T.V. and Monitor Scrapping Guide

Okay, so after many posts about T.V's and Monitors all asking the mostly same thing, I thought it would be useful to make a one-stop guide for T.V's and Monitors (CRT Variety). So lets begin!

So your cruising the streets of the burbs and you come across a T.V. or Monitor and you pick it up. You get home and you unscrew the back. These screws are either Phillips head or a socket head. You find out for yourself which is on the particular T.V. you have acquired. Next you are looking at the back of a backless T.V.

Next, after you discharge the flyback transformer (see later in the thread to see what this is) you are free to start clipping wires and taking off the Yolk. The Yolk is often help on with two clamps around the neck on the glass tube, and are easy to remove. There is no need to break the glass unless you want to feel like the Hulk smashing a piece of Leaded glass of the back.

Next, you will be left with five or six components. We will go in order from the most valuable to the least.

You have the Yolk, which is a piece of Ferrite ( This is the ceramic, iron stuff that the copper is wrapped around, you can toss it in with your steel bucket.) with copper wrapped around it. Some of the copper looks like this:

To get the copper out, take a hammer to it. To make clean-up a little easier, you can put them in a junk towel or old t-shirt to keep plastic from flying all over your garage. Then just pick out the pieces of copper and you made your money off the yolk. There is maybe 1/8th to 1/2 a pound in the yolk. Don't quote me on those numbers as every T.V. or monitor is different.

Next we have the degaussing cable, which is a large piece of stranded wire, wrapped in electrical tape, zip tied around the glass. Once you unwrap the tape, you are left with a large hand full of either copper or aluminum. It looks like this:

The aluminum ones can sometimes be green, red, purple, or even the color of copper. (the copper ones are almost always copper colored) To check if you have copper or aluminum, you can scrape the side of the wire, or you can cut into it. The aluminum ones will be silver on the inside, while the copper ones will be a red or orange on the inside.

As you can see, this one is copper because of the red/orange color indicating that it is made of copper.

Next, we have the low grade board, they will always be low grade no matter the color. There will be a couple transformers, possibly some aluminum heatsinks, and some I.C. chips. To get the transformers off, you can put your foot on the board and knock them off with a hammer, or break the board. Same with the aluminum, which you can put in your dirty aluminum bin.

These are a couple fully stripped low grade boards. There is nothing on these that I want. You can sell these at your scrap yard for tin price, or sold separately.

Next, we have the flyback and transformers. You can sell these as motors, or transformers, of copper bearing, or copper breakage, etc etc. Do not even try to get the copper out of either the flyback or the transformers. It is WAY to hard and you will be wasting your time.

The flyback is on the left, and the other kinds of transformers are on the center and right. These go for about .20-.30 cents a pound.

Next, you have all of your wire that you tediously clipped off of the board. Now, you can go crazy and strip these if you want, or you can sell the wires and cord as is.

Now, if you have and older T.V., you might have an antennae on the back, which is brass even though it looks silver. Scratch it, and it will be yellow under the nickel plating. There also might be a gear box tuner thingy inside, which you can toss in your tin. It is not worth your time.

This is the antennae. It will be brass.
IMG_0070 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Follow this link to my Flickr to view the tuner. As you can see, it is mostly tin.

Next you are left with a large piece of leaded glass that needs to be disposed of properly. Here is a list of places you can take the glass, or you can just put it with your trash. (I don't like throwing them away so I take them to Goodwill, but thats just me)

Computer Equipment Recycling with Reconnect Dell takes electronic waste from Goodwill for free.
Universal Recycling Technologies URT recycles CRT glass.
Dlubak Glass - Glass Recycling at its best!
Regency Technologies – IT Scrap - CRT Glass Separation

Next you also have all of the ABS plastic, which can be fully recycled. You can put it in your recycle bin for the city, take it to your recycling center, or take it to a plastic recycler. You will have to research this yourself as there are not really any national chains that I know of. I use Omni Resource Recovery, which takes my plastics for free. I have contacts inside the company ( Big wigs) who let me drop stuff off for free, but it may be different for other people.

Monitors are mostly the same, they just have an extra low grade board and some extra steel inside.

Now after you have scrapped a few of these and you have cashed out, you can feel like a true Tennanaire and look like this guy.



I hope this helps improve the forum and cuts back on some T.V. and Monitor questions. Thank you for reading this long and winding post, and if this could be a sticky, that would be awesome! -Gravitar

Already been done but they don't read that one either, they just want to ask the same questions over and over.
Other than that, good job. http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/elect...g-monitor.html
Also to add that on a mechanical channel changer (clicky style) there usually is silver or gold plated contacts in them

Originally Posted by happyscraper

You missed a nice piece of copper. It's a braided silver wire that go's around the tube, has two springs on it and it's connected to the four corners of the tube. Scrap this wire and you'll see that it is copper.

Oops, missed that one. I've always tossed it in my stainless.

Nice job Gravitar. After yesterday's spirited discussion hopefully tv's and monitors are put to bed...lol