Armstr's Daily Questions (Pics Pics!)

Over the past couple weeks I have created a variety of threads showing what I did that day and generally asking a few questions along the way. I decided to just create a thread that I will update regularly instead of making a new one every couple days. I GENUINELY thank all of the help I have received so far and welcome any feedback that you do leave. I have only been doing this for 4-5 months so there is still a massive amount to learn.

I started this originally because my job throws away an HVAC unit every couple days. They already evacuate the freon before giving them to me (on most systems), but I went and got my universal HVAC license ($120 and 10hrs of study +test) and I now take them home and make around $30 a piece! This also allows me access to the dumpster anytime there is room before the pickups (3 times a week). But that is neither here nor there..


My questions!
Now... I have seen the crappy brown boards, and the mid grade red/green ones, cell boards, MB boards, etc... but Im not sure I have seen one quite like this. Its from some switch or router... not sure. Is this entire board gold lined?? Look at the chip! Gold =D







This is from an HVAC unit. There is one right behind the RAD which goes into the room. Is it a heating coil? The coil part is NON magnetic. Anyone know what type of metal??


I asked what these were before, but now I need to know what to do with them. Do yards pay for these? Do you take them apart? What do YOU do?



Lastly, How much of a particular material do you gather before you feel it warrants a call to get a different price? For instance, im sure no yard would care about a 25 pound pile of rads... but would they give you a better price on 100 pounds? 250+ pounds? Etc. Up to this point I have pretty much just brought loads of material in when I get the chance. Sometimes I have gotten 250+/ton for my load of magnetic, but most times its around 160/ton and is "shred". The Non Ferrous stuff is a bit easier since the guys at the yard always tell me what they are weighing as they do and have shown me many tricks to help ID different materials.


I will have some more pictures later on of possible silver contacts. I am beggining to realize how many of them are out there! I think every AC unit has a bunch on the motherboard part of it. I know most of the silver contacts have a low silver percentage, but does anyone know if its a "general" percentage? Like 50%? Are they usually enough to show silver on a metal testing kit?

Thanks for reading!!

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

The round cylindrical thingies are "can" capacitors and no real value inside them, maybe oily substance with different material wound. Stuff them inside a dead computer carcass, microwave chassis.
Nice motherboard with a yellow varnish on the back gives it a "golden" look.
The heater coils are the same thing that comes out of electric heaters, toasters, water heaters, etc. Good pay if you can get someone to recognize it.
This is from Wiki;
That's about all the help I got for ya.

nichrome wire. Thats a new one for me. Thank you!! Got some research ahead of me

The round cylindrical thingies are "can" capacitors and no real value inside them, maybe oily substance with different material wound. Stuff them inside a dead computer carcass, microwave chassis.
Nice motherboard with a yellow varnish on the back gives it a "golden" look.
The heater coils are the same thing that comes out of electric heaters, toasters, water heaters, etc. Good pay if you can get someone to recognize it.
This is from Wiki;

Most modern electric heating devices use nichrome wire as the active element.

That's about all the help I got for ya.

The nichrome (Nickel Chromium) heating coils should be better than stainless price, but no yard near me pays more than stainless for them. There are yards that buy it for more, but shipping costs and 1000 lb minimum weights have kept me from doing anything with it.

The last time I took in a load of ni-chrome wire, I got 4.00 a pound for it. The board looks like a large socket motherboard. The processor looks like either a Pentium or AMD ceramic. I take in my radiator pile every time it gets over 500 pounds. I get better pricing that way.