Deep depopulating - How do YOU do it?

[Snowmeow]

Pyrolyzing (As done with the flatpack chips by Patnor - http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827 ) wouldn't be a solution?

 

[Captobvious]

Pyrolyzing (As done with the flatpack chips by Patnor - http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827 ) wouldn't be a solution?

This is where I got yelled at, I confused Patnor's incinerate process for flatpacks and Deano's Pyrolyzing process for everything else. Unfortunately I'm nowhere near setup for pyrolosis

 

[patnor1011]

I guess I am guilty of misappropriate use of both terms.
What we both did is pretty much incineration but Deano's closed burner - that is very close or can be called pyrolysis.
As a matter of fact there is no pyrolyzing system totally without presence of oxygen so arguing if particular process can be called pyrolysis or not makes no sense. I would say that incineration in closed container with holes for extraction of gases going directly back to fire can be called pyrolysis.

 

[patnor1011]

Now that that whole kerfuffle is done (please let it be done) For things like the aforementioned items (memory/cpu sockets, expansion slots, etc. How would you process them then in a time expedient manner that don't involve incineration or spending months plucking pins out one at a time with pliers?

If we talk about slots then no, you can't do that easily. If you incinerate them then you just create bigger mess. If you do not want to cut them out one by one then there is another option, it involve some work too.
There is post here where member suggested to cut out portion of board with slots in them. Remove plastic cover and expose pins. Then you need to dip back part where small portion of pins stick out in heated solder to cover all of them. That will make them all to be connected like and can be used in sulfuric cell.
There is no easy and quick way to deal with pins apart from option to either sell whole boards to middle man or accumulate big quantity and send off to copper smelter to refine it for you.
Time expedient manner - with pins it is difficult. Reverse electroplating do not involve high costs but takes a lot of time to be completed properly. AP again low cost a lot of time and I mean A LOT of it. HNO3 - bit more costly than previous 2 (depend on how much it cost you in your part of world) and involve some time too in addition of creating a lot more of waste than previous two.
Home, hobby recovery and refining from electronics is just what it is. A nice hobby, not a way to get rich quick. When you factor in all costs and time involved you will see what I am talking about.

 

[patnor1011]

Pyrolyzing (As done with the flatpack chips by Patnor - http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827 ) wouldn't be a solution?

I would not suggest or approve that.
Let me explain.
I was told few times and found out it to be true. Do not lose sight of your gold. If you do have fingers you use AP to see foils getting lose. Easy to filter, clean, move around - you always see your gold, even at later stage as AuCl3 you see it nice yellow or orange.
Same with pins, you see them losing color in cell, foils in AP, Nitric...
If you incinerate plastic sockets with pins inside you will get blobs of metals and "something", ugly looking ash you must know very well what you are doing and be careful at every step not to lose anything. Second thing is that if incinerating you are going to lose a lot of values in smoke unless you can do it in some controlled environment where you can catch and scrub smoke produced.

*edited spelling

 

[Captobvious]

Now that that whole kerfuffle is done (please let it be done) For things like the aforementioned items (memory/cpu sockets, expansion slots, etc. How would you process them then in a time expedient manner that don't involve incineration or spending months plucking pins out one at a time with pliers?

If we talk about slots then no, you can't do that easily. If you incinerate them then you just create bigger mess. If you do not want to cut them out one by one then there is another option, it involve some work too.
There is post here where member suggested to cut out portion of board with slots in them. Remove plastic cover and expose pins. Then you need to dip back part where small portion of pins stick out in heated solder to cover all of them. That will make them all to be connected like and can be used in sulfuric cell.
There is no easy and quick way to deal with pins apart from option to either sell whole boards to middle man or accumulate big quantity and send off to copper smelter to refine it for you.
Time expedient manner - with pins it is difficult. Reverse electroplating do not involve high costs but takes a lot of time to be completed properly. AP again low cost a lot of time and I mean A LOT of it. HNO3 - bit more costly than previous 2 (depend on how much it cost you in your part of world) and involve some time too in addition of creating a lot more of waste than previous two.
Home, hobby recovery and refining from electronics is just what it is. A nice hobby, not a way to get rich quick. When you factor in all costs and time involved you will see what I am talking about.

Thanks for the info Pat, I generally pull the slots off the boards before removing the pins but unfortunately some of the slots either dont want to come off, or they break and can't get a clean removal... this accounts for maybe 15% of my mainboards and whatnot, unfortunately that 15% adds up. Maybe when I get bored and it's warmer I'll try and figure out a new method that doesn't involve chemicals or heat to get them to come out and also doesn't involve me spending 6 months plucking pins by hand. Indeed you're right, it is a hobby, and never have I ever expected to get rich off this.... take my wife and kids on vacation definite goal to be sure.

 

[ilikesilver]

i say take a large metal coffee can or small metal trash can, throw them all in. Take a large slug hammer, you know the ones they use for breaking up rock or concrete and bash them up. that should break up all that plastic to the point were they will come out on there own, and then pull the loose ones out of the little bits of plastic left.

 

[Captobvious]

i say take a large metal coffee can or small metal trash can, throw them all in. Take a large slug hammer, you know the ones they use for breaking up rock or concrete and bash them up. that should break up all that plastic to the point were they will come out on there own, and then pull the loose ones out of the little bits of plastic left.

So in other words....

I can live with that lol

 

[old geek]

For some good info on pylorus check out 'plastic2oil'

 

[ilikesilver]

i say take a large metal coffee can or small metal trash can, throw them all in. Take a large slug hammer, you know the ones they use for breaking up rock or concrete and bash them up. that should break up all that plastic to the point were they will come out on there own, and then pull the loose ones out of the little bits of plastic left.

So in other words....

I can live with that lol

gotta like the hulk!!

 

[chlaurite]

FWIW, I have a pretty decent answer to the original question.

To remove the pins (antipins?) from female IDE and serial/parallel cables, use a 1/16th" flat-head screwdriver, with at least a half-inch long shaft staying at or below 1/16th" (if you can find one with a shaft very slightly smaller than the tip, it makes it much easier). Once the connector's back/top is off, just poke the screwdriver straight in through the holes (try not to twist, that just makes a mess inside the pin), and the pin will pop right out the back and fall on the table/floor/lap. You can do a pair of 40-pin connectors in under a minute once you get the hang of it.

As for getting the back/top off first... For the IDE connectors, slip the blade of the screwdriver into the small holes on each side (narrow side) near the board-side of the connector and slip it up toward the top of the connector. The whole side clip will crumble with no effort required, and you often don't even need to bother with both sides, one is enough. For D-shell (serial, parallel, VGA) connectors, they often have two vertical slots on the front, just to the right and left of the functional portion of the connector. Shove the screwdriver in, and the pin-retaining back pops out. If it doesn't have those slots, I usually just stick it in the dykes and hack the back off - As long as the pins can fall out when you poke them from the front, it will work just fine.

 

[Anonymous]

I know of two different ways to remove the pins from the plastic connectors without chemicals or burning.

!. Use the wire cutters shown below. They will break the connector and pieces will most likely fly everywhere, so make sure to have a catch box or something covering the overhead as you work, and wear safety glasses. Just clip from left to right, and all the pins will come out, or you'll have at least 95% come right out, and you might have to pull the others out. Real simple and easy.







The other way to get the pins out of the connectors is to use a bench grinder. Doing it the same way, from left to right, you can remove all the pins in a matter of seconds. Make sure to use a box or make a containment unit because the pins WILL fly everywhere, and you'll also have some plastic dust. If you do it inside, it's best to have a humidifier on before starting so that way the air will be moist and humid, and the dust will quickly drop to the floor instead of floating around in the air. Other than that, just do it outside.

Either method you choose, you can strip lbs of connectors in less than an hour, or at least you can do them all in one day and not have to take days to do.

Kevin

 

[Smack]

Testerman, I use those same pliers on IDE ribbon connectors to get the pins out but you don't need to cut the plastic, use them to pull the pins out, both rows at the same time about 8 to 10 pins at a time. Just don't squeeze real hard. These are about the easiest pins to pull. I only do these once a year and while I watch football usually but for the most part there is not much gold there. Out of the black , blue and gray, the gray are the best and sometimes the whole pin is plated.

 

[Anonymous]

Testerman, I use those same pliers on IDE ribbon connectors to get the pins out but you don't need to cut the plastic, use them to pull the pins out, both rows at the same time about 8 to 10 pins at a time. Just don't squeeze real hard. These are about the easiest pins to pull. I only do these once a year and while I watch football usually but for the most part there is not much gold there. Out of the black , blue and gray, the gray are the best and sometimes the whole pin is plated.

I never thought of using them like that. I'll have to try that. I have around 30 lbs of different connectors to strip. And you're correct too on those IDE connectors. I took quite a few apart, and there is hardly any gold on them. I believe upto 1/3 of the pins are gold plated, and the remaining portion is stainless steel colored.

I wonder what the yield (gold) is on 1 lb of those pins. But darn Smack, I'm going to definitely try that method.

Kevin

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Smack, I tried that method of pulling those pins with those cutters and it does work. That really surprises me because since there are two rows and they're so close together, I thought you'd have to grab one row first, which is nearly impossible to do, but I grabbed both rows a bit at a time and it surely does work. Thanks for the tip. That saves me even more time and makes my work even faster. All I need to do now is to wear my work gloves while doing them, so I can get a good grip on the connectors. :shock:

Kevin

 

[gold4mike]

I've been using a little vise to hold them so my left hand doesn't hurt so much but have been thinking about making a foot operated device to clamp and release them much quicker.

 

[glondor]

foot vise http://www.google.ca/imgres?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&sa=N&biw=1745&bih=866&tbm=isch&tbnid=RLgHsUjJaVljmM:&imgrefurl=http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/general-archive/t-o-multifunction-vise-foot-pedal-81329/index2.html&docid=T-2gidpLlMag6M&imgurl=http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/attachments/f9/21485d1270061102-t-o-multifunction-vise-foot-pedal-t-o.jpg&w=300&h=300&ei=Zx1VUbGbCdbG4APL-oDgAg&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:1,s:0,i:85&iact=rc&dur=5180&page=1&tbnh=163&tbnw=145&start=0&ndsp=35&tx=73&ty=48

 

[gold4mike]

Thanks Mike!

That's pretty much what I had in mind. I have a few extra vices in my shop and should be able to adapt one using their design as a basic template.

 

[bswartzwelder]

Until today, I've been depopulating boards with a heat gun. They are cheap and easily available from places like Harbor Freight and Northern tool. Today, I bought a 7.5 inch square metal cake pan from Walmart ($0.92) and filled it a little over half way with play sand. Put it on the hot plate and turned it on. In 10 to 20 seconds,the boards get hot enough so that you can either tap them on a solid surface and the parts fall right off, or the components can be scraped off by just running a pocket knife over them. I couldn't believe how easy and fast this was. Saw it first right here on the forum, and as usual, you guys (and gals) are right on target. If you have the heat up too high, you can damage the circuit board. Conversely, if the heat is too low, it takes a lot longer before the parts are ready to fall off.

 

[Captobvious]

Until today, I've been depopulating boards with a heat gun. They are cheap and easily available from places like Harbor Freight and Northern tool. Today, I bought a 7.5 inch square metal cake pan from Walmart ($0.92) and filled it a little over half way with play sand. Put it on the hot plate and turned it on. In 10 to 20 seconds,the boards get hot enough so that you can either tap them on a solid surface and the parts fall right off, or the components can be scraped off by just running a pocket knife over them. I couldn't believe how easy and fast this was. Saw it first right here on the forum, and as usual, you guys (and gals) are right on target. If you have the heat up too high, you can damage the circuit board. Conversely, if the heat is too low, it takes a lot longer before the parts are ready to fall off.

Curious, what temps does your hotplate reach? And what kind is it?