Why you should strip Power Supplies

Very true. And I have a strong...dislike..lets say, for China. I make it a point not to deal with scrap yards or people with end processing in China. If they can't tell me where their scrap goes then I don't want to deal with them. We did 330 PSUs last night and today, as well as tower dismantling. I'm very tired and the one thing I can tell you, beyond ANYTHING else...DO NOT USE A ANGLE GRINDER! The dust includes lead and a few other trace things you don't want to breath. I personally want to live a long useful life that benefits my kids and grandkids.

Especially don't use angle grinder in living room. lol Maybe you missed outdoors with a fan blowing dust and fumes away! I plan on living a long life as well, no middle something here and told recently by my MD "don't know what your doing but keep it up! Don't recommend breathing any kind of dust or fumes. Plan your work and work your plan. Smarter not harder, starting with continue to learn as you work my friend. Seriously outdoors with a fan is taking health concerns very serious and wouldn't do it any other way so far. I do keep an open mind about various techniques. When all your going to take is 1 to 3 items from a PCB, my prefered method is Mechanic's and others chisel method. Even that method has it's risk if careless. I haven't tried the "sand bath method", but plan to do so, just working out some of my safety concerns with that setup. I have tried de-soldering indoors, shop with a vent hood. Found fumes to be overwhelming when doing a lot of low level boards. If I had a down draft table that is the method I would prefer. How exactly do you remove the transistors and IC's doing as many as you do? You can't honestly be cutting them at the rate you quoted, can you? If so your the best. lol

Interesting thread- thanks all- but I do have a totally lame, naive question... You folks are mostly talking about PC PSUs, not server PSUs, right? The last I checked, my local yard buys your standard desktop tower PSU for $0.15/lb (same as electrical motors) and after doing a little math I've been satisfied with that (though only after clipping off the occasional gold connector first). I ask because I recently "invested" in a stack of HP DL360 and DL380 servers (2002 to 2004) that I've been disassembling and wondering about which parts might be worth re-selling- the PSUs seem like an obvious choice. There aren't a ton of sales on eBay, but even getting a couple bucks per unit might be worth it. For example, I have an HP model PS-3381-1C1 400W PSU pulled from an HP Proliant DL380 sitting in front of me. It clocks in at 3.75 lbs, or $0.56 at my local yard (minus the lovely gold fingers, of course). I'd be willing to spend 15 minutes listing it if I could net even a couple bucks per rather than four bits- this is sane, no?

I can plug these things in and see if the fan comes on, but do I *really* need to plug them into their DC converter and test the various outputs before I can think about selling them? I know, it's probably easy and fast if you have the equipment and technique down (and would be great to claim on eBay), but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Trying hard to overcome my ignorance...

cheers,
tbg

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Originally Posted by bigburtchino

You can't honestly be cutting them at the rate you quoted, can you? If so your the best. lol

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I agree 330 is a lot for 1 day. But I also am leary of using a grinder, even in a ventilated area. I prefer the (wear thick leather gloves) smash and grab method.

All of us, 4 people. Not by myself guys, that would be a record for sure. I can do about a 100 by myself in a day before I don't want to look at them anymore.

I've got about 400 to work on now, and another 800 coming in a month. Hope its worth it!

Agree, When I get my machines I plug them in, fire them up, and if they start, I sell what is marketable on ebay, the rest goes to scrap. Once you have a template, if it take you more than a minuet to post a power supply you're goofing off. Compared to breakdown time, it's no contest; if it doesn't sell you can still scrap it.

I have put the use of angle grinder on a "STOP ORDER". As I'm concerned about environmental impact. Any kind of environmental hazard is health hazard as far as I'm concerned. My method more than protected me from the dust. It's just plain stupid for anybody to inhale any dust while working. I took a hard look at the whole practice of PCB recycling and there are some serious dust concerns no matter what method is used. The dust generated from use of angle grinder is considerable amount. Although I was not breathing any of this dust. The dust was going somewhere, that somewhere was my property. So not a good practice, the dust is mostly made up of Glass Reinforced Polymer. Let's call it fiberglass for simplicity purposes, the fiberglass dust is 90 to 95% of dust generated. The other 10 to 5% content is the rally bad stuff! PBDE (Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether) is a flame retardant that has been banned since 2007. The problem is a lot of the PCB's that we are working with are pre-2007 (most). PBDE is one of the most toxic substance you can expose a body too! It is not just generated from grinding, any heating of the PCB can generate PBDE residue (WHY IT IS NOW BANNED BY EPA). The two other heavy metal toxins are Cadmium and Lead, I think most know of these carcinogens. Just wanted to let every one know I will not be grinding as a depopulating method.

Good man, and commendable.

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Originally Posted by thebugguy

Interesting thread- thanks all- but I do have a totally lame, naive question... You folks are mostly talking about PC PSUs, not server PSUs, right? The last I checked, my local yard buys your standard desktop tower PSU for $0.15/lb (same as electrical motors) and after doing a little math I've been satisfied with that (though only after clipping off the occasional gold connector first). I ask because I recently "invested" in a stack of HP DL360 and DL380 servers (2002 to 2004) that I've been disassembling and wondering about which parts might be worth re-selling- the PSUs seem like an obvious choice. There aren't a ton of sales on eBay, but even getting a couple bucks per unit might be worth it. For example, I have an HP model PS-3381-1C1 400W PSU pulled from an HP Proliant DL380 sitting in front of me. It clocks in at 3.75 lbs, or $0.56 at my local yard (minus the lovely gold fingers, of course). I'd be willing to spend 15 minutes listing it if I could net even a couple bucks per rather than four bits- this is sane, no?

I can plug these things in and see if the fan comes on, but do I *really* need to plug them into their DC converter and test the various outputs before I can think about selling them? I know, it's probably easy and fast if you have the equipment and technique down (and would be great to claim on eBay), but I don't see that happening any time soon.

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TBG, these are the hot-swappable PSUs, right? Do they have a PCB connector that plugs into a DC/DC converter?

The PSUs in the Proliant DL360/DL380 series are actually pretty popular. "R/C" enthusiasts (people who are into radio-controlled model planes, robots, etc.) modify them and use them as power supplies for their battery chargers. They're also one of the ham radio crowd's favorite PSUs. In fact, if you decide to list yours on eBay, you might want to include "R/C" and "radio" in your title so that your listings turn up in searches on those terms.

These are switch-mode PSUs, and to get them to turn on you have to jumper some of the pins. I probably have the pinout in my files here in my computer -- just let me know the exact model(s) you have. If you have a lot of them and want to try testing voltage on all the rails, we can probably rig up something to perform a simple test.

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Originally Posted by FLimits

TBG, these are the hot-swappable PSUs, right? Do they have a PCB connector that plugs into a DC/DC converter?

The PSUs in the Proliant DL360/DL380 series are actually pretty popular. "R/C" enthusiasts (people who are into radio-controlled model planes, robots, etc.) modify them and use them as power supplies for their battery chargers. They're also one of the ham radio crowd's favorite PSUs. In fact, if you decide to list yours on eBay, you might want to include "R/C" and "radio" in your title so that your listings turn up in searches on those terms.

These are switch-mode PSUs, and to get them to turn on you have to jumper some of the pins. I probably have the pinout in my files here in my computer -- just let me know the exact model(s) you have. If you have a lot of them and want to try testing voltage on all the rails, we can probably rig up something to perform a simple test.

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I've mentioned that before, but nobody caught on it seemed.

I have 6 of them tucked on a shelf, can't bare to scrap them. Gave one a buddy to wire up for his R/C charger. I should probably ask him if it worked. I got free beers for it too :D

Flimits-

Ok, so I have to ask- is your handle referring to the mathematical concept of the limit of a function?

Yes, these plug into DC converters (which I've also saved) via gold finger connectors. I briefly looked at a couple threads detailing mods for use with R/C systems- clever.There does appear to be a market for them though it looks like I will have to bite the bullet, buy a multimeter and do some more homework in order to fully capitalize on their potential value. I seem to be falling down a rabbit hole here... but this project will have to wait for a while.

I got zapped good once as a kid while trying to re-wire the power supply to a record turntable. It was only a taste of 120 volts, but it learned me not to use a metal folder chair as a work-surface!

cheers,
tbg

@lousypirate: You're into CB radio, right? These PSUs can be used for that as well.

@thebugguy: (1) Correct re: my handle. Lame but true... (2) PM me about the multimeter.

I have a lot of info about other uses for computer power supplies and how to modify them for these applications. Do you guys think I should start a thread about that?

Hey guys, I tried to assemble all the numbers in this thread to make it easier to see the big picture. The table below summarizes the *gross* value per lb. reported here for fully disassembled ("stripped") vs. whole scrap PSUs. The stripped prices don't quite provide an apples-to-apples comparison because half of them don't include wire; in addition, Burt's total is missing a few of the components of the PSU. If the numbers for the stripped PSUs all were based on the a complete set of components, though, it looks as if the prices per lb. for stripped PSUs would probably be fairly close. It's also clear that breaking down the PSUs brings in a bigger *gross* payout than scrapping them whole. However, this is *before* deducting for your labor, your cost for the PSUs (if they weren't free), and any other expenses.

Gross Avg/Lb Reported by Thread Participants

	Stripped	Whole	Wire?
Armygreywolf	$ 0.51	$ 0.23	included
Bugburtchino	$ 0.46*	NA	included
CTscrapman	$ 0.30	$ 0.25	excluded
Spinroch	$ 0.30	$ 0.25	excluded

*Does not include transistors, ICs, gold-plated contacts, or PCBs.

Your actual "net profit" (excluding taxes) is obviously less than the gross amount you receive, and deciding whether it's worth your time to break down PSUs depends on how quickly you can process a PSU and how you value your time. As an example, suppose you were given a 5-lb. PSU at zero cost. (That doesn't mean it came from a free computer; if you pulled it from a free computer, its cost to you is the amount of time you took to extract it multiplied by whatever hourly rate you assign to your own labor.) If you get a gross payout of $0.50 per lb. after breaking down the PSU, you receive a total of at most $2.50. In reality, you'll get a little less because some of the PSU's raw materials will have no scrap value. Then, if your expenses for the teardown are zero (so you're not including gas or shipping to get the goods to your buyer, electricity, wear and tear on tools, etc.), and you value your own time at $12/hr., that means you have to complete the teardown in 12.5 minutes just to break even. You get paid $2.50 for your 12.5 minutes of labor and nothing more -- and that's without taking into account the amount of time you have to spend to get the scrap to your buyer. I've never disassembled a PSU, so I don't know how long it usually takes, but it's clear even to me that you have to be really fast, like Armygreywolf, to make good profits on PSU teardowns.

For that same PSU, if the average ePay price is $15, on which you pay 12% commission, and your shipping costs are fully covered by your shipping fee less commission, you net $13.20. That's equivalent to 1.1 hrs. at $12/hr., so if the entire process of selling the PSU takes less than 1.1 hrs., your earnings will be greater than $12/hr.

If you want to run your own numbers for breaking down PSUs, I made a spreadsheet that calculates your gross return, net profit, processing rates (# minutes to completely break down 1 PSU and # PSUs/hour), and breakeven processing rates. You can download it at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing. (Go to the File menu to save your own copy.)
I also made example worksheets based on the itemizations provided by Army and Burt, which you can see at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing. (Use the tabs at the bottom of the page to see all the worksheets.)

I'm a processing monster...probably the fastest dismantler on the forum. BUT caveat here, the right tools, the right workbench and the right help. At some point when I'm not hair pulling, eye bleeding busy I will do ten PSUs for a youtube video. Likewise I will do ten towers, ten optical drives, ten hard drives and I hope this will maximize the labor involved. Speed is the one reason I can pay more for PSUs and things of that nature than anyone in my area. And FLimits, I pay 23 cents without wire. with is 33 to 34.

Fast enough I can just about beat the charger for the tool I'm using, a Bosch 12V Li-Ion 1/4 hex drive and a 3/8" drill/driver of the same model.

Big emphasis on the right tools, you need a light cordless that has a fast speed with a "tip in" which means it doesn't apply immediate full speed it increases over a 1/4 second or so which is just enough not to strip those little screws. Also, I use two tools rather than swapping out bits (especially hard drives where I need a T8 and T7) I reviewed the bosch in the tools section.

Would love to see it......I can go at a fair clip when I get a good rhythm but I don't attempt power supplies.......I cut the wire and get .18 here locally (not to good)..........My patience level is my problem with processing this crap any more than I do

I just offloaded 250+ lbs of whole PSU's at my local yard yesterday. They classified them as Low Grade Boards and paid .50/lb for them.

I just did a quick test of breaking down 4 average power supplies. Selling the wire, steel case, fan and board separately would net me $0.42 per lb. Selling them whole I can get $0.25 per lb. Sounds good, but for me the greatest problem is the lack of time, especially when I have about two gaylords of them to get rid of. So most likely will be selling them whole.

I don't bother stripping PC psu. Not enough yield gain to make it worth my while.

Current prices dictate. Right now copper is not what it was when I started this, but Aluminum is still pretty high. Shred is so low for most of us if you can get 18 or more for the whole power supply wire and all might as well chuck it.