eesakiwis adventures

I have been scrapping down the transformers I have and such lately, the little toroid transformers too. Imhad been putting them aside for 'one day'. They were mostly from PSU's.
I had a sack of 25kg Copper #2 from them today and sold that and a few Kg of Stainless Steel for NZ$140.
Yay!. Spending money.

I didn't get much $ for my 'transformers' sale a month or two ago.(they werevmostly small transformers and little motors etc, anything Copper/Steel mix that's too small to scrap down, or has plastic molded around the motor)
I think I was paid NZ$0.40cents/Kg and got about $30 for it.

Someone I know sold them a 3 phase motor and some other motors last week and got 60cents a Kg, I dunno why there's a difference unless it was because the 3 phase motor still worked...


I have been building up a large collection of plastic coated wire in plastic feed sacks over the last 2+ years, about 400kgs plus and have been trying to find the best way to extract every $ from it.
I now know what to do. Go on holiday and sell it out of town for better prices.

{This is a cut n paste of another post I made today, so deja vu..= yes}

[ Well more than 24hrs passed... But I got my answer.

The local yards paying only NZ$1.90kg for plastic coated wire.... One price for all wire, the lowest price possible.
I have decided that I will not burn any of it off, which will be a relief to a lot of you, and me, its a real pain to do it. In this amount its a real big pain, and lots of more work.

I have found out I can get NZ$2.70+/Kg for 60%+ Copper return wire.
And NZ$3.70+/Kg for 80%+ Copper return wire. That's 'out of town' prices.

It actually works out better by NZ$200 to drive <400 miles and sell it and drive back, including fuel..... A free holiday really.
Though that includes a few more sacks of wire I have around, some real thin stuff, co-ax, the 2 sacks of 80% Copper return.
I get a free holiday out of town for a few days, I have only been out of town once in the last 6-7 years, things have changed a bit too.

I also sorta added up my CPU collection and found it contains more than 20 grams of Gold.... That's just the large CPU...
Its worth it for me to send it to America and sell it there..

Haha, someone here on SMF is going to benefit $$.
Its NZ$50 to send 2.5kg to America. Equals 5 1/2 lbs...@ US$33.oo

I guess I will be knocking off the large Copper heatsinks from the CPU to save weight. Maybe.

Anyone know of a good CPU buyer?

I will see the escrap buyer here tomorrow, just for the boards, not the CPU, I think it would be easier to sell him everything but the CPU's.
They are a little messy because we do not really know exactly how they are classed. The 486 & 386 & K5's = ???

I have a rough/clean idea on what to expect for the CPU, but its the buyer who makes the real final call on description. A American buyer will know 100% and would be able to give me fair prices.


The escrap buyer who is the 400miles away, pays only 25% of 'boardsorts' 'US$/NZ$ exchange rate included' prices. (I had to get a 2nd opinion/prices to be sure)

The local guy says he will pay @ 70% of board sorts prices, ie, he pays boardsorts prices, but in NZ$, not US$, his profit is the exchange rate difference. Great idea. He gets a 30% cut.

Its probably 3 gayloads of escrap boards. 500 plus motherboards, plus server, CD & Hard drive boards, plus the daughter boards, plus flatscreen boards and memory sticks and the scanner bars etc etc.
I will get photos of it to post here one day.

I will get him to drop in to have a look at it first. The local guys only ten blocks away from home.

I figure I can trailer it there and pack it in front of him so he knows what's in there, plus he can weight it as I go.
That way its really only one proper handling, not handling it 5 or more times.

My place - onto trailer. ~~~ his workplace - into Gaylord's + weighing. Done! Get $$$ and run.

I want the ca$h when it leaves my hands too, no waiting for a promise....
{End deja vu}

When I was properly scrapping, I didn't have a car. It was all carried 'in a sack, on my back'.
Now I have a bad back and a car.....
I was getting $50-$60 a week on average. Microwaves, CRT's, Fridge compressors. For the Copper $$.

Since the downturn in scrap, the guy who's yard I sourced most of my scrap from closed it down.
So I have been concentrating on what's around home, stripping down the power supply's (done!), picking off Silver electrical contacts, stripping off unsaleable circuit boards, sorting & picking out Gold pins.

Packing up the HMIS (iron motor/transformer cores) that's on my property and getting drums to put them in and taking them to my old source guys yard.
(That's my agreement with him, he gets all my Iron in exchange for my chance to pick thru his shred)

I have been helping a guy I know shift his rubbish from his 'workshop' the last few days, well...... Its 95% rubbish, never seen someone so disorganised/unhelpful/ungrateful/unrealistic, 'grumpy man' style, its a attitude he has taken on as a defense against what he gets for being like that to people in the first place.
But, I have known him for a few decades and its his 'style' to waffle on whenever possible.
My mentioning the word "I can use this Yard broom, nah its a 2 foot 8 inch broom..." Got ten minutes of waffle about 6 Indians (In India) using one broom at once so they all had employment... Oh well... He retires in a year, I think its been his life long ambition...

So I ended up with a sackload of perished extension cords and such, more broken electronics than I need and a front yard full of heavy wood to cut up for firewood.
A few CRTs, a bunch of stuff you couldn't give away at a yard sale. Some motors, a 2.5 HP Villiers (yes! Score!)

From Curbco I got two flat screens in the last week, a 40" plasma exactly the same as the one I am using now. Its worth $80 to sell.
And a broken one for it's boards and metal and tinted front screen glass sheet.

I also got some escrap samples to the scrap guy who wants to buy it. He underestimated what I had by a bit.
("600 motherboards.. Oh, SIX HUNDRED MOTHERBOARDS!!!!")
Tomorrow I finalise details and spend the weekend doing the last 5% of the checking, cleaning and sorting motherboards/peripherals.
.
I will make a effort to photo all the potential 'good for sale' motherboards and peripherals and post them here before I strip the heatsinks off, my neighbour wants to have a squizz at them too.

I dunno if you know what a 'banana box is' but I have...
One full of Hard drive boards (sorted) and another over full of DVD/CD boards.
7 KGS of Gold memory sticks. All the CPUs I mentioned in another thread.
1 full of older motherboards with only the '9 pin DIN' sockets on them.
1 full of Apple motherboards
3 full of Server motherboards.
3 full of Peripherals.
3 full of 'green boards' off CRTs & fax machines.

And probably another of just 'unknowns', CD laser heads, Gold plated boards ie LED TV screen edge strips etc. Tantalum's.
~~~~~~~~~~
Something I would really like to find out about is 'Scanner bars'. The sort from image scanners and printer/scanners.
They are a thin 12 inch long green board strip with between 220 & 400 Gold wire connections on them, for the LED's I think.
There's a small amount of Gold plating on the board.

I have about 100 of them. If I could find out a buyers price it would be very helpful. It'd be a pity to sell them as 'med grade green boards'.
I could extract the Gold from them as its just a 'scrape and incinerate and Gold pan the wires out' sort of operation.
Which I am doing to my stripped LED's and also to transistors and IC's. All seperately of course.

I'm about to get a pizza and go home to sleep, see yah tomorrow with more details.

I went into the scrapyard again today to get price details. He said they had not arrived yet and come and see him on Monday.

Last night I spent a few hours picking out some motherboards to clean and check them. There's more work than I thought.
Different CPU sockets (if there's a way to separate the boards I want to use it), divided into large and small sockets.

But the older MB's (7pin DIN only sockets) are classed as 'Large sockets', but they will be separated, but included with them.

There's a smaller socket with the face of 100% pins, I found a few of those MB's. I think they are classed as 'small sockets'.
Some MB's had little boards on them that will have to be removed, they only have chokes on them.
Some other boards still had Aluminium heatsinks, some of them screwed to power transistors, extra work there.
I had been removing the little Brass bolts that are screwed into the plugs fascia, I have screwed them back together and have a 23 foot length now. That's just a start.

And there's the odd 'slot processor MB mixed in too...
And! There's mold and dirt on about half of the boards, I thought I cleaned most of that stuff off before I stacked them.
That's extra work because they have to be dry before they get sent away.

And!! I don't think I have two MB's that are exactly the same to sort together anyway.

Even ones that look similar are very different when you look close at them, different sizes is the biggest difference, positions of sockets, layout of minor parts on the boards.

Maybe I just better sort by colours and then sizes. The space its going to take is a big problem, to do anything, it involves picking up a bunch of boxes to get to the one I want, there's not enough area to lay much out to see it all at once.

He also tells me that I can "Get better prices for my heatsink Ali, as its a special Alloy". Uh, I didn't know that... Been selling it as 'extrusion'.

I forgot to ask him about prices for my plastic coated Copper wire. 400kgs worth.
My local buyer only pays $1.80 for $720 for the 400kg.
I can get $1090 for it 400miles away from here, and a paid holiday.
The escrap buyer will be able to adjust prices to suit if it means a sale for him.

He's actually a youngish chap who I met 18 years ago when I was buying my house, he's quite intelligent (for a Kiwi... that's just 'intelligent' to a American...) and real business driven from a young 16? age.
He must have been 20 and buying/selling houses when I first met him.
He lent money to somebody and ended up with a scrapyard by default and just had to make the most out of it.
There's soo much going on at that place, he's got ten things going at once, exporting cars and parts to Asia & the middle east. Knowing all the part # & their worth. Buy different cars for their parts and different metals as well and the breaking & sorting. Juggling that and questions left, right & centre, & sometimes from above.
Every time I have been there, there's been someone arrive who is just a 'friend'.
Last time it was a older guy who's car had just stopped changing gear and then blew up, stuffed.
"Oh, I have a xxxxx, its like the last car you had, its works and has everything sorted, I will get the guys to pick up your old car and you can keep that one".
OK, I don't expect he made any money on that deal. That's not his point, he was just "seeing the guy right".
The guy and I chatted a bit. Its weird, in life you sometimes meet two people who look & act so very alike that they could be twins, even his manner of speaking and voice & expressions was just the same as a guy I knew, a real Kiwi character. I'd probably do anything I could to help him out too.

But I did ask him (the owner) "if he actually does clean down the computers and microwaves from his shred pile?"
He said he "has not been able too lately as its built up a bit too much and he's got other stuff to store and no place to put it too".
"Uh, I can do that sort of stuff, I'm very good at it, its what I have been doing for years".
$$$$$ signs....
"Come and see me on Monday about that".
I think I have a new job......

I dropped in to see if the escrap prices had arrived today, still no luck. He said because " prices are messing around at the moment".
Hmmm, yeah they are, but....

So I decided to see if he would buy my plastic coated wire. "Bring in a sample".

So I chuck a sack in the car along with of some of the other wire.

I have been saving this wire up for years, there's about 12 sacks full, about 25kg per sack depending on size.
Back when I started saving it up, I was going to burn the plastic off.
I'm not going to do that now.... Decided not to about 2 years ago.
But I have 4 smaller sack fulls in the front room and I can get them out of the house easy.
So I grab one, some samples, and take them to the scrap guy.
He pulls out a handful and goes "Oh"... So do I.....
It's got mylar ribbon cable all thru it. I forgot about that.....
And he points out that some of the wire is 'tinned'.... And tinned ribbon cable... And some coax.

Its not looking good.

He tells me I can only get the good money for the larger 'untinned' plastic coated wire, and there "cannot be any of this" varnish covered Copper wire in there too.
Uh oh.

I realise now why, its simple, when burning the plastic off, none of this matters, that's why its all mixed up like that.
Burn the plastic off and I'm left with 'Domestic Copper", lowest price, but better than nothing.

But if you are saving 'Plastic coated wire". You need to separate the 'bare Copper wire/plastic coated" from "Tinned plastic coated" and "light gauge/low Copper return plastic coated". And 'mylar' (of course...)
I have not, its all pretty mixed up.

So I empty two of the small sacks, pick out the mylar from a handful, then pick out the copper wire. Then check to see what's actually untinned wire, end up with 5 bags all part full.

I now see why there's such a thing as 'Cord cutters'. All cords are untinned wire, save that up and you get a good price for it. Basic.

Now, after that work today, I cannot be bothered doing the whole lot. I messed it up. Better to sell it as low grade and let them sort it.
I still have to remove the mylar though. ****. During that time I can pick out any power cord wire that I stripped out. There's at least a sack and some slightly better money for that sack in the end.

And the sack of 'telephone cable, outer shield stripped off already, high grade twisted pairs'. Ouch.

But, it will still pay for my Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden tickets for the end of this month.... Inc transport, just.

1/4 to 1 am, I have a early start tomorrow. See yah.

I STILL have not got any escrap prices......

In fact, he's closing up shop and moving on, he says that "In a month" he will be able to do something.
But when I was there, I saw a printer scanner, and to fill in time, popped the 'light bar' out of it, and just to impress somebody else there, showed him it and said "there's over 150 bits of Gold wire in there".....

He goes "Ohhhh, do you how to get 'The Gold' out do you?". I said "Its possible, you just need enough of it of the right sort of part and you do one sort of part at a time, that's why you need zoo much stuff first, or send it to Asia where they do it in bulk anyway".

"Oh, because I have some computers if you want to buy them off me" he says. (Uh oh...)
We talk, he shows me some of what he has, and he other stuff there I can get off somebody else. He mentions about $80.
There's about 40+ odd computers there, and flat screens etc.
Tomorrows job is see what's who's, have a price set, and get the lot.

At the moment I don't have lot's of time to spend on things that won't generate immediate money. There's work to be done while its still early winter and frosty, later it gets rainy, and days are short now.

My plastic coated wire??? Hell, I ended up just selling it and only got the lowest price of $1.80/kg. $500+. Sad.
I paid a bill or two, got some cat medicine for my cat @ $100 for a months supply, ouch.
I ate well for a couple of weeks...

So that's gone. I sold my Brass scrap collection for $60 today. Good, Petrol $20, McD's $10, grocery's $10, Catfood $10.
$10 left.
I still have the same volume of Copper to sell after scrapping down a few more things, CRT, 3 fridges. The future escrap I'm buying...

I was holding onto my light gauge steel, but prices are $60 a ton, better than nothing, and I need the space anyway.
It's going to be a few trips, but its close (15 blocks) and not out of my way.
This way I can take steel scrap to the dealer and pick up the escrap on the way back.
They will just tally up the weights of the lightgauge until I will have gotten rid of everything, inc the escrap light gauge, future work, and I get paid once its all done. No messing around with small $ amounts.

Well I picked up a server today, its nice, got two slotprocessors in it. I do find in the end they don't have much more than a plain computer.
The boards heavier, two CPU, lots of Tantium capacitors (Which I don't take off.)
Power supply's, now maybe they are worth something, in theory they should be, but they just get put aside and pile up.

I checked out a dumpster a few days ago, got two 400watt Metal halide floodlights, ones 'buzzy' the others quiet as. The 'buzzy' is loose Iron laminates in the transformer, I think.
A few gellcell 12 volt battery's, 2 years old (neat!) With a good spark to them, X4. Some plastic coated wire.

Tonight I couldn't get a carpark to do my free WiFi thing, so I checked the dumpster again...
Found the back of the floodlights shells, nice. Some more wire. About 15 more gell cell batterys (Nice!) Some handy cardboard boxes.

The guy who sold me his computers yesterday (paid today) knows somebody with even more stuff.. So I checked and there's servers and boards and low grade escrap from CRTs and a bunch more good escrap, a lot of hard drives, about two Gaylord's full.
There's a LOT of LED screens (30?) for computers, too good to scrap, not much return scrapped either.
Yesterdays computers, I checked today, most have the hard drives and CPU, I was thinking most would be 'empty'.

The hard drives are a good thing, I can scrap them down and the Ali casing can get sold for ca$h right now.
The next good thing is plastic coated wire, I know a bit more about it now. Won't get fooled again..... Its a bit of work though.

I will know by this time tomorrow exactly what I have, and its raining a bit right now, tomorrows supposed too be 'overcast with drizzle'. That's not too bad,, I can work harder in the cold. Not as easy though.


Ah ha!!! Something I found out last night, very important, I might even make a new thread about it. FPGA's.
Does it mean anything to you? Didn't to me until I read the replys to a YouTube video.
And can I find that video again? Nah.
He was scrapping a board down and in the replays somebody mentioned the FPGA's on that board were worth between #10 and $300..… This was 2 years ago.

So I wiki FPGA and get this , quote {
{A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – hence "field-programmable". The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware description language (HDL), similar to that used for an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)}
end quote

Basically a its a 'Computer on a chip' . You have to programme it yourself a bit, but it will do exactly what you want it to do, and fast.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiel...ble_gate_array

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...EaLUXlI694fL4S https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...swK_JPfzhhyCbK https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...mMDhFQz1wxo9uQ

I got the escrap today,
It was 3 full car loads, I counted over 50 loose hard drives, just by themselves.

Probably 40+ motherboards by themselves, most had the CPU still in them.
About 40-50 computers still in their cases, most have the hard drives still in them, about 8 didn't, a few were partly crushed.

There's 4 servers, a big fat heavy one, two normal ones, a lot of their weights in the steel casing, and another that's unchecked yet.
I will get the model numbers tomorrow, as I finished the work shifting it all, it got dark.

A 55 gallon drum full of oldish escrap, I see 'Canned Tantis'!!!!!! And CRT boards and power supply's.
There's a few 'Projects' in there too, like a elevators LED floor indicator, it'd make a nice counter, like they have in restaurants.
I have a proper unit that does that 'My turn' brand or similar, and some old LED displays from sports scoreboards that could be setup to do the same job.

There's was about 12 'Cisco switch' things, rows of telephone sockets on them, for joining up a bunch of computers I think.

One nice score item I found was a K5 CPU still on its board.. Nice! This just pushed up my collection of K5's by 33%, to Four.
They are near 0.5gms of Gold in each K5.
I also found a 'Blue lighting' DX purple CPU http://redhill.net.au/c/jpg/c-assorted2.jpg They seems to be a 'fast version nearing the end of its generation', good for word processing, but not for gaming.
I also have the CPU in the centre too, with the heatsink.

With this sudden escrap intake I am going to have to set up a proper storage area where everything's separate.
I started off with a 2x2x3 foot cardboard box, now I cannot get into the room.....

It turns out there were 60 led monitors, but..... somebody else had actual claim to them. When I was told today I thought they were making it up on the off chance they would get them. Then the chap who I bought them off turned up and was pretty apologetic.
Offered me some money back..
I gave the whole situation another thought, and realised, I cannot sell them, I have no use for them, they take up space, I would have to scrap them, perfectly good monitors, they don't give up much escrap either. Its absolutely no loss to me at all.

Well hardly any. 12 volt ones could be handy. They won't fit the surveillance units I have, they use the Ariel BNC(?) Sockets.
Though one of the guys told me that they had not had much interest from possible buyers for them either.
Maybe I will end up with most of them anyway. 60 @ $10 each = about $500 return, some will be broken, fees, time etc.
Perfect for a intimidating surveillance display setup though.

Since the guy who owned the LCD monitors was honest, upfront and offered money back (now just how often has that ever happened? 1. Never!) I gave the other guy I was buying it all off (2 guys owned all the escrap $80 each) $100 and told him to give the change to the first guy.

Tomorrow, I will put some light gauge in the car and get it to the scrap buyers. I'd intended to do that today, in theory I could shift stuff in each direction, in practice, not enough time.

See yah tomorrow/e

I took a look at the servers, got some details, 80% of their weight is light gauge though their power supply's are the only thing I expect to be able to sell from them.
First up is a Compaq Storage works RA-4100. eBay says $10 -$100....
Its got 12 X 72 gig hard drives but somebodys done 'data destruction' to them with a hammer....
http://www.tbfcomputing.com/ebaypict...jm100_9210.jpg

2nd. A Compact Proliant 7014cyn10015. Two of them. Sorta like this if the pics right.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/pr...N=w276-h183-nc

Next is a tape drive router sorta thing. I cannot find a pic, but its just a big metal box with 4 slide out draws in each corner with a area in between them.
Its got 2 (should have 4l of these tape drives in it.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/pr...E=w511-h288-nc
Here they want over $1000 for the actual tape drive unit that's in my unit..... 973605 101 412502 001 BRSLA 0401 DC Tape Drive for msl6000 ULTRIUM960 LTO3 working DHL EMS free shipping-in Other Computer Products from Computer & Office on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/pr...E=w508-h290-nc

It took a while to figure out what it does, the information is on 60 tape cassettes, 15 in each box, slide out, in the corners of the main box.
In the centre of the unit is a automated conveyor/robot arm thing.
It moves along to the desired tape cassette and pulls it out, it them moves it towards the reader/players (the above pic) and turns the cassette around and maybe lifts it to the other level, then inserts it into the reader/player.
All very cool and neat, absolutely no use 2nd hand.. The reader/player and the power supply parts may have value, there's no tape cassettes.....
With a lot of work it could be converted into a machine jukebox for the Pioneer 6CD players I have, hmm 6 X 15 X 4 = 240CD jukebox.
Or I could put all my CD's and records onto a single harddrive......

By the way, I have a couple of '8 Channel audio' motherboards. Are they sought after or useful?

And last. Two of them.
Allied Telesyn Switchblade 4000
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...GWyW0DnsxBbQcQ
Ones as pictured, the others in peices, lots of nice yellow Tantis..

So far I counted over 80 motherboards & flotsam from that deal, plus the above stuff, and 20 computers in their case inc hard drives.
At the moment its raining for the next 36 hrs.
I will try to clean down as much as possible with the intention of getting rid of the light gauge, just to get extra floor space and make up some plastic containers out of square 30liter plastic drums to hold the smaller parts.

I found another fridge too. After scrapping it will get turned into a trailer for a pushbike, its narrow and I have the wheels already made up on another fridge. (As a experiment, its rusted out since I started making it, 4 years ago)

I tool another load of light gauge in today, got $27 for it.... So on the way home I dropped into a recycling/2nd hand shop.

They had a Cebora single phase Stick/TIG welder, the sort with all the fancy 'High Frequency' start and 'Up welds' and special power curves etc. Solenoids for gas etc.
$20.
There's no plug on it & no guarantee it works...
I have a older smaller Cebora 155amp Stick welder, paid $1400 for it in 1998. Its paid for itself since, work allowance$.
Great welder, outperforms anything else, and it has been tested in real work conditions.
On one job, fitting a bow thruster on a boat. I was using my Cebora, there was a 3 Phase welder and two Kempii stick welders in use there. I finished my shift at 8pm & started at 8am again. The overnight welder guy was using my welder, its got a yellow handpiece.

I asked him "What he thought about my welder". A bit sheepishly he answered "That he didn't know it was mine, sorry, but that one just wouldn't work (3 phase, AC welder) so I grabbed a handpiece and turned all of the welders up to 'Full' and these two just didn't have any grunt (Kempii's) and this one, well it kept going. Saved my arse".

We were using 3.2mm rods, and then he started using 4mm rods when he found that 'whatever welder its was' (mine, Cebora) could handle it and he was just piling on weld to fill a gap.
So he was running a single phase 155 amp DC Cebora on 4mm rods and it took it......non stop welding almost.

As for Kempii's.... Worst welders I have ever used, every single one of them.
The two stick kempiis on that job, never worked if they were plugged into a extension cable, BUZzzz, flip flop, bizzzz plip.

The 'PowCon' which was just a rebadged Kempii, never worked right, ever. Neither did its wire feeder...
(The other PowCon's we were using, the SM400 & SS400, were actual real PowCons, I spent 9 months using them, 6 on Ali MIG & 3 as a stick welder. Fell in love with it, nearly cried at the end of the job when I had to hand it back in. I'd buy one in a flash if I found one for sale. Later Miller bought them out, such good welders...)

I had a fancy brand new Kempii on one job, the owner bought them after I had specifically told him not to... Never worked right, wire feeder was crap. I was doing a lot of just 'laying metal' into fist and finger sized holes, once filled, they needed ground down to surface and then all divits filled and ground and polished to shiney and smooth.
This kempii, of you went to 'spot fill' a chip hole or speck, it would 'ask itself if everything was OK with itself', when you pulled the trigger, if you let go of the trigger too fast for it, while it was having a moments introspection of itself, it would spit the dummy amd go all 'ERROR#2" on you.
That ment... Oh **** not again.... Slip out of the slot in the wall of the job, off my back 3 feet up, drop, 4inch grinder, 6 inch air grinder, arc air handpiece, air pien gun, MIG gun, try not to get tangled up in the floodlight cord, take helmit off, pick out floorboards to get access to inspection tunnel, climb down into inspection tunnel on hands and knees, crawl along platform (15metres above the ground, in a full cold windblast) climb out tunnel entrance, walk over to actual welding machine, turn it off, wait 20 seconds, turn it back on, go thru the same thing again in reverse.
And if it did it again a minute later, do it again.
Walked off that job at the finish, told them to "stick their kempii.....(you know where)"

So, that's the story of my welder, and why I won't touch a kempii.... Oh, they work well using stainless steel wire, but not so good with Aluminium or Steel, because they corrode too fast and your boat will run aground....

Anyway, today I got into all the Hard drives that had been hammered as in 'data destruction'. About 40 of them.
You could see where they started, those drives had hammer marks all over them, "Bash Bash Bash" turn "Bash Bash Bash"..
By the end they were "hammer hammer" get another "hammer hit" get another "Hit & hammer" next...
9Kgs of Ali, that's, um, $14.....+ $2 worth of Stainless Steel.

I have got the impression that the wires that run down the edge of the reader arms is Solid Gold wire. In whatever form it is, tracks on a mylar sheet, wires, or metal strips. So they have all been saved up, along with the Ali spacer rings.
The Ali spacer rings could be sellable, onn'TradeMe' or 'ebay' as home workshop materials, along with Steel pins and shafts from printers.
I think I can make the thicker ones into 'coin holders'. By using a Lathe to cut a rounded groove inside it, then slitting thru the ring and drill & tap a thread thru the slit and drill a hanging hole.
You spread the ring, insert a coin into the groove, do the screw up to hold the coin and use it as a keyring or necklace.
And sell the magnets as well. The magnets seem stronger than normal, this might be because the hard drives are from servers?

There's still a pile of computers without hard drives to scrap down. 20?
I have too much work to do on the house but have to clean up the escrap to get access to things. I may get them done tonight (this morning, its 1:30 am..)

Don't forget the little copper strips in the open bays on the first pic. There's a whole bunch inside a server.

When I first started finding the little Copper earth strips I put them in with my Copper, then decided that they could be Copper plated Stainless Steel, then found out about Berillium Copper, which is what I think they are.

If they are easy to pick off, I get them.

I scrapped out one of the servers, I'd checked our 'eBay', 'TradeMe.com' for server prices and found that 'anything' is extinct.
Like if its in private hands, there's a good reason, its not useable in real life.
So the power supply's will get saved and the rest scrapped.

I had put aside all of the loose Hard drives from my escrap buy from last week. Then I found some had been datadestructioned with a hammer, so I scrapped those.
Last night I noticed and unhammered one had a drill hole in it..
Today I got thru them and find at least 45 of the 90 had drill holes in them. Plus the hammered @ 25+.
Leaves about ten actual whole drives.

But, I get to scrap them right now and they take up less space. Its amazing how many shortcuts you find to scrapping them out.
Like the cases are often Stainless Steel, with some magnetic and or Ali peices to them.
Ripping off the loose sheet from the casing takes the big plastic sticker off too, which gets you access to the star drive screws that are normally covered and a pain to expose.

And, I get to scrap the slide out tray of the server hard drives, there's Ali castings in it, = more Ali.
45 Hard drives Ali cases equals 11Kg, $NZ16.50. Not much $ there. I intend to make $ selling the magnets and some parts on TradeMe at some point, maybe $2 for two.
Same with microwave magnets.
Funny story, after starting a welding job, I find the Boss had to pay hundreds of $ for magnets to use to hold the individual 500watt spotlights in place on the steel walls of our jobs...
Even then, I had hundreds of microwave magnets....ouch.


Last night I found two flat screens with broken screens.
They were the very lite sort, backlit by white LED's. But with small escrap circuit boards, I put them aside labeled in case one day I get a same model flat screen with dud circuitry.

I figure there's uses for the LED's, so they are a good find.

And I found a 9xx (?) 386 small ceramic 'double Gold' purple CPU on a board. I did not have any of these until then.

Also, on TradeMe, somebody sold 70 memory sticks for over NZ$200..... Random sticks too.
Its got me puzzled, why would somebody pay that much?
And.
Can I sell mine for that much? I have a lot more than 70 of them.... I could be talking some very good money if its a indication of things.
And then... What about my CPU? I could put them up for auction @ the current Gold value and see what happens.
I'd get far far more money than selling them as escrap. I have checked the auctions out for a while and do not see sales intended for escrap or Gold recovery.
Very little bulk computer sales and they are mostly a long way away, simply not worth doing. Postage kills.

Today I scrapped out the rest of the Hard drives, the ones with the holes in them, one had the broken off tip of the drill in it, funny :-)
The weight of the Ali cases is about 20kgs, hmm NZ$30+ 1/2 a coal sack full.

I 'might' separate the Ali into its proper grades. Last time I sold Ali, most of the prices were the same.
Some of what I have is 'extrusion' and I'm putting the heatsinks in their own coal sack as in theory they are $2 a Kg. I expect to get a whole sack of it by the time I am finished.
All of the big escrap buy from last week is being put separate so I can figure out some of the numbers and mathematics of the deal.

Ah, the more I do, the more I have to do......

I seem to have scrapped almost everything that I bought a week ago. There's still some random stuff, and the CRT boards.

Today I started on the computers with hard drives still in them.
I figured that with a hardrive they could still be usable, A few have 'started up'. Two need passwords, and I have no idea of how to get around that.
Of the ones that didn't, it seems bent boards and ruined connections may have been why they got chucked out.
The most modern shows a 2006 on it, its hard to think that that was 10 years ago...
Only one board so far looks 'Gamer'. Other than finding nothing, nothing interesting at all.

I already have several running computers, set up for music, so I expect to scrap the unknowns after all.
On the positive side, I found a couple of 2gig memory sticks, maybe more, and a 500gig hard drive. No fancy power supply's yet.
Oh, and a USB memory stick, that was shoved into a floppy drive, funny.

Since there's a big pile of light gauge metal on my front lawn, from the escrap, and tomorrows Friday, I will do a trip to the scrappers to get rid of it. Those server cases are heavy!.

I pulled apart two flatscreens with broken screens. One had LED backlights, so I played around with that, finding that each strip runs on 12v DC, and the connector that runs all the strips needs 24 or 36v DC, after blowing up one whole strip.

These strips have uses, cheap lighting, possible DIY electricity etc. Hydroponics.
I picked up about 30 gellcell 12v battery's a while ago.
These would power my 3000w UPS system, and the LEDs. The battery's have a good charge in them.
I blinded myself several times by short circuiting them trying to get the LEDs to go, and then the LED's blinded me too...

Something that's been on my mind lately is 'Line boring'. Specifically welding up and then line boring out the holes in excavator buckets and other earthmoving machinery.
I am a Fitter/Turner, its a part of that job. I have seen it done inside the workshop, and I did a similar thing on milling machines.
But there's good money in driving out to where the machinery is and doing the work 'onsite'.
NZ$600 minimum for a set of holes, normally several sets have to be done, and honing out the holes to suit bushes/bearings.
A proper line borers expensive. But its also possible to DIY a basic machine.
They can use magnetic based drills (rotabroach) to power the shaft, or even hydraulic pumps. Depending on the setup.
You could easy spend US$30,000+ ,10Kva power generator, welders, line borer(s) ID welder, hand tools, truck.
But I could make a small machine from some stuff that I have. A good magnetic base drills worth $1500, $500+ second hand.
I kept seeing a real old one @ a second hand shop for $50, its gone now. :-( Too late, took too long. It would drill with normal twist drills, not the proper HSS 'shell' tubular hole bits that a $1500 version would. So I'm keeping a eye open for a 2nd hand one.

I had a idea for making a collet chuck lathe from a $120 collet set, bearings, motorbike front shock system, electric motor from a washing machine
(Alloy2 's post tought me I need a 3phase speed control for these motors, its in the electrics, which I never took out with the motors I got, either I get the electrics or find a cheap low power 3 phase control unit)

But, the same motorbike shock setup could be the basis of a small lineborer, at home for the domestic power 240volt (yay, NZ got that right!) A couple of jobs and it could get me into line boring, as a weekend earner, or main income.
For a main income I could get a job in a engineering shop and move up from there, a possible line of work for them if they already do it 'inhouse'.
My other interest is fixing shipping containers. Line boring could be extea weekend work. To get these jobs I would have to shift to another city though. No work like that in this town.


Something else that came to mind, when I bought some escrap off a guy, for $5, he mentioned that someone else he had met, in another city, was doing escrap too, had lots of it but no real buyer.
He was also stockpiling CRT coils, wrong because they can be scrapped down and the Copper sold locally.
But, that make me think a bit. A forum member here did a 'escrap drive' in his home town, didn't get Tons of escrap. But enough to make a good pile.
But, maybe I could find a proper buyer for my escrap, Malaysia/Asia is where my potential buyer said he sold to.
Then tour around doing escrap drives in different towns, scrap it down there, get rid of excess plastic, sell Iron/Copper/Ali, save escrap and sell it by the shipping container load direct to the refiners in Asia.
There's potential, 10 years + ago somebody did a escrap drive in this town and they got tons of escrap. There's only ever been one done here. It was a shame seeing all that computer gear getting offloaded.

So many possibility. Its 4:10 am here... Gotta get some sleep. See yah/e

Sounds like it would make sense for you to become THE ewaste buyer for NZ. If you are having trouble finding someone to sell to then others probably are too. I have no idea where you would even begin though.

/\ I had to laugh at that. Thanks.
Pictures would be great but he won't be able to Post them until hea got a few more posts made.
I guess they are Ali sheet covered on a Steel frame.

I stayed up all night and kept scrapping down things and checking the last computers (with hard drives (mostly)) to see if they worked.
1/3 of them did, a couple or 3 bad power supply's & 4 with passwords needed. The going ones were not !such different from the others I have sitting around.
So, I guess I scrap them all anyway. I found a 12 hard drive server under everything, with 12 'decommissioned by force' Hard drives.
More Ali ....! Scrapped tonight after dark, its 1:40 am now.

And I counted up the Motherboards from that deal, = 110 motherboards, mixed sockets. And everything else, for NZ$100. (US$70.oo)
Took in 250kg of lightgauge Steel today, about NZ$16 worth.
Well it was worth it to get rid of that Steel pile anyway, & its petrol money. I still have more around the house to collect/clean/cash up.
Tomorrow, Saturday, is going to be fine weather, time to do work on the house. Sunday = rainy day.

I have to go to the bank on Monday, in NZ we have a sorta compulsory savings scheme, the first $1000 put in every year gets a Government top up of $500, expires the end of this month.
So I have to transfer some ? $ across to it. It gets paid out when you retire, want to buy a house, or a 'situation' where they let you get the $ out.

Oh, I want to get up early and try out the local Saturday yard sales, just to see what's in them.

Today's Sunday, there's a post up above of mine that's pointing to HipoGears post, its actually was pointing to a post somebody else put up, but has been taken down.

HipoGear did start me thinking though, all I have to do if find a overseas buyer who will take a shipping container full....
And its ridiculously cheap to send shipping containers overseas from here, since there's a net oversupply of containers to NZ, our exports tend to go out by bulk shipments.

today I finished scrapping out the computers that had hard drives in them, I also found about 10 'under 80gigs' so they got added to the extra hard drives.
The thumbdrive I found in the floppy drive, had exactly what I thought was going to be on of, on it. about ten pics of Hefner style 80's style.

Of all the computers I scrapped 110?, only two were interesting.
A large socket turbo with 9 pin din connector, old school,
3x 5.25 inch dia hard drives,
a board with a Ali anodised '0ne Gig ?' metal plate heatsink inside, so its gotta be made this decade......
About 8x 1 gig memory sticks. About 8x 120+gig hard drives.
A fancy unit that houses 4 hard drives as one peice.
About 8 or more Copper tube & Ali CPU coolers (sellable)

I just realised I never got any keyboards, so no mylar, that's a pity, I have a goodish amount of Mylar & its something I can process myself.
I have plenty of mice... they drive my cat crazy because they can hide where he cannot get them, and sneak away his cat food at night.
Oh, those mice.... Non of them either, so no adding to my mouse ball collection, I like the often Gold plated switch contacts they have.

And the 'eye' sensor which is useful for escrap art/jewelry, in theory they should give the same 'red eye' effect that you often see in photographs, in photographs. Neat if you are into illuminati conspiracy's.

Which, since I have the subject in mind...... Ever noticed the logos on our escrap? Always, and I mean "Allways" a EYE or a Triangle, or a 'A', sometimes all of them...... With the exception of Microsoft & IBM, uh oh 'EYE-B-M'.....
Just too weird..

Ah, the last, and absolute last, computer I scrapped had a bright Deep Purple Motherboard, very very nice, and then I pulled out a board from it and it was Silver metallica style with a Silver Cherry shaped heatsink.
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...CJlfBiapTbRXng

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...qLHdFDljRR7qDQ

Its looks very similar to this card, except where that heatsink is, there's a Ali Silver anodised 'Twoo Cherrys' shaped heatsink.
These cards were worth about US$500 'back in the day'...... Of possible collectable interest now.

I might have some of the weights of what I have got in this ewaste buyup next week. After sorting & weighting I will shift the whole lot of escrap to another room and clean down the other stuff I have stockpiled.

I have been taking out the little chrome plated brass nuts from the in/out ports of most computers, they get screwed into each other in sticks.
I have 11metres of them now..... 36feet?

eesakiwi, and others
Remember that on some of the computer cases (older) that there is lil brass standoff's screwed in where the motherboards
are screwed to. They add up in a hurry with an old load.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

eesakiwi, and others
Remember that on some of the computer cases (older) that there is lil brass standoff's screwed in where the motherboards
are screwed to. They add up in a hurry with an old load.

---

Yes they do add up. I started a brass bucket about 5 months ago and most of it is the standoffs and brass from power strips. Data switches have a lot of standoffs in them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by eesakiwi

Today's Sunday, there's a post up above of mine that's pointing to HipoGears post, its actually was pointing to a post somebody else put up, but has been taken down.

HipoGear did start me thinking though, all I have to do if find a overseas buyer who will take a shipping container full....
And its ridiculously cheap to send shipping containers overseas from here, since there's a net oversupply of containers to NZ, our exports tend to go out by bulk shipments.

today I finished scrapping out the computers that had hard drives in them, I also found about 10 'under 80gigs' so they got added to the extra hard drives.
The thumbdrive I found in the floppy drive, had exactly what I thought was going to be on of, on it. about ten pics of Hefner style 80's style.

Of all the computers I scrapped 110?, only two were interesting.
A large socket turbo with 9 pin din connector, old school,
3x 5.25 inch dia hard drives,
a board with a Ali anodised '0ne Gig ?' metal plate heatsink inside, so its gotta be made this decade......
About 8x 1 gig memory sticks. About 8x 120+gig hard drives.
A fancy unit that houses 4 hard drives as one peice.
About 8 or more Copper tube & Ali CPU coolers (sellable)

I just realised I never got any keyboards, so no mylar, that's a pity, I have a goodish amount of Mylar & its something I can process myself.
I have plenty of mice... they drive my cat crazy because they can hide where he cannot get them, and sneak away his cat food at night.
Oh, those mice.... Non of them either, so no adding to my mouse ball collection, I like the often Gold plated switch contacts they have.

And the 'eye' sensor which is useful for escrap art/jewelry, in theory they should give the same 'red eye' effect that you often see in photographs, in photographs. Neat if you are into illuminati conspiracy's.

Which, since I have the subject in mind...... Ever noticed the logos on our escrap? Always, and I mean "Allways" a EYE or a Triangle, or a 'A', sometimes all of them...... With the exception of Microsoft & IBM, uh oh 'EYE-B-M'.....
Just too weird..

Ah, the last, and absolute last, computer I scrapped had a bright Deep Purple Motherboard, very very nice, and then I pulled out a board from it and it was Silver metallica style with a Silver Cherry shaped heatsink.
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...CJlfBiapTbRXng

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...qLHdFDljRR7qDQ

Its looks very similar to this card, except where that heatsink is, there's a Ali Silver anodised 'Twoo Cherrys' shaped heatsink.
These cards were worth about US$500 'back in the day'...... Of possible collectable interest now.

I might have some of the weights of what I have got in this ewaste buyup next week. After sorting & weighting I will shift the whole lot of escrap to another room and clean down the other stuff I have stockpiled.

I have been taking out the little chrome plated brass nuts from the in/out ports of most computers, they get screwed into each other in sticks.
I have 11metres of them now..... 36feet?

---

I didn't realize the chrome plated nuts were brass. I knew they were non magnetic but I've just been throwing them in with my other screws.

Eh, the things you learn doing escrap...

I will probably sell the Brass/Chrome plated nuts as 'Brass'.
Some of them have a Steel spring washer stuck around the thread, there's about 1 metre of them, when I do start selling on TradeMe (or NZ eBay) I will try and sell them there.
There's other stuff like that I have saved up, other standoffs, Steel ones, longer lengths, white plastic etc from LED monitors, the escrap jewelry stuff, even the anodised Ali north bridge heatsinks, hard drive magnets, those funny screws that screw into the fans.

Anything is worth something if you have enough of it, I expect, and somebody has a use for it, or can think of something.

Years ago I saw on BBC world TV news a bit about Afghanistan. The news reporter talking, and kids running around in the background, weird, which caught my eye.
Then the reporter says "And a problem is after a gunfight children will often arrive to collect the loose Brass cartridges which they can sell, these often get reloaded and used against the soldiers who are trying to protect them in the first place. Sometimes they find unexploded ordinance and sometimes these explode killing a innocent child".

So I sat down and started figuring out things that can be made from Brass cartridges.
I found many ideas, some quite devious, some quite pretty, some very useful, some byzantine....
One idea I made a fair amount of $ off, selling for $3 each. Bullet shell pipes, 'Trench art' is what its known as.

I checked Google images today for that sort of stuff. Its obvious a lot of people have either come up with similar ideas, or even copied them. But I have sooo many other ideas...
When I started, all there was was somebody drilling out the primer and putting a loop in and glueing a quartz crystal in as a pendant.
Now there's a few more ideas along that line out there, somebody's making some coin off it.

My ideas were intended so that if I was travelling around the world I could make and sell the peices in markets and stalls for extra $.
Where I had been there would be people who could/would copy the ideas and make a few $ for themselves too.
One idea is a 'Everlasting match'. There's a similar item advertised on the SMF homepage at the moment.
The everlasting match idea was something I noticed in a 1940's Popular Mechanics magazine.

I invented this in the early 90's, you can buy it in any city (almost) in the world now.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...XzxwT38Csl3SWz. https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i..._6NWwRGOWKgmVQ

They copied the first run I made, after that I made a few small changes, like the nut fits under the cone so it sits up, and a recess in the bottom of the bolt thread so you don't loose the stem down the inside.
See how many different versions there are, each ones copied from another one.
So most of them are the same material size, and weird threads (fine & a low profile)

Somebody in NZ copied it (b@$7@&##)
So when I happened to meet a young couple from NZ who saved $ here, then went to places like Bali to live for cheap, they had been doing it for over 5 years., so I gave them one, told them how it was made, they were going to India next.
Guess where, a year later, the imported ones came from?..….. Stainless steel, from India.
Somebody had to make them, they got paid for doing that, and that fed their family, that's how I look at it. (and it undercuts the p41&% who copied it in NZ...:)