Scrapping a surgical laser machine

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Kisers

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Nov 28, 2017
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Has anybody scrapped a surgical laser machine for its pm and if so what kind of pm was recovered.?
I picked up a surgical laser machine and in the manual that came with it stating do not dispose of at a public dump before removing hazardous chemicals and valuable metals.
So with that being said. If anyone has any knowledge on this my first a foremost important question should be what kind of hazardous chemicals would i have to deal with also
 
A few. The laser head, if flow through co2 variety usually has some good gold plate / gold clad parts. Beyond that it was mostly the electronics.


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Might also be lasing rods made of different gem stones or other lasing media.

Lazersteve (oddly enough--NOT!) would be a good guy to ask.
 
Lou said:
Might also be lasing rods made of different gem stones or other lasing media.

Lazersteve (oddly enough--NOT!) would be a good guy to ask.

Yes!

...and the bigger the laser gets, the better the PM content.

Unfortunately, of the medical grade lasers I've disassembled, they are pretty low power. You'll find more PM's in the power supply driving units though, as they'll very likely have some good RF power transistors (be careful of the Be Oxide)
 
So this is what you will possibly find. These are the charging lamps. (I think that's the right term) They are gold plated or gold clad copper, though it will feel like aluminum in your hand. Inside the layers of copper are cooling channels. Those two holes were for O-Rings and water was pumped through to cool the lamps.

The ones I had were low 3% high 2% Au, with balance copper and Ag, likely from brazing alloy.
 

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