# LCD scrap



## warlead

Are there any recoverable, valuable metals in LCD screens / monitors? I am seeing more and more of these going to the trash heap.


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## Noxx

Still working parts can be resold.


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## Lou

I think they're made with indium tin-oxide. Indium's about a $1 or so per gram.


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## warlead

the screens themselves have indium? how would you recover it?


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## Lou

Could not tell you, I've never went after indium from mixed oxides before, just its sulfate.


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## Anonymous

They have about 1 pound of number 2 copper in each screen that's about all I can scrap from them. The rest I give to the recycle yard. But this is for CTR monitors not LCD's.


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## aflacglobal

Welcome to the forum Kyle.


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## cypher7194

kyle on what part of the monitor do you get the copper from? the wires inside of it or the monitor part?


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## donald236

cypher i can help with this because Ive done tons of these literal tons .
the copper there talking about is in monitors and its in several different places one being on the yoke of the screen . the other part is around the screen found at the bottom and sometimes under the screen so you'll have to take the screws out in order to get to the copper . this rope is taped with black electrical tape . now on the circuit board there's copper , and aluminum . 
if you need any more help with this please (pm) me


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## cypher7194

thanks just whats i needed


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## kelly

I've found gold in laptop LCD screens. If you look real close or with a magnifying glass you'll see gold wires running around three sides of the board (nec versa s/33 and an old compaq). Fine as a hair, but quite a bit of it. I haven't processed any yet partly due to time and partly because its sealed under some kind of silicone. I'm still in the gathering, learning stage. Thanks to this site and the people on it I feel for the first time that I can actually successfully process the stuff I've hoarded. I've been reading and watching and rereading and rewatching. All I can say is 
THANK YOU! This forum and you guys rock!
K


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## Claudie

kelly said:


> I've found gold in laptop LCD screens. If you look real close or with a magnifying glass you'll see gold wires running around three sides of the board (nec versa s/33 and an old compaq). Fine as a hair, but quite a bit of it. I haven't processed any yet partly due to time and partly because its sealed under some kind of silicone. I'm still in the gathering, learning stage. Thanks to this site and the people on it I feel for the first time that I can actually successfully process the stuff I've hoarded. I've been reading and watching and rereading and rewatching. All I can say is
> THANK YOU! This forum and you guys rock!
> K




Gold around three side of the screens, hmm.
I have several LCD screens at the shop, I will tear into a few tomorrow and see what I can find.


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## wrecker45

when taking the copper yoke off the tube do not twist it the tube will break wiggle it up and down


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## Claudie

I am referring to the flat panel LCD screens like are on laptops, not the CRT or big TV style monitors.


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## Claudie

I took one of these apart today, was pretty simple to do. Yes it appears that there are tiny gold wires running along the edges of the glass & possibly making a grid inside of the glass. There were also two pieces of PC board in there that have a small line of gold plated fingers running the length of them. I will try to post some detailed pictures of it later. 

To answer the original question, YES! There IS gold in there! :lol:


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## T3sl4

Brauer says indium can be electroplated from a solution of indium sulfate. Platinum gauze or foil anode, 20-35C temp, 10mA/cm^2 current density. "Smooth deposition is aided by hourly addition of 1ml of 1% gelatin or carpenter's glue solution per liter of electrolyte."

Probably suffices to peel apart the glass panes, wash away the liquid crystal and dye stuff, then leach the ITO with acid.

Tim


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## Claudie

This picture shows the rows of gold plated fingers on the boards taken from the edges of the screen.


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## Claudie

This photo shows the boards still attached. The thin gold wires run along two sides of the glass, that's the only obvious gold I could find. You need a magnifying glass to see them.


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## hfywc

where are the photos?


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## hfywc

okay...now i see them...thanks.


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## ilyaz

I pulled out these two pieces from an LCD monitor. They are about 12" in length and seem to be gold-plated on one side. At least they have a typical "gold" color on one side and "usual" stainless steel look on the other. So is this gold on the front or not? Thanks.


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## patnor1011

Are they magnetic?


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## ilyaz

patnor1011 said:


> Are they magnetic?



no


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## goldsilverpro

Completely dissolve a small piece in a little 50/50 nitric. If any gold flakes remain, it is gold plated. However, I think I've seen these before and I'm thinking they're just brass with no gold. Don't go by what I think, though. Test them yourself.


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## ilyaz

goldsilverpro said:


> Completely dissolve a small piece in a little 50/50 nitric. If any gold flakes remain, it is gold plated. However, I think I've seen these before and I'm thinking they're just brass with no gold. Don't go by what I think, though. Test them yourself.



Thanks! Where can I buy nitric? Also, can brass have stainless steel color? That's what the back looks like.


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## patnor1011

If back is white it may be anodized aluminium. My rule in electronic scrap is simple. Do not think that everything what is yellow is gold. Try to think what is the purpose of putting gold on that piece and if you would put gold there as manufacturer. Test everything you can. If you cant get nitric snipe small bit and put that in HCl. Bit slower than nitric but something anyway.


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## othercompguy

I replace laptop screens once in a while and I save the old ones to display. After reading this I decided to take a look at them a bit closer:


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## Militoy

patnor1011 said:


> ...Do not think that everything what is yellow is gold....



I always try to keep this rule in mind - and some gold plating over brass can also be very thin - a flash well under 10 microinches will still look like pretty gold when the brass underneath is visible through the plating. It works the other way around as well - I picked up a large box of bridge rectifiers that had failed their in-process testing. The faston terminals looked to me to be unplated brass - but that didn't make sense from the standpoint of solderability. I pulled the datasheet on the parts - and they are plated with 30 microinches minimum of gold.


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## cincoer

I process 1,000's of LCD screens weekly and never tear them down like above. I get more money from partners when they're in tact if the glass isn't cracked.


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## Goldwasser

I thought it would be worthwhile to note that I will pay Motherboard rate for those green board strips with the gold plating that Claudie posted on the previous page of this thread. At the time of this posting that is $4.20 per pound.


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## joem

I now trade dead 17" lcds monitors for about 15 motherboards, 
and I picked up non working 26 inch lcd tv with hd computer input , lots of bells and whistles for free
Brought it to my guy who trades me and he fixed a loose power supply.
Now I have a free lcd tv.
So sometimes the value is not in the teardown.


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## jimdoc

I got a non working 32" Memorex MLT3221 TV and fixed it for less than $20 with this capacitor kit;
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230559455195&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
Having an ESR meter comes in handy also.
Jim


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## macfixer01

If you have a working LCD monitor that's not much use to you anymore, the guys from MAKE magazine had a video online that showed you how to turn one into a video projector. Basically what it amounts to is removing the glass panel and electronics from an LCD monitor, then making a box to mount it into along with a properly placed Fresnel lens and a high intensity lamp and power supply. I'm sure is linked off their website somewhere, I found it online browsing with my AppleTV box so don't know the URL.

macfixer01


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## tlcarrig

Ok, so we have gold, iridium or indium and mercury in the flourescent bulb in an LCD screen. What else would we be looking for? Is there anything else that we should be careful about besides the Hg? Anybody have any ideas on recovering the iridium? Wish I was close to joem. Would love to swap my dead LCDs for a bunch of MBs. What I have though are small LCDs. Oh well.


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## fumes

donald236 said:


> cypher i can help with this because Ive done tons of these literal tons .
> the copper there talking about is in monitors and its in several different places one being on the yoke of the screen . the other part is around the screen found at the bottom and sometimes under the screen so you'll have to take the screws out in order to get to the copper . this rope is taped with black electrical tape . now on the circuit board there's copper , and aluminum .
> if you need any more help with this please (pm) me


Watch the capcitors if there holding a charge it may kill you


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## Jaydak

Claudie said:


> This photo shows the boards still attached. The thin gold wires run along two sides of the glass, that's the only obvious gold I could find. You need a magnifying glass to see them.


do those ribbons on the sides have gold in them? they look goldish and if they are would AR get it out of the plastic?


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## kurtak

I sell LCD monitors as is to Dynamic - I get $6 each for 17" & larger (which is more then the value of the boards in them & I don't end up with a bunch of worthless plastic & the worthless screen to deal with) for 15" monitors & monitors with no base they pay $3 each which is still more then the value of the boards - they can't have cracked/broken screens though - those they charge for so those I do tear down

If you can find a company in your area like Dynamic in my opinion you are better off selling them as whole monitors

Kurt


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## goldsilverpro

A little off the subject but there is a much more valuable item that looks almost exactly like those metal sticks in the 1st photo. In the late '80s, a guy brought in several hundred pounds of of what we called, "copper sticks", about the same dimensions as those. Some were as long as 24" and all were about 3/32" x 3/16" copper rod, in cross section, I think. They were fairy heavy. Every 2 or 3 inches, there was about a 2" long section of gold plating. It was first time I had seen them. At the time, gold was about $400 and these damned things assayed at about $80 a pound. Some of the thickest gold plating I've ever seen. I really hit a lick. I was told they were used in telephone switching stations. They were probably some sort of contact that took a lot of abuse. A perfect job for the sulfuric stripper.


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## lysdexic

ilyaz said:


> I pulled out these two pieces from an LCD monitor. They are about 12" in length and seem to be gold-plated on one side. At least they have a typical "gold" color on one side and "usual" stainless steel look on the other. So is this gold on the front or not? Thanks.


Were those metal pieces the reflectors for the florescent lights? I have only taken about 1/2 doz lcd monitors and I think one of them had reflectors that looked to be brass (on the outside portion) and some shiny silver colored substance on the inside. The others were plastic with what looked like the silver mylar that balloons and plastic mirrors are made of.

The gold colored fingers on the boards I tried to process with some other gold plated boards in CuCl etching solution. The ribbons seemed to be glued to these rather than soldered and the fingers were mostly still there long after the gold traces on the boards were gone.

The screen itself I took one corner where the vertical and horizontal leads met and peeled/scraped the silvery plastic coating on the front and the dark shaded one on the back and then broke off that corner and separated the two pieces. I wiped off the liquid crystal and removed all the adhesive. Both pieces of glass have a grid work on them. One had what looked to be gold traces around the edge of the glass, scraping the grid work I saw a hint of copper color but nothing that suggested gold. The other piece of glass had a silver color trace arounf the edge and the grid looked silver colored. I can't imagine the glass being covered with a PM grid and I have no idea how to check to see if it's Indium (or what Indium even looks like). I'm going to keep the 2 pieces of glass until I have nitric and can do some testing. I have no idea how to dispose of the liquid crystals and it's way too much labor for the little bit of gold trace (if it is gold) even for me. I know that there are backlight reflectors that are sputter coated with silver and I'm guessing it is the transparent yet silvery looking plastic sheet(s) behind the screen. If you can see light through them there can't be much silver on them. 

The only thing I found of real value was a chip on one of the boards (it may have been a camera component, don't know I didn't notice it till I was depopulating the boards) but it was clear and had a spiderweb of gold wires that attached directly to the board.

The only reason I took the flat screens was because I learned long ago when scrapping that if you take the lower value items as well as the higher value people are more likely to find more junk they don't want... and spread the word about you. So I take flatscreens just won't take anything with a CRT.


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## lysdexic

my mistake... the reflector is the plastic piece the light is mounted in.

http://www.tracelogix.com/backlights.php


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## bernard123

ilyaz said:


> I pulled out these two pieces from an LCD monitor. They are about 12" in length and seem to be gold-plated on one side. At least they have a typical "gold" color on one side and "usual" stainless steel look on the other. So is this gold on the front or not? Thanks.


 They are actualy transparent stickers yellowish in color was a heartbreaker finding that out as i had 30 something saved just like it.


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## wicky

ilyaz said:


> I pulled out these two pieces from an LCD monitor. They are about 12" in length and seem to be gold-plated on one side. At least they have a typical "gold" color on one side and "usual" stainless steel look on the other. So is this gold on the front or not? Thanks.



Aluminum anodized in Golfen color shade...

That typical gold color is not gold... 

Thanks


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