Guys,

I recently was doing some extensive cleaning out of my basement and garages and ran into an interesting situation. My two sons who are now grown and gone had left a massive clutter in the basement and garage area and I got tired of the accumulation beginning to look like Hoarders so I got busy on it.

There was an old wide screen projection TV that they ruined playing video games on it as well as an old picture tube 32 inch and an LCD 36 inch that my youngest son had picked up from a neighbor who replaced it due to some problem with it. The TV shop wanted an outragous 95 dollars to evaluate it and told him typical repair was 200. I told him it wasn't worth that so he dumped it here as well.

The trash truck did not want to take the projection unit cause the guy couldn't get it by himself at 4AM. So I decided I would deconstruct it to get rid of it easier. I had seen a show on Green Recycling where various places were setting up deconstruction sites to keep this kind of junk from going to landfills.

As I was getting into the deconstruction process, I realized that there were some really large components with huge copper windings and had just seen a circular for a scrap yard with copper at 2.50 a pound. There were coils and torroids and transformers nd filters and large aluminum heat sinks as well as a fair amount of wiring plus multiple steel panels and frame pieces.

So I set up a work area in my outdoor BBQ Pavillion with a work bench, bar stool, Sony Explosion Boom Box. cold beer, cordless drill, 36 inch pry bar, screw drivers, wire cutters, channel lock pliers, lineman pliers, hammer and hatchet and proceed to totally deconstruct those three TV's.

I set up buckets and segregated the materials into pure copper, aluminum, steel, insulated wire, and misc. and was impressed with how much I was able to reclaim from just those three TV's. Plus, now what's left will fit into a large trashbag.

Does anyone know if the ferrite cores can be scrapped or not. I may just throw those away.

I also have a few small fans and various other items that i may deconstuct to reclaim the copper from their motors. I got to thinking, if I can pick up some discarded auto starters, generator/alternators or stuff like that would also yeild a fair amount of copper. Seems like I see quite a few TV's and similar items sitting out curbside for pickup.

I may get into this form of copper mining thru deconstruction of scrapped items.

Just cleaning up around here, i am going to see just how much stuff I can deconstuct like that to use the additional funds on the upkeep of the Discovery.

 

Best Buy will give you a $10 gift card if you recycle your old tv with them.

As for the pieces parts you already took out, anything metal take it to the scrape yard.
If you really want to get a load of cooper Google foreclosed homes in your area, if they are vacant...(ok, thats a joke)

 

I am amazed at the amount of pure copper and the pure aluminum heat sinks I have collect already. There are very large torroids, filters, and various other items in there that are relatively easy to bust up and retrieve the copper.

Some of the transformer coils are pretty hefty as well and they bust up really easy using large vice grip brand adjustable pliers like a nutcracker on a walnut. I pulled a few feet of copper windings from each one and just wrapped each piece around the other large hunks. I got a few baseball size gobs of pure copper windings already and its fun as well as stress releiving. Listening to counrty rock and bust up stuff while drinking beer sitting in the warm sunshine.

Like that one new country song goes: I ain't much for working up a sweat, not inclined to climb a pole or digging a ditch, but I'm pretty good at drinking beer................ That's what I am here for.............

I noticed one of the really large circuit boards from the LCD TV I stripped down has a significant amount of gold visible on it. I realize it is only microns thick, but as much as I can see, I am wondering what is a good way to retrieve that. Since gold is so high per ounce, the wheels are turning..........

I saw one documentary where this guy set up a recycling center specifically to recycle TV's, computers, and such since they are being thrown away by the ton daily. He had a setup where they used air powered chisels and just chopped all the components right off the boards, put the bare boards thru a shredder and fed it all into a small furnace where everything was melted down to the pure raw metals.

I don't want to get to exotic, but the stuff was just laying around and I need to toss it out. The trash guys don't like to take large heavy items, so I figure I will bust everything down, salvage the copper and aluminum into separate containers. There is also a fair amount of steel pieces as well. I got a couple of PC's to do as well.

I will see how much it turns out to be and go from there. I know one familay that owns an applicance and TV store, I may check and see what they do with their bad ones.

If it turns out to be profitable, I may use that as a source of income to supplement my Social Security and pension from Boeing.

They catch quite a few copper theifs around here every week or two it's on the news.

But there are a lot of deserted steel mills and other old industrial site. I would love to get some contracts salvaging some of the stuff they left laying around. I went to Westinghouse Air Brake Company (WABCO) one time when they were advertising for Quality professionals. It looked like a scene from Mad Max with all the debris and junk littering the alleyways and deserted parking lots and buildings from 1890 or so. That was George Westinghouse very first factory in the Pittsburgh area.

 

When I worked at Safety Kleen one of the things we did was recycle used electronics, big money in it.
They take them and grind them up and recover the metals to be melted down and sold.
We also recycled the silver from photo developing machines, I had a customer that made air craft stuff and they used x-rays to examine the parts.
Recycled medical x-rays too.
There are places people can take their old tv's and computer monitors and vcr's and dvd players etc. for free to get recycled.
All of that gold, silver, mercury all goes into the landfill otherwise. Same thing with old cell phones.
All that stuff has precious metals and heavy metals in them.

 

So is there an easy way to reclaim the gold from the circuit boards?

One large ground loop alone yeilded several feet of hefty diameter copper wire once i cut away the black tape overwrap, I was surprised. Makes me want to tear down a couple of old PC's I have in the closet.