Today's experiment: cleaning boards with a grinder.

some one mentioned cleaning boards with an angle grinder the other day, so today I tryed it.

my opinion unless you have a space suit. and closed cabinet with vaccuum to collect the dust I don't reccommend it.

first tried to grind the solder from the back, guess I wasent holding my mouth right, didnt work too well.



then I decided to try the 7 inch blade and strip the front, it worked fine for speed, but created a lot of dust that Im sure is next to arsinic as far as hazard is concerned.

works and is pretty quick but like I said with out breating protection and dust collection equipment I cant reccommend it.

Back to the drawing board.

wow sure screwed the title to that one up, and cant edit it. sry

Were you trying to de-populate the board or just take certain items off?

Hey olddude that me I think. I do this all the time, only certain items on the whole board, and only hit spots with thr solder. Dose make some dust but not that much. If you have to do it in front of a fan to blow the dust away from you. I only take off ic chips and the transformers and sometimes the alu. If your afraidof a little dust your in the wrong bussness, just about every thing in e-scrap is toxic, lead, solder, fiberglass and who ellse knows whats in some of those other things on circute boards.

Have you tried a heat gun?

havent got a heat gun yet, I keep forgetting to get one

not afraid of the dust for my self but I do consider others. who will come after me.

kind of hard to get IC chips with a claw hammer. at least for me it is.

I'll try my heat gun tonight and see how it goes.

I tried using a toaster oven on a couple smaller boards. Actually worked not to bad.

I was going to recommend an oven, or a chisel, I have a bunch of com boards I need to clean so I'm still a newb at it.

Tried the heat gun, IC's were easy but the caps that had leaked were a pain. A little slow but no nasty fumes or lead dust.

I will try using a 9inch angle grinder with a 5inch dia metal wire 'cup' shaped brush on it & see what its like.....

My other thought was burning the single components off using a magnifying lens in the sun while wearing a welding mask.
Since I'd just be looking for the capacitors that contain platinum.

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

I think your going to be looking a long time as there is no platinum in caps. only palladium and silver for PM's.

Thanks for that, palladium was what I ment. Thanks for the info too, its just what I was looking for.

The wire brush in a grinder just polished the SMD's with a thin layer of grey solder...

I then tried a grinder with a disc & found it was quite easy to remove just what I wanted.
A little too easy to grind into the board too...

I'm now planning to use a plain metal disc in the grinder. A homemade disc, 4 inch dia & 3-4mm thick with a lot of 3mm x 5mm cuts around the outside of the disc.
I'm thinking that the disc will break off the SMD's instead of grinding them off, but I still get the control over what I'm taking off.
The mainly plain disc will be safer as it won't dig into skin much, or attack larger metal stuff that I don't want, like metal can capacitors.

So much for bringing me your TV's, eh Joe? Didnt know you were in the TV business as well. Must of been nice taking a look through my shop.