Newbie question...Heat Sinks?

Hi everyone...please don't flame the newbie. I have spent several hours reading past posts, and on dial-up internet this is painful! Please forgive the ignorant question...but what are aluminum heat sinks and if you pull them off circuit boards do they go in their own sort bin or just in with aluminum?

I have tiny boards from power supplies, power cords, remotes, tore apart a camcorder...just very new & trying to maximize the amount of $ I can get ...literally trying to find $ for food...not looking for pity just help in how I can make a few dollars to get me by...

they are extrusion. Dont pull them from from motherboards and stuff thaugh cause you dont want to get paid 60 cents a pound for them when you can get paid $4.

If you are selling them as Al then check them with a magnet to ensure they have no other metals attached to them. Spend more time reading about the computer boards so you get the most out of them.

The Finger Lakes is a beatiful area. Tell us more about yourself and welcome aboard, Mike.

Not sure yet how I would sell them, I honestly don't even know what they look like! (heat sinks) I guess I should have been more specific in my question! LOL! I am concentrating on copper, brass, alum & short steel; setting aside the boards until I can figure out what to do with them and how to sort them. Willing to research, but as I said it is a slow painful process on dial-up & after 2-3 hrs of reading this stuff, my brain becomes mush!

I did an intro post a couple days ago in the Intro section. Short story: have taken a couple small loads of short steel to the local yard for a few extra bucks in the past w/ my husband. We have since split & I have huge debt & a low paying job, but love it...just need to make some money to put food on the table & keep the elec on...I will work my butt off, do whatever it takes (legally) to survive... in the meantime I can learn about the scrapping business, help recycle things that may otherwise end up at the dump, and make a few bucks to pay those bills.

Heat sinks are the silvery looking things with "fins". I would post a pic but I don't want to slow down your connection.

Here is one link with a bunch of pictures of heat sinks. http://images.search.yahoo.com/searc...l&va=heat+sink

There are lots of other types as well. As said above they should be considered extruded aluminum. It does take a good bunch of them to really add up, but it typically pays a little bit more than standard aluminum such as siding and such. Many cheap boards have lots of small thin ones on them. I have been getting some pretty hefty ones from computers lately. Some weigh in at several ounces each.

Also as said above. run a magnet around them. If ripped from a board, there are typically some steel pins that are friction fit (wedged in) to hold them on. They can be removed fairly easily with a good pair of dykes (side cutters) by grabbing and leveraging them out. You want them completely free of these or screws to get full price.

I scrap the heatsinks out of my metal, mostly TVs & stereo's. The value of them is tiny, 10 grams = 1cent...
Stereo's have larger heatsinks & it may be worth selling them as a heatsink or the whole power supply part itself.

I do it simply because 'they are there' & easyish to break off the board, those are the TV ones. Since I scrap at different places I can bag the bits up & take them home & clean them down while watching TV.

Theres other copper heatsinks in some TV's & they & the small transformers & the ferrite trannys all get picked out at the same time.
The ferrite trannys are plastic coated, looks like a capactor, but differing diameters under the plastic, they pick off easyly, grab with a plier & snap the ferrite tower inside it & that exposes the copper wire, some of the wire has a fine cloth coating.

I agree (now) that taking them off a Computer board isn't worth it as you get a better $ selling the board whole & also some of the computer & related stuff is actually magnesium.

If you have low grade boards, it is ok to pull the bigger heatsinks off of them, in fact it won't hurt if you happen to break the board. Lo grade would be any circuit board not considered computer grade. TV/monitor/stereo/VCR/DVD among others are lo-grade. Usually all brown boards. You'll notice when we talk about computer scrap with a picture, you will see green circuit boards. We even pull the bigger transformers off the low grade's. You will also find transistors screwed to flat alum. heatsinks. Hope this helps a little, and not to add to the confusion.
We're finding more and more computer heatsinks with copper plates on the bottom or sometimes a copper disc embedded into the bottom of the heatsink, YES that really is copper, just use a vise if you have it to remove the copper.

I just pulled a heatsink from an old 2 channel standard radio. It weighed just over 15 ounces all by itself. I just weighed some of my CPU heat sinks and many ran 8 or 9 ounces each.

Some really great posts guys. Even if a newbee doesn't know it they will now be able to recognize Al heat sinks. Best to all, Mike.

Wow! thanks for all the great info. Looks like the boards I have are SOO low grade, they don't even have anything like those on them that i recognize from the google link provided above. I will double check them though. So far what I have are all out of dvd players, remotes, phones, satelitte receivers and power cord ends I have 3 tvs to breakdown, and 2 vintage Mac Classics complete with mouse, keyboards & 1 apple printer.

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satelitte receivers and power cord ends

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Check out the sat. receiver cause they usually have gold pins on some of the plug-ins and small gold fingers where the card plugs into.

I would put the mac's, keyboards and mice on E-bay . I'am sure they would be worth more to an collector than scrap.

I have been ripping the Ali heatsinks out of TV's for a while.

I have to unscrew the screw that holds the transistors on & rip the little metal tags that they use to solder the heatsink onto the circuit board off. I used a needlenose plier.

Theres metal pins of 3 designs (whole pin - 2peice pin & hollow pins)
The hollow pins break if you don't get it right the first time.

I found out quickly that its best to bend the heatsink 'off & out' around the hollow metal pin.
That makes it loose enough so that the pin will pull out 'first go'. You can't have ANY of the metal pin left on the Ali heatsink.

I'm left with -
The metal soldered tags (steel clip)
Nuts, bolts, screws & washers -(all steel),
Transistors (Copper)
The actual Heatsink (Ali)

So to quantify it I counted them &...

66 various Ali heatsinks weighs 2Kg, thats NZ$2.40 worth.
Not much but I will keep doing it, the Fe & Cu helps.

Or about US$2.00 for 66 heatsinks.

All from TV's, any sizes. Thumbnail to envelope size.

The heat sinks look like the sell pretty good on ebay. Looked at completed sales and they are fetching $2 - $12 ea. depending on their size.

before you scrap the macs, you may want to see if they work. You may be better off selling them on Ebay

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Originally Posted by missmargaret

Wow! thanks for all the great info. Looks like the boards I have are SOO low grade, they don't even have anything like those on them that i recognize from the google link provided above. I will double check them though. So far what I have are all out of dvd players, remotes, phones, satelitte receivers and power cord ends I have 3 tvs to breakdown, and 2 vintage Mac Classics complete with mouse, keyboards & 1 apple printer.

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Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

they are extrusion. Dont pull them from from motherboards and stuff thaugh cause you dont want to get paid 60 cents a pound for them when you can get paid $4.

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Darn it I always pull of the heatsinks

Things have changed since this thread started. Now my buyer requires heat sinks to be removed from mobo's

It's good that you are reading the old posts but much has changed in the ewaste scrap. Keep reading it will pay off. Mike

Yah my buyer has made that same change. No more heat sinks on the mobos. Total pain.

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Originally Posted by eesakiwi

Theres other copper heatsinks in some TV's & they & the small transformers & the ferrite trannys all get picked out at the same time.
The ferrite trannys are plastic coated, looks like a capactor, but differing diameters under the plastic, they pick off easyly, grab with a plier & snap the ferrite tower inside it & that exposes the copper wire, some of the wire has a fine cloth coating.

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Just so you know: The word "tranny" has a different meaning in some places.

Also, those are not transformers but inductors. And I have never seen a copper heatsink in a TV.

Sometimes the pins don't come off, but snap in two. I set them to one side and either work on them later or take them in as is. I don't bring in two different categories of aluminum in one trip.