Insight on 60’s er tape reader CNC control.

I will be picking up this controller in the morning. I’ve yet to set eyes on it but it is free and the photo shows some good quality pins and a ton of boards.

Anyone have any suggestions or words of causation as I begin to break this down? I’ll post more information once I have it.

Well, she’s freaking loaded. Greasy as all hell but packed with pins and fingers. Lots of rotary style contacts. Thick dark plating.


What’s best to clean all these greasy parts? Just a tumble in soapy water?

Pumped!

I would use detergent and water verses soap and water.

Run a small batch of parts to see if the detergent and water removes the "grease." Many times simply swishing the mixture around will not remove all of the grime. A few simple experiments may be in order.

If detergent and water doesn't work, it may be worth while to try brake cleaner or maybe alcohol. If you try those, be sure to do it outside, since the fumes could be somewhat explosive. Brake cleaner can dissolve quite a bit of oil and grease and usually leaves no residue when the solvent evaporates from the parts.

The new low VOC brake cleaners are primarily acetone and do not work as well. If you have a choice, the chlorinated ones work very well. Although non flammable, the solvents could be carcinogenic. Proper PPE is always a good thing to consider.

Yep, that is some real nice scrap.

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll be sure to try a few of your suggestions.

Stuffs cleaning up pretty well. Nice heavy pins. This is about 25% of the pins, 200grams.

Fingers are nice thick foils too.

Are the gold foils on both sides ?

Yes on most. Only a couple of the small ones are single sided.

I hope you can harvest several pounds... you can expect a nice yield from them! :G

https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=29390&p=309375#p309375

You might also find some silver tantalum cans... and silver mica capacitors.

I probably have a good pound of them. I’ll have to bust out the scale.

15 large boards and several smaller ones. Hundreds of IC chips. Gold leges transistors, several other goodies I can’t identify.... lots of work in this old control.

Looks like all the traces are silver.

The traces are copper with solder cover.

Göran

g_axelsson said:

The traces are copper with solder cover.

Göran

Click to expand...

Correct & that is likely the old 50/50 tin/lead solder

Also concerning the gold plating (pins & fingers) that old stuff (60s & 70s) tends to run 3 - 5.5 grams per pound depending on the maker of the boards

Nice score

Kurt

Looks like you've got a good amount of tantalum caps too, very nice!

Yes sir, she’s full of goodies. Found a bunch or gold legged transistors, and geranium transistors with gold legs and bridges inside.

Needless to say I am already making the calls necessary to find a few more of these.

450 grams of pins out of the board receivers. Not bad for about 2.5 hours of pulling pins. Man that wire wraps kinda a pain in the ass