Hobbyist E-Waste Enthusiast - Chattanooga, TN

Hi and welcome to the forum from Las Vegas! And thank you for sharing in the joys of breaking stuff! Since the goal is the process itself every desktop printer made since around 2005 should have at least two Mid Grade circuit boards (One underneath the button panel and one where the USB plugs in) and one Power Board (where the power cable is or connects) plus a small handfull of low-grade wire, some papery thin ribbon wire you can put with the power boards and a bunch of plastic and steel, the latter on occasion stainless steel. It can be fun and meditative even breaking them down. Older printers can commonly have telecom grade boards and gold or silver RAM as can older faxes, word processors and even keyboards! Your results are always welcome, especially with photos for all us scrap nerds.

I learned how to do custom builds exclusively through destruction. So if you're attentive and take photos and notes for reference you can learn every different connector, what kind and how many of what connectors are necessary on a motherboard in order to [whatever the build goal is] and so on. It's super interesting especially when you get to the point where you can have a strong guess at what a board does just by looking at it and understanding its architecture.

Chatanooga is large enough that *someone* there should accept ABS. Check with whoever does your curbside recycling to see if they do.

Be careful depopulating boards at all with a toddler around. Older circuit boards often have lead solder and even newer ones can depending on a variety of factors. Plus all kinds of other hazards. There are ways but you have to take extrordinary care. I wouldn't do it.

Hey,

Do the curbside recycling places actually recycle ABS? I've read where a lot of things that are picked up for recycling ends up in the landfill anyway.

I have a friend who is building a refining setup. If I decide to depopulate, I'd probably haul my stuff over to his place for an afternoon and hang out. He's single so I don't care if he gets lead poisoning :P Since my volume is going to be so low, I feel like depopulating is probably ultimately the way to go for stuff I'm not going to repurpose. I don't have the storage to stack up boards to eventually sell.

Are depopulated boards just trash or do they go in with the low grade boards at a scrapyard? I wouldn't try to sell them to a board buyer obviously.