Comments on: How to Sort and Store Salvaged Electronic Parts

By: Keith Neufeld

Keith Neufeld — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:58:36 +0000

Scott, do whatever works for you. I’ve desoldered with a soldering iron before, but it was for me tremendously slow and tedious compared to the heat gun approach.

Either way, I do recommend lifting the crimped leads with a cheap chisel before desoldering. Saves a huge amount of time.

By: scott

scott — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:35:43 +0000

I’m really glad I stumbled across your post. I’m trying to save money on components so I can build simple electronics projects. I have a bunch of old electronics laying around waiting to be salvaged. Can I use my soldering iron instead of the heat gun?

By: Keith Neufeld

Keith Neufeld — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:10:57 +0000

Jeremy, I put out a box of stripped PCBs on the curb with a “Copper recycling?” sign on them, and the local recycling company did take them. So my guess is you should be able to get them recycled, especially if you separate them from other materials; and if all else fails, you should be able to drop them at a computer recycling center.

By: Jeremy Garber

Jeremy Garber — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:37:26 +0000

Need a source for equipment to salvage? Less than a week ago I put an ad on Craig’s List requesting old and/or broken electronic gear to salvage parts for my new hobby. I immediately received three replies. Two had TVs, which I opted not to pick up since my storage space is limited and I don’t want to be messing with the CRTs. Then there was the third guy, who had a rather large collection of old PCs (one Mac) and printers. I’ve picked up one load already, filling my Trailblazer. I’m taking the monitors to my favorite local PC repair shop for credit towards trade items. They’re good about that. The guy called me from work yesterday and told me his office was upgrading all of their PCs, so he has a bunch of ‘better’ ones he’d like to give me. So, not only do I have a large pile of crap to dismantle now, I may be giving my wife and a few friends some new PCs.

The printers have given me stepper motors and gears, LCDs, as well as little button switches. The PCs are good for connectors and the power supplies are great for AC power plugs and more hookup wire than you will ever need. Lots of other common components in there I can’t wait to breadboard with. There are lots of ICs too, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to use them if they are too job specific. I’ll have to look up data sheets for them.

I noticed after I made my post to Craig’s List, someone else had done the same thing, only spamming the whole board with his all caps and poor grammar. So I guess it was a good idea. After I finish pulling and sorting parts, I’ll make another post. Also, I’m very interested in recycling the left over cases so hopefully I’m helping in some way in preventing electronic waste from hitting the local dump.

Any way to recycle the left over PCBs? Can it extract the copper and make copper bars? hahah

By: Matthew Pare

Matthew Pare — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:38:21 +0000

For smaller components and those smaller ones that you have multiple and/or many of, you can use index card/recipe boxes with cards and ziplock bags. So say for resistors you could place the value on the tab in whatever order you like. You can even make each side of the card a different value. If you can’t find bags that fit right, you can simply take a sewing machine and stitch the bags to the card, this also helps if you decide to use each side for a different value. Works great for most capacitors, resistors and various smt.

Cheers,
-mpare

By: Keith Neufeld

Keith Neufeld — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:24:22 +0000

Mayank -- the parts bins are Akro-Mils 44-drawer cabinet #10744 and 64-drawer cabinet #10764. I bought the blue one at Wal-Mart (although they no longer carry them) and the red one at Target (who I think still carries it, although I can't find it in their online store).

By: Mayank

Mayank — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:30:57 +0000

Great article Keith!

I (like most of us) have lots of old boards, non working electronic equipment on the rack – waiting for parts to be salvaged. Your article has inspired me to finally get organized instead of wasting hours looking for the elusive component on one of the boards.

Quick question – where did you source the blue & red (wire?) shelving? And the plastic boxes?

Thanks
Mayank

By: russ_hensel

russ_hensel — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 15:35:44 +0000

Very nice, a topic dear to my heart. I have added to the links at: http://www.opencircuits.com/Free_From_Salvage and also see: http://www.opencircuits.com/Salvage_Ideas . This is a fairly new Wiki, we are looking for other contributers, perhaps those who have something to say but would do not want a whole website. If they have a website, they may want to use this for links into it.

Not my web site, but one I contribute to ( http://www.opencircuits.com ).

By: Keith Neufeld

Keith Neufeld — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:13:29 +0000

James — you don’t need a good heat gun. In fact, I wouldn’t want to waste a good heat gun running it as long and as often as it takes for salvaging components. I have a $14 Harbor Freight special, and I consider it a consumable item — I’ll replace it as often as I need to.

Good luck with that $3 chisel!

By: James Stoffel

James Stoffel — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:17:20 +0000

Great article – especially when you show the “gold mine” of sorted parts. This is what I do too, though I don’t have a good heat gun…have to upgrade. And I like the thought of the $3 chisel – I’ll be picking one up this weekend at my local “Ocean State Job Lot”.