Board Grade (missing components)

[PinkFloydEffect]

Are you sure? They seriously look red in the light, and the contacts on the base are not gold. So your thinking gold plated copper??

[PinkFloydEffect]

I have tons of boards saved up but I began processing them a bit uneducated last week, just the low grade boards to start with. This is the very start to my IC bucket which will have to be sorted again when I sell or process them myself:



Lots of junk in here like aluminum capacitors I should have left on the board! There are a few tantalums in here but that is about it I will have to pull most this out and toss it in light iron:



My miscellaneous bucket again lots of junk but a few good categories...the transistors that have a copper backing, the relays, crystals, push switches, everything else no longer needs to be pulled form boards:



These are two identical corded speed dial phone boards, the one on the left is untouched the right is an uneducated pull last week. As you can see I was pulling things like SMD capacitors, SMD diodes (don't think are worth anything) even those yellow and orange guys I thought were tantalum capacitors. On the left you can see my new approach will be the 6 ICs, two telephone jacks with gold plated wire, the crystal, and SMD MLCCs (I circles two medium sized ones the rest have to go through a sand bath)



One more example, this is an even lower grade then those office phone boards I think. Just out of a TV or monitor, you can see the large missing chunk is where I broke out the high voltage flyback transformer and threw it in my light iron. This would be my approach in red circles then there is so much left on the board I can't see getting just light iron price for it by weight I can stack them at this point and find a buyer. I see 4 ICs, 3 transistors, and that black box by the power inlet which contains two copper prongs suspending some sort of thick coin I am not sure what it is or what that circular coin is made of:

[miked]

Nice photos, thank you. Mike

[Mechanic688]

I still have to ask, why downgrade a green/green board (esp. if you have a bunch)?? That's shooting yourself in the foot. Those boards could be .50 - 1.50 a lb. If your going to start refining you'll be throwing about half of the PM's right down the drain.

[PinkFloydEffect]

I still have to ask, why downgrade a green/green board (esp. if you have a bunch)?? That's shooting yourself in the foot. Those boards could be .50 - 1.50 a lb. If your going to start refining you'll be throwing about half of the PM's right down the drain.

And that is where I am at, if I loose X-amount of $ per lb on boards will I triple my loss $ by selling those PM components in bulk or even processing them myself once a year.

[Mechanic688]

Unless your an expert at refining you will lose about 1/2 of the PM's and that's not just gold. That is according to the GRF.(gold refining forum). Look up some of Noble's posts.

http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/scrap...processed.html

[PinkFloydEffect]

The local buyer in NH allows you to pull some things on some boards without denting the price:weight ratio, I think that is the line I am playing with know what I mean?

[PinkFloydEffect]

I have had time to think about it and no longer have as much time on my hands with other employment obligations so I will not be processing my own boards its best left to a larger line production facility BUT this does not mean I am going to give up on it I will still save boards and sell them as is by grade. I may pop some hand fulls of larger tantalum capacitors and sell them on eBay since their weight on the boards are only worth around a few dollars a pound when nobody will notice a few missing here and there and I will not take enough from any one board to downgrade it as controversial as that may sound...the trick is just don't piss off your buyer (IC chips leave a large visible "missing" spot). This is two of 3 piles of boards I have, the largest is outside waiting to have the metal and wires removed from them. I probably have several hundred pounds and the smaller pile in the photo is all high(er) grade board, I just need to break the piles into finer grades and find the best paying buyer that be drop-off or ship them out.



I am finding this old school ram in some computers will the fingers always be silver if they are not gold or "white" in color?

[BRASSCATCHER]

The silver edge ram is actually tin not silver. The money is in the chips on the the stick. A question about the photos above...you mentioned the crytals, any idea of what they contain? I have been searching to find out but have come up empty so far.

[PinkFloydEffect]

The really older crystals contained a little bit of gold sometimes and real crystals, which were worth some $ but they no longer use actual quartz crystals. I wonder if the tin ram chips are more valuable then gold finger ram chips?

[BRASSCATCHER]

As far as I know and have read about the chips or flatpacks contain very fine gold wires or bonding wires. People who refine these actually incinerate the chips, remove all magnetic materials and then pan the wires. Just like miners pan for gold in rivers. As the waste washes out, the bonding wires are left in the bottom of the pan.

There are more steps to the process but you will have to search for those yourself or look around on GRF.

[PinkFloydEffect]

Yes I did know that, I looked up the process some people use a paint mixer on a drill with steel balls in a bucket to smash them up. I decided to draw my line at only removing capacitors (tantalum and silver mica) then selling the board as the same grade as before I began.

[PinkFloydEffect]

I am currently setting up my board bins for storage after some sorting, the local buyer in NH breaks his grades into the following:

[BOARD PRICING BASED ON " NO STEEL PLATES / NO HEATSINKS OR HEAVY ATTACHMENTS "]

[Low Grade Product]
Brown Monitor Boards
A/C Adapter No Wire
Power Supply Boards

[Mid Grade]
Cable TV / satellite TV / Printer and Modem boards
P3 & Older mother boards
P4 Boards
Server boards
Finger Boards Trimmed of Gold & boards that have had original components removed
Finger Boards ( No Mother Boards )(Heatsinks & Cooling fans REMOVED)
Medium grade Telecom Boards
Networking/ Cisco Boards
Telecom Boards

[High Grade Boards & Memory]
Rambus
Silver Tip memory
P3 Slot Cpu
P2 Slot Cpu
Hard Drive Boards
Clean Cell phone Boards
Gold Tip memory

CPU's & High Grade Gold Content Items
Due to constant change in spot gold price please Email me what you have on the day you plan on selling it and I will QUOTE you pricing.


Now I may not always sell to them, so I realize the bins may change and I want to keep it simple and do the fine sorting the weekend before I sell my scrap. This is what I am thinking:
-All brown board
-All computer motherboards
-All finger boards
-Communication boards
-Cable/Satellite/Printer/Modem boards
-Power supply boards
-All computer ram
-All cell phone boards
-All computer processors
-HDD boards (possibly with CD/DVD & Floppy boards too?)
-Printer ink cartridges


If I find two similar categories accumulate very slowly then I will merge them, I've seen some buyers put many of those categories into larger classes such as "peripherals"

[ryanw]

@ Your suggested sorting -

Motherboards will almost always at least be graded P3-older vs. small socket. There are some buyers that buy green vs non-green as well, but I would sort the first way.
RAM has large value difference between tin and gold edged
HD boards have a much higher value than CD/DVD boards
Trimmed finger boards should be kept separate...or put in with cable/sat/printer/modem/etc.
Keep different processor types in their own baggies.

[PinkFloydEffect]

I get what you mean, what I'm talking about is my bins are all the same size so even if I mixed all types of ram into one I probably still will not fill it after all my other bins are full and splitting that ram bin into separate bundles the weekend before selling wont be a problem. Same goes for other small item such as drive boards and processors.

I am deff thinking about continuing to cut the gold fingers off boards like PCI and Ram which devalues it from around $3.50/lb down to $1.50/lb which is still a little lower then the $1.70/lb for Cable TV / satellite TV / Printer and Modem boards.

Another thing I am wondering about is things such as computer networking/NIC cards and routers; PCI ethernet and WiFi cards and Linksys/D-Link routers...are all these classed as "medium grade telecom" or "networking/Cisco"? Seeing how computer modems are grouped with Cable TV / satellite TV / Printers I assume routers/NICs go in this group as well??

I figured HDD boards were worth more then CD/DVD but are CD/DVD that much higher then floppy boards?

[ryanw]

In the long run, I don't believe it's profitable to trim the ram off of those boards. If you want to just save the fingers, then that's a different story, and it could come down to calculations on the finger size and board weight to see if it's worth it.

I am guessing the networking/cisco boards will be from larger routers and other larger networking components.
Telecom can come from a variety of sources...phone systems, networking, etc. I even have some arcade boards that would be graded as telecom right now.

ALL pci cards, nics, etc just go with gold finger cards.

Boards from home modems/routers can probably go both ways (peripheral/telecom) depending on their population.

You'll have to, of course, ask your buyer for clarification on this.

[PinkFloydEffect]

What I don't plan on trimming ram chips off the boards? I was talking about the gold fingers themselves which I have been saving (I also try trimming gold pins off boards that are not noticeable for downgrading)

[PinkFloydEffect]

I am currently setting up my board bins for storage after some sorting, the local buyer in NH breaks his grades into the following:

[BOARD PRICING BASED ON " NO STEEL PLATES / NO HEATSINKS OR HEAVY ATTACHMENTS "]

[Low Grade Product]
Brown Monitor Boards
A/C Adapter No Wire
Power Supply Boards

[Mid Grade]
Cable TV / satellite TV / Printer and Modem boards
P3 & Older mother boards
P4 Boards
Server boards
Finger Boards Trimmed of Gold & boards that have had original components removed
Finger Boards ( No Mother Boards )(Heatsinks & Cooling fans REMOVED)
Medium grade Telecom Boards
Networking/ Cisco Boards
Telecom Boards

[High Grade Boards & Memory]
Rambus
Silver Tip memory
P3 Slot Cpu
P2 Slot Cpu
Hard Drive Boards
Clean Cell phone Boards
Gold Tip memory

CPU's & High Grade Gold Content Items
Due to constant change in spot gold price please Email me what you have on the day you plan on selling it and I will QUOTE you pricing.


Now I may not always sell to them, so I realize the bins may change and I want to keep it simple and do the fine sorting the weekend before I sell my scrap. This is what I am thinking:
-All brown board
-All computer motherboards
-All finger boards
-Communication boards
-Cable/Satellite/Printer/Modem boards
-Power supply boards
-All computer ram
-All cell phone boards
-All computer processors
-HDD boards (possibly with CD/DVD & Floppy boards too?)
-Printer ink cartridges


If I find two similar categories accumulate very slowly then I will merge them, I've seen some buyers put many of those categories into larger classes such as "peripherals"

Combining the NH buyers list with my other option being eWasted out of Ohio...I have refined my suggested sorting. Taking my allotted sorting space into account I built this rack out of 2 shelves, old recycling bins and coffee containers. I think I can make do with this and when they get full maybe I will band stacks of boards into bundles or something. This is what I am now thinking from top to bottom:

-Telecom/Communication/Cisco/Networking (finer sort at a later point)
-Complete Finger Boards
-Dual Socket Server Boards (small socket/DIVIDER/large socket)
-PC Motherboards (small socket/DIVIDER/large socket)
-Power Supply Board (DIVIDER) Cable & Satellite/Printer/Modem/Floppy Boards


With 5 shelves I can fit 30 coffee containers it's tight (6 per shelf; 4 in the front and 2 in the rear centered) so I'm thinking the following and they will need to be refined as I have done with my board categories because I know there are other newer AMD processors:

-Rambus / Gold Tip / Silver & Tin / Cell Boards
-HDD Boards / CD & DVD Boards
-Intel 386 / 486 / IBM & VIA Gold Cap
-Motorola / Pentium Pro Gold Cap / Pentium Ceramic
-AMD Ceramic / Black Fiber CPU / Green & Brown Fiber

[wadarbr549]

wow that looks so much nicer than my system of everything in piles and buckets strung through the field around my building.....i swear if you show that to my old lady i will get runned off..lol seriously looks nice and neat

[PinkFloydEffect]

haha yeah it should work good, maybe need to make a few adjustments down the line.


I need help sorting these boards though...these are blank Rambus sticks and since there is no metal casing they should be worth more however there are no chips so does it equal out to be worth the same as Rambus to refiners buying?


This is one of the many power boards I have from TVs and monitors that are LCD, do these go with computer power supply boards??


The video driver boards from TVs and monitors do they go with cable and satellite boards? (which for me is also the same for devalued/trimmed finger boards, printer, modem, and floppy boards)


And these boards from speed dial office phones? Go with the above grade same as modems? Or does this somehow make it into communication equipment?