Hobbyist E-Waste Enthusiast - Chattanooga, TN

So I'm super intrigued by e-waste. I love watching videos of people repairing vintage electronics and others things. Planning to teach myself how to solder and maybe do custom builds from reused electronic components. I'm not sure if this is the best place for these questions, but there seems to be a lot of traffic here, so it looks like a good place to start.

It's highly unlikely that I will ever accumulate enough scrap to really make it worth my while to sell boards and such for money. I enjoy the tear down process immensely and can sit for several hours breaking stuff down to their uttermost and separating all the different metals. My first batch of breakdowns were a half dozen printers they were throwing away at work and some random boxes of cables and a few junk hard drives. I had a blast. Now I have a small bucket full of various boards, probably mostly low and mid grade, but a few high grade. Some are pretty old.

Does anyone have any links to any electronic hobbyist forums where I might be able to more finely tune what I'm doing?

If I go the route of depopulating the boards (undecided), what do I do with the board? Tin shred? or are they still considered low grade even with a lot of the components missing? I've heard of some people shredding them and putting them in leaching vats to get all the metals, but I don't think I'm interested in doing much chemistry. Especially with a toddler around.

Can the ABS plastic go into typical plastic recycling? One thing I've definitely determined by starting this hobby is that I want to recycle as much of what I breakdown as possible and keep it out of the landfill.

Can anyone in the Chattanooga area recommend a scrap yard? I'll have a fair bit of steel and aluminum built up.

Printers are probably the worst e-waste items to dismantle. They're dirty and low in metals (unless they're the larger ones or the copier type ones). The boards are you'll get are probably not enough valuable to ship them to the specialized buyers and are probably good for shred after you pull everything you want to save or sell apart. Ewaste is a hard niche, just check out the recent threads.

Hi and welcome to the forum from Las Vegas! And thank you for sharing in the joys of breaking stuff! Since the goal is the process itself every desktop printer made since around 2005 should have at least two Mid Grade circuit boards (One underneath the button panel and one where the USB plugs in) and one Power Board (where the power cable is or connects) plus a small handfull of low-grade wire, some papery thin ribbon wire you can put with the power boards and a bunch of plastic and steel, the latter on occasion stainless steel. It can be fun and meditative even breaking them down. Older printers can commonly have telecom grade boards and gold or silver RAM as can older faxes, word processors and even keyboards! Your results are always welcome, especially with photos for all us scrap nerds.

I learned how to do custom builds exclusively through destruction. So if you're attentive and take photos and notes for reference you can learn every different connector, what kind and how many of what connectors are necessary on a motherboard in order to [whatever the build goal is] and so on. It's super interesting especially when you get to the point where you can have a strong guess at what a board does just by looking at it and understanding its architecture.

Chatanooga is large enough that *someone* there should accept ABS. Check with whoever does your curbside recycling to see if they do.

Be careful depopulating boards at all with a toddler around. Older circuit boards often have lead solder and even newer ones can depending on a variety of factors. Plus all kinds of other hazards. There are ways but you have to take extrordinary care. I wouldn't do it.

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Originally Posted by CopperMiner

The boards are you'll get are probably not enough valuable to ship them to the specialized buyers

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Depends on the quantity! If the place you're shipping isn't too far and you have the time and space to save a gaylord quantity it's very worth it even for low-grade and power boards.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CopperMiner

Printers are probably the worst e-waste items to dismantle. They're dirty and low in metals (unless they're the larger ones or the copier type ones). The boards are you'll get are probably not enough valuable to ship them to the specialized buyers and are probably good for shred after you pull everything you want to save or sell apart. Ewaste is a hard niche, just check out the recent threads.

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haha, I am 100% uncertain that you even read my post with that response

Hey,

Do the curbside recycling places actually recycle ABS? I've read where a lot of things that are picked up for recycling ends up in the landfill anyway.

I have a friend who is building a refining setup. If I decide to depopulate, I'd probably haul my stuff over to his place for an afternoon and hang out. He's single so I don't care if he gets lead poisoning :P Since my volume is going to be so low, I feel like depopulating is probably ultimately the way to go for stuff I'm not going to repurpose. I don't have the storage to stack up boards to eventually sell.

Are depopulated boards just trash or do they go in with the low grade boards at a scrapyard? I wouldn't try to sell them to a board buyer obviously.