What is the black stand off component connecting Al heat sink to circuit board and Ag

[tenke]

The best that I can find so far are that the things that are screwed to aluminum heat sinks that stand off of the circuit board are called power resistors. Well, today that I discovered that they contain a copper core if you crush them with a hammer. But... I see a shiny silver coating that looks like it might be actually silver (Ag).

Are they power resistors?

Is the copper silver plated?

Thanks, my first post!



Cheers,
kbe

[tski72]

Good day Tenke. just as a friendly suggestion, you should post an intro to the forum here, https://www.scrapmetalforum.com/introduce-yourself/ and this way we can get to know you and what you do in the scrapping word.

To answer your question, I believe those are just copper bearing and its not silver, it might be a silver based soldier but its not pure silver. If you read the old posts, you will get even more familiar with the stuff inside e-waste that will answer a lot of questions that you might have. I used to remove them and collect them up but that little T8 screw just did not want to come out all the time.

Happy scrapping

[eesakiwi]

This thing (cut open)


Better pic of a flat can sort to indicate the Silver wires.


I save them up, a 8 gallon bucket full now...Will probably get dirty Copper or Transformers price for them.
They come from power supply boards and such as I cannot store or sell them.
You can find larger flatter ones with 4 wire legs on them, mostly they are bridge rectifiers for converting AC to DC. Same things inside them, just more of it..

The Silver wires not worth saving up. Even the Coppers probably worth about 1 cent and less. The Copper refiners will regain the Silver in the end, no huge profit in it, just a little more Silver. I'm not sure what happens to the other (toxic!) metals in it when refining.

If you wanted to get some Silver though, I would try getting it from the Audio amp 'Sanken' power units from old home stereo systems, I scrap them for the transformer Copper and sometimes get a good size Ali ex heatsink too.

Its still not even worth your time to pick the silver out of those amps though, I did a bunch of them once to see what the return was.
Proudly posted it here.

And got told I'd processed 32 cents worth of Silver. Lol

[msmoorad]

ive got a plastic biscuit container of them....i am saving them just for the copperno point in trying to recover tiny amounts of silver etc...its just not worth it