trimming finger cards - Page 2

Originally Posted by ewasteofco

We stopped cutting the fingers off our boards because we started sending right to the refiner. Question what do you guys think about cutting them off VS send direct to refinery?

It has been calculated and shown that removing the fingers from boards will generate the extra income to justify the time involved in removing the fingers and selling or having them processed seperately. You will develope a higher grade product will less chance of losses of your Precious Metals from your refiner.

Here is a good cutter that does a great job.

Northern Industrial Sheet Metal Shear — 12in. Throat Depth | Metal Shears| Northern Tool + Equipment

Here is something else to ponder that I have been meaning to post on this thread and I feel now is a good time to put it up since you say you send your boards directly to a refiner.

Have you done any calculations on what it cost you per Lb. to have your material processed?

With some refiners charging $1.50-1.65 /lb. to process material. That means for each lb. of steel, brass, aluminum, plastic & copper (yes copper) that goes to refiner or that you sell. The end refiner gives no credit for, except for possibly the copper. That means for every ton of these items it is costing someone $3,000-$3,300 that someone pays for.

I see many of you asking what can I take off a board and not loose value in the boards, or what metal can I leave on and still not get docked for having too much metal left on. I think the real question that should be asked is what junk can I take off that will increase the value of the boards.

I see many of you going and chasing metal to make a dollar, nothing wrong with that. But start a trend and clean your boards up of excess junk and see if the buyers stand up and take notice and give you better prices.

Originally Posted by scrapperben

there needs to be a standard grading system that everyone can go by.
low grade is straight fwd, mid grade is a bit cloudy, but high grade is just all over the shop.
a mother board can range from basic to mr T like, gold hanging off it everywhere, pins and things I don't even know.
a card with fingers can have fingers spaced out, every 2nd & 3rd missing, some are thicker plating, longer fingers,
all kinds of variations that calling everything high grade is too general.

I think high grade should be specified more clearly, maybe have low grade - mid grade - high grade levels 1-10
fit everything into 10 grades of high grade so everything has a number, a ram chip might be H3, an ethernet card may be H4 or something like that, I have no idea but maybe it could be done?

not sure but it seems most things with high grade boards is the same, there may be odd variant cards made by small companies but generally where all scrapping the same things so in combination, I reckon we could do a photo database of almost every high grade board in existence!

why not, someone has to do it and what better place to get it done with hundreds of e-waste scrappers pulling high grade boards from things every day, then when everything is graded from 1 - 10, with the help of the refiners that buy this stuff, they can then set the price structure for the 10 grades.

might be like..

H1: $3.45 lb
H2: $4.89 lb
H3: $6.06 lb
and so on, then as prices go up or down, they just run a percentage up or down across all 10 grades.

I don't think that is going to be very possible since boards can range from .10 to over 200.00 per lb.