ITT: People who find unwanted electronics, working or not, rebuild them or harvest their organs.
What I'd like to see: Stories (I found a $10,000 X that just needed a new power cord.), and tips (Junk microwaves can be disassembled for a free HV transformer.) (You can find Y for free, but it just isn't worth it for Z reason.)
Bonus level: State what you do with the parts.
I'll start. I like to desolder PCB's. It's a decent source for common and sometimes not so common components.
>>956960
>>956961
well
/thread
>>956961
>i collect loads of stuff and don't do anything with it
this will be the same as every other 'recycling' i.e it will become hoarding: the thread then someone will post rps
this thread is bad op and you should feel bad
>>956960
Washing machine found near the bin while i was moveing had a rotary switch that needed a bit of a cleaning and now it works fine.
Found a cheap electric guitar knockoff, sanded it down. re painted the body. Sanded down the neck and gave it a decent cleaning, adjusted truss rod.Checked and cleaned up the bothed wireing .Put on a decent pair of stings sold it for about 150 euros.
Found an old UPS, Fried chips, not worth the effort. Regenerated the battery sold it off. De soldered the relays to make a remote contorlled light switch with an atmel chip.
Found old ratio. Took speakers and transisotrs out, made a little guitar amplifier. Put it in a wood box and run it with batteries. Sold it off for a pretty penny.
Found a sewing machine. Atached a drill cuck to the motor. I now use it as a coil winding machine. Use a spring and a calculator glued on to count the number of turns.
>>956966
>Found a sewing machine. Atached a drill cuck to the motor. I now use it as a coil winding machine. Use a spring and a calculator glued on to count the number of turns.
Are you Jesus???? That's fucking brilliant. Can you post pics please?
Know a guy who got a toaster oven off Craigslist and turned it into to a reflow oven.
>>956965
...My dad can beat up your dad.
>>956974
Phones curenly wired up to serve as a security cam. I think one of the neighbout kids keeps denting my car. So cant take pics untill i get my hands on my gfs phone, or get enough evidance to demand money form his deadbeat dad.
Took the motor off and atacked it to a plank of wood. It alredy had mounding praces on it so i just used those. It also had the speed contorll pedal thing witch was reportedly broken. Swaped the cable and it worked fine.
I just used a bolt adapter to screw in the drill cuck to the motor shaft. Put a pen spring on the side of it and slid a calculator under it. One of those chenese ones with big numbers. Set it to +1. While the chuck spins it hits = and it counts the number of turns. I put a steel saft in the cuck and use bushings with screws to hold the coil core in place.
Added a nother steel saft to hold the spool of wire.
I mostly hand wind because it makes me feel zen, but you could add a belt drive so it spins the spool at a decent rate and a guide on a screw rod to fully automate the process.
>>956982
Nice! I repurposed an old clothes press machine once to wind the secondary of a Tesla coil. Not as elaborate as yours.
>>956966
Can you give me more information about regeneration of ups batteries?
I did a dumb thing and turned a broken bluetooth headset into a bluetooth receiver with a headphone out, with the battery still in it. Didn't have to change any components, but had to wire it to a headphone port, remove broken buttons, etc.
I took apart an old cash register once. Lots of big components, though obviously low quality.
Air ionizers have high-voltage transformers and circuits. I think unfortunately the one I have had the wires ripped out, but it's an entire circuit just embedded in a block of black rubbery looking plastic.
Generally speaking, a lot of scrap stuff can be ignored: small caps are super cheap, resistors are piss cheap (for low wattage at least), LEDs can be bought for like $2 for 100 bright ones. Powertrench logic-level mosfets are almost universally better than transistors for switching purposes. Only exceptions being low switching voltage and low power. The LM317 or MC34063 can be used for power conversion pretty easily.
Ironically switches and ports are the most difficult things to have in surplus, but you can get them from a lot of places.
I love desoldering and seeing what chips are in shit and stuff (like finding a 16-bit microcontroller in an e-cig surprised me), but it's not really worth it except for the motors, switches, etc. Big things. Literally I've spent more money on "external" bits, like screw terminals, banana plugs, switches, headphone jacks, power jacks, etc, than normal components. Potentiometers are pretty cool too, they make little blue ones with 1/2W ratings and 25 turns total, so they're ultraprecise.
>>957361
They usualy just dry up. So you just pop it open with a scalpel and add some destiled water. Sometimes you might need to add a very very small amount of battery aicd just so it will start to carry a charge. Once you do this you hook it up to a battery charger at a very low curent, still open so it wont build up gas inside it. The gas is hydrogen or sulphate oxyde, nothing too toxic but just dont do it in a bathroom. after it build up to around 12ish volts you can seal it back up. It sould carry around 12.5+ volts to be fully funcional inside a UPS, the rest will be fixed by the unit.
>>956965
there is nothing wrong with hoarding
Bummer, i thought this was a thread on profiting from selling junk parts (low grade boards, motors, etc.) to scrap yards.
>>957493
Neah no one will buy it off you these days. I even have to have a proof of origin for selling scrap iron from my shop. Damn gypsies keep stealing manhole covers, diging up power lines. casue 3000$ worth of damadge to get 30$. I'm all for reducing waste and recicling, but this is a real problem.
And even if you find a yard taht will buy your unknown origin scrap it's a front for something shady.
Iron, and steal is dirt cheap even new.
Copper is worth a few bucks but only if you have more than 5kg. These is this one electritian i know who keeps old wires from rewireing jobs. Burns of the insulation and is left wit hpure copper. He sais that the best way to sell copper is in packs of around 5 kg. If you sell less they try to rip you off saying they dont usualy buy sutch small stock. And if you sell more than that they try to haggle you since they are tehnicaly buying in bulk.
Scrap yards are like pawn shops they live off scaming you.
any board made post 1980 is not worth the the effort of takeing it out. There is not enough gold in the conectors to make it worth extracting. And the components in it are questionable and new ones are dirt cheap and availabe eveywhere. Transformesrs are a bit harder to get. They are quite heavy, so shipping costs more than the part. So i cosider them worth salvageing. Morots too, if you can thing of an aplication for them, they are alwasy fun to have around. But a scrap yard wont buy it off you unless its something the ycan make a buck off. So far the most profitable thing to sell are car and motorcicle parts. They can make a buck on these since some parts are no longer made new, and with a bit of cleaning can look as if they just came out of new old stock.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
Not about electronics, but somewhat related to this thread.
Someone recently gave me an older UPS. It's probably no good. Is there anything worth scavenging inside of it? Are there any safety concerns?
>>957748
Well a few gate mosfets, bout 3 relay switches, some conectors, depending on how old it is, a big beafy transformer from mians to 12 and back again widnings. The batery might be salvagable if you have a way to charge it or regenerate it.
It's pretty safe if you leave it unpluged and disconect the battery for a few days, The Battery dose have acid in it, but just treate it like a car battery and dont be retarded. It also has some big caps but these discharge over a few hours.
>>958060
Thanks!
>>957748
Replace the batteries and sell it. The batteries go out on UPSs before the simple circuit parts do.
>>956965
Someone make a /diy/ version with extra corrugated steel, containers, palettes and crabmeat
>>956965
Didn't you read the man's name? "not a hoarder"
I go dumpster diving once in a bluemoon. I take what I can use or use later.
Shit I found so far
Old AMD Desktop. Took the IDE and SATA hard drives out of it, fans, PSU, the DDR RAM and AGP Video Card. The RAM and AGP card I just took for decoration. The rest is sitting by for spares for older machines I jack around with.
A Clean Lenovo ThinkCentre with a dual core AMD CPU, 4GB DDR2, 80GB SATA HDD, onboard ATI Graphics, and DVD-RW. With Vista Business and 7 Pro Keys on the side. Had a dead PSU in it which I swapped out. Using it just for a second desktop and testing parts/operating systems. I live in an apartment behind a strip mall. They are doing remodeling to a few of the spaces and tossing out crap like there is no tomorrow into the dumpsters. Seeing a lot of business related crap being tossed out.
Also found some business security systems in the dumpster. I took 5 out of, fuck i dunno, 8, that was tossed out by a company. They are in metal boxes that mount to the wall also some of them had new boards in them. Also took a lot of electronic parts that went with them such as bags of resistors.
>>958130
they need to be sitting inside a shipping container
>>956961
That's some good advice but what do you do with all that stuff once you have it?
Seriously, I want to know what someone can build with a bunch of motors from a copy machine, a power switch from a hairdryer and the moisture meter from a humidifier.
TELL ME PLS. THX.
>>961852
Make a dehydrator and make jerky.
Use the motors for the shelf to increase/decrease the distance from the hair dryer and use the moisture meter to detect the moisture levels?
>>961852
The most accurate answer is whatever you want. I just salvaged a speaker out of a broken PSP to use as a buzzer in a frequency adjusting circuit. Heatsinks are easy to find and easy to reuse. So are voltage regulators. Not everything has a use. If you won't use it, don't hold on to it.
>>961852
Printer motors and smooth rods are commonly used in homemade 3d printers/CNC machines.
>>956961
I made this picture. So glad to see it circulating around /diy/ and that it's being put to good use.
>>963600
So what type of stuff have you made with the components that you've salvaged, then?
smartphones are worth salvaging. Some can be fixed and sold. It is also possible to run linux on smartphones with a broken screen and use them as headless servers.
Oh and they have battery and wifi so maybe you can do fun pen-testing stuff with them
Ive scavanged for several years. Ive made several cnc lazer cutters from junk, with junkspec results. Ive currently sourced a 15W lazer diode, and bought a few cnc bits (breakput board etc) which will go with rods servos steppers power supplies encoders and more to make a multi head lazer burner/cutter/engraver with a dremel as a secondary tool. It will also have a stapler head simply because it was in the photocopier and i find it amusing.
All this for arond $40 of new parts (incl laser), the rest from scavange.
>>964622
i have tons off phones and would love healess servers , explain more please
>>965747
Theres an app called full linux install if you have a rooted phone, you can instal linux on the memory card. Use ssh to get in to it, and then use it as you would a linux machine. I've got one i used as a security camera. But if you get creative your might have more fun than me.
I sometimes use the harvested components I have laying around to create random things.
This is a capacitor charger that I've just made with a big inductor and a 1500 volt transistor from an old TV.
This is only the top and high voltage board, the driver and charge control goes under it.
This is how it looks below, thick traces with solder on top. Epoxy has been used on the capacitor traces to avoid hundreds of joules blowing the thing up.
Here's my latest, funnest trash pick, a 2200 VA 48 V UPS. Currently working on a way around some stupid proprietary communication stuff in it.
UPSes in general are a great source of transformers for lab power supplies, etc. It's usually a shame to scrap them though, since they tend to be discarded for no reason other than bad batteries.
>>965898
>>965899
I like this device.
where do you guys go dumpster diving?
Sometimes people leave old TV's here (the fucking huge ones). I don't have a TV license but I like to open them and just look at them.
>>966485
Outside of big box chains is a good bet
>>965899
>this thick
Is that plumber's solder?
>>966485
I wonder this as well. You can find some detailed posts on reddit where people describe exactly where they like to do it and why which is useful, but I'm still curious about people in this thread.
>>966485
>>966967
I tend to just ask around IT related companies if they have any old crap to spare for a hobbyist. Push on until you get to an IT guy and you're likely to get pallets full of whatever your heart desires. Pic related.
>>967328
Can confirm, I have friends that work IT. They can land me just about whatever I want as long as it's not current gen, and doesn't contain personal info (HDDs).
>>966475
You don't happen to own a youtube channel and live in finland, do you? Cause this looks familiar...
>>967850
Nah.
>>966475
FFcossag??? :O
Hmm okay.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_-S-4Paa9ve6U8-L3xaTwg
>>967858
Looks to be him. Interesting to find him on 4chan though.
>>967858
>>967859
>>967862
COMMENT LIKE SUBSCRIBE
I'm surprised anyone outside of 4chan would know about me.
(Pictured is a heap of stuff I pulled out of a scrapped radio transmitter)
>>967868
Cool! Where the radio room is located?
>>967877
The gear came out of a national transmission site, it's stuff out of a whole heap of antiquated gear, so I suppose the radio rooms would be spread out all over the country.
>>967868
>COMMENT LIKE SUBSCRIBE
no. fuck off with that shit. I really hope you were saying that ironically.
>I'm surprised anyone outside of 4chan would know about me.
You are on 4chan. Nothing implies that someone outside of 4chan knows of you. What is the source of your surprise?
did you mean you would be surprised if someone outside of 4chan knew you?
>>967917
Of course I'm being ironic. Chill out, man.
>What is the source of your surprise?
That was in response to the guy who was surprised to find me here. The channel actually started on 4chan, which is why it's fun to see people finding it through other means.
>>967924
sorry, when I see what the internet turned into I get a bit.. angry I guess youd call it.
What other means did he find you through?
what is that pic, video converter? cant believe I never thought to duct tap crap to the back of my monitor.
I desoldered dumpster dived boards all through high school. Lost its charm after I went to uni, eventually used the 1000s of 1/4 watt resistors to make some interesting sculptures, and I still have all the other component in my junk bins waiting to be trashed some day. Got my BSEE and now I don't do much that isn't SMT.
>>967980
It's just a KVM switch, nothing fancy. Ancient picture, all trash picked.
>>967980
>sorry, when I see what the internet turned into I get a bit.. angry I guess youd call it.
Yet you come here ?
All I do is buy old semi-working laptops and resell them. I bought an old HP dv series that had bad RAM for $40. I replaced the 512MB stick for 2GB stick, changed Vista to W10 and gave it a good clean inside (new thermal paste, clean fan, remove as much dust etc.). Also cleaned the outside (polished the lid, removed old stickers, cleaned keyboard). Sold it for $100. $60 profit minus $10 in parts and 3 hours of my time, comes to roughly $16/hr of work. Not bad. The key is to look on Craigslist, every once in a blue moon you'll find some retard who will sell his PC dirt cheap becuase it stopped working and it usually will be something simple to fix.
