Toss in shred or break down everything???

I have a bunch of these boards that came out of some network switches I just purchased (100+). Should I try and break each of them down into parts (copper / al / etc). Or should I just not waste the time and toss them into my shred pile?

Do you have a local buyer for power boards?

from what i can see theres going to be quite a bit of copper, aluminium & wires if u had to remove them from the boards.
it will take time but i think it will be much more profitable if u removed them & sold them separately and then sold the shred.

Do 5 boards and weigh up the results to see what your take home would be

Then weigh up 5 of the complete boards and multiply that weight by shred price

Only you can determine what your time is worth

I also always consider how busy I am >> If I have 5 cars already in the driveway >> Next couple might just get battery, aluminum rims and Cats pulled
If times have been slow and I only have 1 car in the driveway then I strip it down >> battery, aluminum rims and Cats PLUS aluminum radiator, aluminum AC parts,alternator, starter, RAS cores and all the wiring harness I can get in 10 minutes

No one around here buys boards / ewaste. Why stuff gets tossed in shred so much.

Originally Posted by Ticonderoga

No one around here buys boards / ewaste. Why stuff gets tossed in shred so much.

Good potential for starting a new ewaste buying venture?

Originally Posted by Ticonderoga

No one around here buys boards / ewaste. Why stuff gets tossed in shred so much.

Whereabouts are you? Might be worth packing to ship if you have room to save a pallet worth.

The general consensus among the scrappers in my area is that the brown power boards aren't worth breaking down by hand.

It's best if they're processed by the ton in a factory setting to recover the lead,copper, and aluminum.

To use an analogy: Imagine loading a big eighteen wheel dump truck with sand.

Would it make more sense to load it with a shovel -or- a front end loader ?

If it were me, I'd cut all the wire off them I could quickly get to, and use a hammer or something and bash the copper heatsinks off. That's what I do on the ones I get. I don't bother with the small aluminum ones. Only if the AL heatsinks are large, or if they are copper. Just my 2 cents.

I watched the local guys ... back when they were doing them.



They used a meat cleaver and a 12" long piece of I-Beam as an anvil.

Sometimes they used tin snips and cut the board.

Sometimes they just snapped the board in half with their hands.

They took the transformers, little copper coily things, heatsinks, the three legged transistor thingies that are bolted to the heat sinks, and the ferrites.

Personally, i don't breakdown any boards. There's too much of an unknown health risk. We know that there's the lead poisoning risk with solder. Sometimes the ferrites have an iron core but sometimes there's this powder inside instead. (No idea what that is.) The three legged transistor things have copper inside but you have to smash off the ceramic. ( Don't know if the ceramic dust is harmful.) The transformers seem okay, but they're a real booger to get apart.

It would be nice if they were all made the same but each manufacturer has their own way of doing things. There's no way of knowing for sure what you're dealing with. It might be harmless to the scrapper ... or... it might not be.

Thanks for all of the input all. I may just toss them in a bin for now to break down on a rainy day.

Lots of opportunity for ewaste in my area. But I already have a full time job, plus a number of side jobs. I'm in Georgia, with most ewaste buyers out west.