Just a couple of tips I thought of

Have not seen these mentioned when I searched so I thought I would share them...

One thing that we have found very useful is a pair of scissors....This is great when you are clipping IDE connectors off of the cables. Most people know this as Ribbon wire...The scissors make short work of this and it has really sped up our operation.

Another one is using a grinder to remove the wires from power supplies. We like to do things that are similar together so we stack up the power supplies and save them until we are done dismantling towers. We were spending a lot of time and getting a lot of sore hands using wire cutters on the wiring harnesses from the power supplies. One of my employees came up with the idea of using a grinder and it has worked great for us. It allows us to remove the wire from all of our power supplies within a few minutes rather than a few hours.

Hope these tips will help

Thankyou CS....I thought of scissors too and it really cut the time in at least half. I hadn't thought of using the grinder cause I take my ps's apart. What do you do with yours. thanks again for sharing. Did I tell you that I'm glad you came back ? (3 times ??!!) lol

I use these for cutting the wires off of power supplies. Take your scissors and grow them up. This things works awesome.
http://www.harborfreight.com/15-inch...per-66278.html
I line up 10 or so powersupplies on my workbench then just go down the line takes like 30 secongs to do 10 of them this way.

Thanks Dee....It is great to be back with the gang lol....We sell our power supplies whole (minus the wire). During the early days we were tearing them down but we found out that we were losing in the end. I think we are getting somewhere in the area of .35 per pound for ps without wire right now. It has really sped up our process over the past year and we are actually profiting from the power supplies rather than losing on them.

We stumbled upon the scissor idea in quite a strange manner....My partner decided to go out to the shop on a Sunday afternoon...He and his girlfriend had gotten into a little *tiff* so he went there to cool off. When he got there he decided to cut some wire but he had forgotten his tool box keys (We lock all the tools up each night) and all he could find was a pair of scissors. The rest is history. I told him he needed to fight with his girlfriend more often lol.

Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

I use these for cutting the wires off of power supplies. Take your scissors and grow them up. This things works awesome.
http://www.harborfreight.com/15-inch...per-66278.html
I line up 10 or so powersupplies on my workbench then just go down the line takes like 30 secongs to do 10 of them this way.

Those would work great for the power supplies....Had never thought of that...The one downfall to using the grinder on the power supplies is the noise but most everyone that works for me has their Ipod plugged into their skull all day long anyway so the noise is not really an issue, especially considering some of the music choices LOL....We have a rather strange mix of folks on the payroll these days and no one could agree on a music station so I instituted the rule of bring your own.

the loppers dont use electricity either so cheaper recover rate. I think they aree quicker than a grinder too.

Thanks I will check into those....We have a store here in town that carries pretty much everything that Harbor Freight does in the way of tools. They would probably have some of them there. Let me ask this....Are you having any trouble with them getting dull after so many power supplies? If so, are they easy to sharpen?

Do you sell them to a yard or one of your e-waste buyers ? My yard won't take them. That's why I've been breaking them down.

Originally Posted by Dumpster-Dee

Do you sell them to a yard or one of your e-waste buyers ? My yard won't take them. That's why I've been breaking them down.

E-waste buyer....Most yards won't mess with them because they cannot see the value. Same thing I went through when I first started. I knew there had to be some value to them but no one wanted to touch them....Here is the kicker...If you are planning to ship your e-waste in to a buyer then they are not worth it...Just too heavy to ship and make any money. We don't ship anything, we deliver direct so it makes it worth our time. we usually take in 2000 pounds of power supplies along with assorted other items.

Originally Posted by ComputerScrapper

Thanks I will check into those....We have a store here in town that carries pretty much everything that Harbor Freight does in the way of tools. They would probably have some of them there. Let me ask this....Are you having any trouble with them getting dull after so many power supplies? If so, are they easy to sharpen?

Mine havnt dulled out any and ive done maybe 100 or so. i would imagine they would dull since they are made to cut trees and not metal just like anything else. The pair I have come apart with a bolt so when they do need sharpening it sholdnt be all that hard on the bench grinder.

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

CS, we use a reclaimed paper cutter from a cleanout for the ribbon cable. It's like the loppers, just pull the lever and it slices like butter.

Im still waiting to find one of those at a garage sale myself ever since I read that what you used it for. i want one now. I have a box with about 30 pounds of ribbon cable I need to cut up.

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

CS, we use a reclaimed paper cutter from a cleanout for the ribbon cable. It's like the loppers, just pull the lever and it slices like butter.

We tried that with a papercutter we had laying around and could not get it to work but it was a newer version and probably not sturdy enough to actually do the job. I probably need to find one of those old monsters that they used to have in the schools when teachers would cut paper.

Been using the scissors on them for awhile now.

I've always kept a pair in the top drawer of the chest for cutting sheets of sandpaper, grabbed them one day and they work great...nice, close cut.

I like to just use my bolt cutters. nice and easy.