land rig burns and even a few offshore rig burns (deconstruction jobs) where I either consulted or did the burning myself as a crewmember. When we talk about burning were not talking 20 tons a day or even 40...one man can cut down 220 tons of iron into foundry "prepared" iron. Kinda why I was thinking your host company should rethink their jobber situation. You hire local you get what you pay for, hit the shipyards and rig companies this time of year (usually slow) and your likely to find guys who have a record of burning 1000 tons a day as a 10 man crew. After Katrina, then Rita we had like 90 rigs that were unservicable. It took years for them to be raised, or even worse, they sat in port waiting on insurance claims before they could be burned.

Examples: A good burn crew (three guys) can take down two harvestore silos and fit everything in the yard provided dumpsters in one day. That two torches and a material handler/gofer. One burner can take down a cell tower in a day, and have it cut up and ready for transport in another...by himself. It truly is a specialty and I treat it like that, I'm good but not like some of those guys, my hats off.

As for ewaste, I only recently discovered it. I buy it, I don't go looking for it so much, even though we are still running our routes nearly 24 hours a day.

I buy the oddest things, carbides (nickel and cobalt), batteries both nicads and lithium, I EXCLUSIVELY buy the hybrid batteries from the local auto wreckers. HSS, Inconel, Monel, Titanium punch outs, aircraft aluminum extrusions, bus bars, bronze...it's a long list. My bins have labels like 304 and 4017M, M1 and C2...when everyone is in the same biz your best bet is to specialize. I don't know of any other hybrid battery buyers out there...but I buy them, don't know anyone else that does, and its considered hazardous waste therefore they cant even crush the car until it's removed.

More computer stuff. This is from the store clean out, there was some delay but when it was done, this was the result.

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Heavy gold CPUs, anyone else find NKK Japan made CPUs? I got 40 cpus out of the deal...

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A few laptops, no hard drives, had batteries.

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Drives...some already dismantled, these tested good.

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Finger cards and more...hard drive parts...

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A couple low grade motherboards

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Some of the memory and a few dismantled HDD logic boards

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A couple magnets and readers. I'm saving the readers and CD/DVD boards for Mudlucky and maybe the rest of the low grade mobos too.

Good score! In those last few pictures are you getting ready to melt that stuff down on the stove? lol You could probably fit more reader arms in a box if you melted them into a blob. I would ask Ken first though...

Ohhh no I just used the space for finished dismantling. Only thing I melt is wheel weights and I stopped doing that a while ago.

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Originally Posted by armygreywolf

Ohhh no I just used the space for finished dismantling. Only thing I melt is wheel weights and I stopped doing that a while ago.

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I was only kidding! Just thought it was funny seeing it piled on the stove, I have the same problem with limited space...

It's cold outside, therefore after dinner the kitchen gets used to dismantle computers heh.

Yeah, my living room is full of computers and boxes of stuff lol

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Originally Posted by ScrapperSkip

Yeah, my living room is full of computers and boxes of stuff lol

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That's how I used to do it until I finally got a shop. It's only 750 square foot though. I use the front end to sell my refurbs and do service work. To the left of my "show room" is where I do all my scrapping.

I'll have to take pictures someday, it's a pretty sweet setup.

Man that's awesome. Fondy isn't too far from me. I live out to the SW of Horicon Marsh.

I'm looking to get into more of this in my free time.

You mentioned those hybrid batteries, what's your take on the DC converters on them?
I know here at my work, when they come up to be cored I'm pretty sure we just toss them.

You have to be really careful, on priuses and a few other cars the dc converters are plumbed into the cooling system so dismantling most of the time ruins any resale theyd have. And I think theyre aluminum core not copper....but I could be wrong...there's gonna be two or three transformers inside it and a TON of heavy duty mosfets on a liquid cooled heatsink. And thats just on the Plug in hybrids, theres another type of converter on older priuses and tahoes...dont even bother with those theyre mixed aluminum at best...same as scrap ECMs...

You work at a yard? Which one?

If I come across some (because at this point I haven't seen the few that were floating around) I'll take some pictures... maybe even take some time to rip one open for ya.
I think some of them actually mount to the drive motor. They basically look like if you made a plate for the bell housing, then extended it maybe 2 inches and added the other side.

The hybrid gen/motor is a perm mag motor and HEAVY copper...last one I did I pulled 21 pounds of copper from it.

And now... for today's haul. I have a special surprise, someone on the forum put me on to this last night and I followed up this morning when I realized the case was totally aluminum.

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48 Traffic Controllers circa mid 80s...I figured the older of the two lots would possibly be more valuable. I tried to get both lots but someone was in a war on the newer units so I think we "agreed I get the old ones he or she gets the newer ones" We stopped bidding each other out and it settled out good for me.

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Not sure what grade these boards actually are but they are green, are pretty IC dense...have golf fingers and the IC sockets have gold even if most of the ICs don't. There are CPUs and EPROMS throughout.

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I won't lie the break down is alot of work, each box takes about 14 minutes which includes knocking out the steel inserts for clean aluminum....but as a result each box nets 5.5 lbs clean aluminum/.35 lbs lead acid battery/4.4 lbs of boards/1.4 lbs low grade board/4.4 lbs transformer/1 lb wire/ .1lbs cell phone grade gold contact keypad/ .6lbs shred

A long night ahead...tomorrow is a good run of aluminum (Going to be over 250lbs) and transformers too...