scrapping electricals for pm's

miniroo said:
ShinyStuff said:
So - question... how do you take apart the old vacuum tube TVs without smashing them. THEN, what to do with them later? I am totally into it, but these seem too hard for me.... love your advice.

Shiny.
Click to expand...

it's very easy to remove the copper without breaking the glass tube.
remove the 4 screws from the back cover, take it off, on top of the tube there is a small circuit board,
just pull it up off, then you'll see two stainless steel hose clamps, unscrew them and you just pull the
whole yolk up off the tube.

then the main circuit board just pulls out and you cut a few wires.
then pull out the big cord that wraps around the tv by snipping of the cable ties.
that's it, you can also remove the speakers if you like then cover back on and your done.

but if you have no real means of disposing tv tubes then your best to do it where you find the tv.
Click to expand...

Here in Illawarra NSW they DONT accept vacuum TVs on council clean ups.... that is my understanding. also, they DONT accept steel.. which is weird as I thought they would love it as they make $$ on it. That is how I came to be a scrapper... they left all my steel behind so it got me into it!
 
Man you are a real inspiration, turning what might be for other people time spent watching telly, smoking cones or bitching about life into exploring a new source of income and actually learning it and embracing it AS WELL AS making money from it in my book kicks arse, You are an inspiration, you have not only identified a real source of income along with doing good by the planet as well, you have done your best to embrace it and learned from all the other people you encountered along the way.

Not only have you taught yourself mostly but you have also shown others how it is done with the barest of elements within your means of transport and storage and embraced the potential.

You Sir deserve all that you gain and I hope that all that you seek comes your way in the future as you deserve every bit of it.

You epitomise what it is to be Australian , Identifying an opportunity and doing your best to achieve it. Some will frown and discourage you, some frown and look down on you. The rest of us will envy and congratulate you for either making a go of it or recycling things.

Ensure you stay safe tho and know what you are dealing with, My cousin lost his arm's in a recycling accident but still made millions. And long before the current potential.

Good luck to you and your endevour miniroo. Thanks for sharing and posting your progress here along with other members who have helped along the way.
 
Thanks man, yeah having a crack.

had a little break last couple days to try and get some sort of order here.
finished the 2nd area, was just a small estate and got to it towards the end but did have a couple super batches there.

yesterday I went to a new district, 10 minutes away, the've been having hard rubbish in sections, i've missed a few but am onto the current part and in the morning will go and load up. got a load today & yesterday but it was raining and am expecting most houses to put out there things tommorow before it's picked up from monday.

so tommorow i'm gonna try and do 5 trips and catch as much stuff as it's coming out as possible, this area not only has a cord cutter but a tv scrapper that is doing quite an efficient job of removing all the copper from the tv's & monitors real clean, even puts the covers back so at least he does it nice, but will eat up more time for me as I stop for the monitors, only to find them gutted out.

my biggest mistake so far was to load up half the garage first with tv's, then pack it real tight with small items so now it's not worth pulling everything out to get to the tv's, i'll just have to scrap my way in over time.

but did start and have half of my bench space back so I can at least stand in one spot and do things, I first need to empty my shed, then i'll repack it with small items that I don't want to scrap right away, things like modems, hard drives & laptops, they contain very little left over rubbish and are nice and clean to stack, I wanna start on 'em when i've got no big items left and it's warmer weather, more daylight and I'll feel like sitting in the garage until late night.

Speakers are something I've always had a fascination with, and so was picking up lots.
but they take up so much space and contain very little,
usually made of cheap chipboard and when it get's wet it's even heavier, I am over speakers and won't pick 'em up during hard rubbish times, maybe in between times I s'pose it's better then nothing but I scrapped all speakers I had stacked up outside, I had just as much volume of rubbish to go out as I brought in with speakers,

so today when I went out for that one pick up, I loaded up all the scrapped speakers and as I picked up a monitor, I replaced it with some of my junk, that's fair hey? :)

But I'll keep looking at the speakers and at least pick them up to feel their weight, the occasional speaker is quite heavy and is ok, but there is something else that seems to be mistaken for a speaker, these big black boxes that are a speaker but lots more, weigh about 20kg's and I think they are amps? not sure but they have a huge heat sink on the outside and lots of plugs and things, anyway, yeah, the're awesome!

here's a pic of inside the door of the garage..

scrap1003.jpg


and my new stack of printers to be scrapped..

scrap1004.jpg
 
now what you do is get a industrial metal shredder next to the pool. float off the plastic. pull the ferrous out with a electro magnet. pan the remainder for gold silver and copper. take the rest and melt it down for the alloy.
 
today I was at mt ritzy, interestingly though, it seems the wealthier the suburb, the less they have to throw out.
perhaps they buy the best quality and don't need to throw things out?
well it's very different in this neck of the woods, some of the houses in this area are ridiculously enormous.
anyway I got this silver plated cutlery box, the pile where I picked it up had a lot of nice electrical items
and when I cleaned it all up, in the rain, all that was left was a flat soggy cardboard box and i just decided to flip it up.
well I saw a cutlery set and took it, got it home and find it's double layered and for 12.

cutlery002.jpg


cutlery003.jpg


cutlery004.jpg


there's a ladel, a serving spoon and fork, cake server, 12 spoons, knives & forks, 12 little forks and 12 teaspoons.
that's 64 pieces and they all have written on them.. Silver Plated - Italy. and the cake server also has Mazel EP ZINC written on it.
they are unusual as they are quite thin, the knives are almost like throwing daggers.
the handles have a nice design front & back, all identical except the cake server has more detail and more words, it's probably meant to be the centrepiece of the set or something.

what does silver plated mean? only plated and it's not real silverware?
going by the box which is quite old, has been repaired a long time ago aswell so I'd say at least 25 years, maybe more.
does being made in Italy have any significance? I was hoping to see some sort of royal symbol or something but nothing.
hey could these be silver plated zinc?

so what you's think? I put a magnet to 'em and they don't stick, what should I do with them?
 
a friend of mine is working on maintaing comps in abig school i think 1600 kids and he says they renew regularly loads of computers throwing the old ones in the bin where he is free to take cpus etc. Thing is i tried to convince him to take out to salvage them and other bits he asked me how much they are worth. we went on ebay and they had like 50 cpu's for bout $150. which does seem like a lot of trouble for loads of work. He told me i can let you know when we're throwing the next bit out if you help me throw them out you can help yourself to all the bits. What do you guys reckon?
 
Just silver plated - worthless for the silver content, but a nice set of cutlery that can be cleaned up and used. Give them a short soak in cloudy ammonia and see how they turn out.

Amazing what people throw out - knew a guy once who picked up an old set of golf clubs from hard waste, there were a couple of solid gold ballmarkers inside the front flap. Couple of hundred bucks in gold just thrown out.
 
miniroo said:
today I was at mt ritzy, interestingly though, it seems the wealthier the suburb, the less they have to throw out.
perhaps they buy the best quality and don't need to throw things out?
well it's very different in this neck of the woods, some of the houses in this area are ridiculously enormous.
anyway I got this silver plated cutlery box, the pile where I picked it up had a lot of nice electrical items
and when I cleaned it all up, in the rain, all that was left was a flat soggy cardboard box and i just decided to flip it up.
well I saw a cutlery set and took it, got it home and find it's double layered and for 12.

http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s391/miniroo/cutlery002.jpg

http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s391/miniroo/cutlery003.jpg

http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s391/miniroo/cutlery004.jpg

there's a ladel, a serving spoon and fork, cake server, 12 spoons, knives & forks, 12 little forks and 12 teaspoons.
that's 64 pieces and they all have written on them.. Silver Plated - Italy. and the cake server also has Mazel EP ZINC written on it.
they are unusual as they are quite thin, the knives are almost like throwing daggers.
the handles have a nice design front & back, all identical except the cake server has more detail and more words, it's probably meant to be the centrepiece of the set or something.

what does silver plated mean? only plated and it's not real silverware?
going by the box which is quite old, has been repaired a long time ago aswell so I'd say at least 25 years, maybe more.
does being made in Italy have any significance? I was hoping to see some sort of royal symbol or something but nothing.
hey could these be silver plated zinc?

so what you's think? I put a magnet to 'em and they don't stick, what should I do with them?
Click to expand...

I had lots and lots of unwanted silverplate wares - cutlery, tea pots, bowls etc.

Took everything to an auction house, they have a weekly sale for stuff like this. Everything sold and all up made a few hundred $s!

So ring around and see if any auction places will accept these.
 
I have a few kilograms of old RAM sticks sitting in a box.... I wonder if anyone would be interested in buying them or a swap for metal?
 
Just saw this from a member on a gold refining forum I frequent.
Home refined from scrap....... and very yummy!
Looks feking cool too.
This is now a goal of mine. :)

4088_p1190268.jpg


4088_p1190280.jpg
 
miniroo: i too try to scrap PM, and have been collecting lots of pc box.

where do you get the price for the copper ? some of the places i asked in dandenong only give me $0.90/kg for copper cable.

it seems like it is much more easier if you just gather all the cpu + ram and auction it off on ebay.. i have try to source the chemical, and they costs about $200 odd just for nitric acid (small quantity).

no pick up from the place (sigma ) only courier delivery only.
 
Is there any scrappers in Adelaide, South Australia?
I need some advise about refining gold. I have heaps of phones and computer parts with gold plating on them, i have a few containers of gold plated pins. I found a bunch of videos about refining the gold off with acid but after that you are left with a nice fine gold powder.
I dont have a foundry or any means to melt the powder into ingots so i havent started refining my scrap yet. If anyone lives in Adelaide that has access to some equipment and is willing to help me please sent a PM :)
 
long88 said:
miniroo:

where do you get the price for the copper ? some of the places i asked in dandenong only give me $0.90/kg for copper cable.

it seems like it is much more easier if you just gather all the cpu + ram and auction it off on ebay.. i have try to source the chemical, and they costs about $200 odd just for nitric acid (small quantity).

no pick up from the place (sigma ) only courier delivery only.
Click to expand...

yeah 90c kg is for low grade pvc wire that contains a miniimum of 30% copper in it.
that's the new low price, has been like $1.40 kg up until recently.
wire with minimum 43% copper goes for $1.80 and up to $2.30 kg.

big places like sims would of paid you $1.80 kg for that wire if it came from pc's, tv's ect, and you included the cords too.
I cut all my cords and plug ends off, only to find I didn't even need to do that!
they don't really care as they don't process anything here.
they squash all the wire up and send it to china, so if there's plugs and ends ect, it's all the same thing when squashed.
and 'cos there's brass ends on plugs they actually get good value.

yeah I agree with the cpu's & ram, certainly a much easier way is to sell on ebay, the gold content doesn't change but
depending on who is bidding, if you get cpu collectors bidding then you'll probably sell for twice the value.
I do it with the copper/aluminium heat sinks from mother boards, the're mean looking things and would sell better then melt for sure.

Cind3r

http://goldrefiningforum.com is a forum for those interested in refining e-waste safely and you'll probably find contacts.
 
cind3r

download the ebook refining precious metal scrap by hook.. that will be the first book that you will need to get yourself familiar.. a lot of reading.. but it at least get you started well.. and dont end up on mess.

i can send it to your emaill if you want

miniroo said:
long88 said:
miniroo:

where do you get the price for the copper ? some of the places i asked in dandenong only give me $0.90/kg for copper cable.

it seems like it is much more easier if you just gather all the cpu + ram and auction it off on ebay.. i have try to source the chemical, and they costs about $200 odd just for nitric acid (small quantity).

no pick up from the place (sigma ) only courier delivery only.
Click to expand...

yeah 90c kg is for low grade pvc wire that contains a miniimum of 30% copper in it.
that's the new low price, has been like $1.40 kg up until recently.
wire with minimum 43% copper goes for $1.80 and up to $2.30 kg.

big places like sims would of paid you $1.80 kg for that wire if it came from pc's, tv's ect, and you included the cords too.
I cut all my cords and plug ends off, only to find I didn't even need to do that!
they don't really care as they don't process anything here.
they squash all the wire up and send it to china, so if there's plugs and ends ect, it's all the same thing when squashed.
and 'cos there's brass ends on plugs they actually get good value.

yeah I agree with the cpu's & ram, certainly a much easier way is to sell on ebay, the gold content doesn't change but
depending on who is bidding, if you get cpu collectors bidding then you'll probably sell for twice the value.
I do it with the copper/aluminium heat sinks from mother boards, the're mean looking things and would sell better then melt for sure.

Cind3r

http://goldrefiningforum.com is a forum for those interested in refining e-waste safely and you'll probably find contacts.
Click to expand...
 
renovator said:
Hey miniroo hows it going have you cleared your shed out a bit & made a few bucks ?
Click to expand...

yeah shed's cleared out and been selling some bits n pieces over the past few weeks, mostly the things that take up space like steel.
wires, some copper, aluminium and low grade circuit boards. so yeah a bit of cash rolling in now.

have learnt a lot and been setting up a better system to process e-waste on a larger scale but mostly to do it efficiently.
one of my biggest time wasters so far is double, triple and quadruple handling of things, and not having a place for everything.
I spend too much time moving things around until I work out what to do with it.
having 300 or so tv's stacked up was a bad move too, in hind sight I would of saved weeks of work processing them as they came in
and never letting them pile up in the first place.

I've decided to go the next step into e-waste recycling and try make a business out of it, think e-waste recycling is the biz' of the 21st century,
probably not in the copper so much as it was and still is somewhat, the future of e-waste will lean more so towards precious metal recovery.
i'm blown away at the amount of e-waste there is out there, just take the old style tv's right now, there's 10 million about to hit the land fills as we go digital, on average you can make $5 from an old tv if you work at it a bit, so that's $50 million going to landfill in the next year.
flat screen tv's are already being recycled, they don't have the copper, they have mid - high grade circuit boards with platinum, palladium, cpu's and gold laden plug ends, the steel is now being replaced by aluminium, so it's getting higher in value and smaller to handle.

so yeah, in between scrapping what I amassed during the hard rubbish frenzy, I been setting up my place to go commercial, researching and getting myself organised, hope to be advertising soon.
 
after reading this thread youve inspired me to look into maybe doing this myself.
thanks for keeping us informed miniroo, your an inspiration
 
miniroo said:
renovator said:
Hey miniroo hows it going have you cleared your shed out a bit & made a few bucks ?
Click to expand...

yeah shed's cleared out and been selling some bits n pieces over the past few weeks, mostly the things that take up space like steel.
wires, some copper, aluminium and low grade circuit boards. so yeah a bit of cash rolling in now.

have learnt a lot and been setting up a better system to process e-waste on a larger scale but mostly to do it efficiently.
one of my biggest time wasters so far is double, triple and quadruple handling of things, and not having a place for everything.
I spend too much time moving things around until I work out what to do with it.
having 300 or so tv's stacked up was a bad move too, in hind sight I would of saved weeks of work processing them as they came in
and never letting them pile up in the first place.

I've decided to go the next step into e-waste recycling and try make a business out of it, think e-waste recycling is the biz' of the 21st century,
probably not in the copper so much as it was and still is somewhat, the future of e-waste will lean more so towards precious metal recovery.
i'm blown away at the amount of e-waste there is out there, just take the old style tv's right now, there's 10 million about to hit the land fills as we go digital, on average you can make $5 from an old tv if you work at it a bit, so that's $50 million going to landfill in the next year.
flat screen tv's are already being recycled, they don't have the copper, they have mid - high grade circuit boards with platinum, palladium, cpu's and gold laden plug ends, the steel is now being replaced by aluminium, so it's getting higher in value and smaller to handle.

so yeah, in between scrapping what I amassed during the hard rubbish frenzy, I been setting up my place to go commercial, researching and getting myself organised, hope to be advertising soon.
Click to expand...
Good to hear its working out . I particularly like the fact that your learning the do's & dont's & the more efficient way of doing it . Those things can only be learned from actual experience . Hope it all works out for ya . simms metal started from humble beginnings too :)
 
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