Telecom pieces

[jays_computers]

Been hanging on to these wanted to show everybody. They came off some Northern Telecom equipment. Looks like something is in there too bad I only have a few of them.

 

[acpeacemaker]

I remember this chip well. As I and several others might have a little infatuation with it. http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=12269&p=121009#p121009

 

[scrappappy]

I'm somewhat familiar with these working in the Telecom Industry. They seem to be NorTel DS1 Line Cards probably from the 1970-1990's. DS1 being basically the same as T1. Much of this stuff is working its way into scrap yards with the Ethernet conversions that almost all Telecom Carrier's have been going through for the last decade or so. it saddens me to say it but floor space has become infinitely more valuable than gold in Telecom equipment rooms so I'd imagine we'll see a lot more of this coming to market.

 

[akgold]

I have several thousand of these. Removed them from cell site equipment. They were in the site monitor units. Each control rack had one. Sometimes two. Mine are currently in barrels getting ready to ship to smelter. That generation of cell gear was an absolute gold mine. I processed about 8000 channels of it. Been working on it for several years and still have more to process. Took out about 20 tons of aluminum and 10 tons of copper (that is a very low estimate) in just the first couple of years. 16000+ Bendix connectors with lots of gold and silver. About 12000 gold plated boards out of the TX and RX. The amps also had a lot of PMs. For the last week I have been processing edge connectors that have a lot of gold. I will be glad to see the end of the stuff. It is a bit boring to do the same thing over and over 16000 times. This was ATT's statewide cell system in Alaska. And compared to systems in the lower 48 and elsewhere it was a small system. I have heard of systems that were a 100 times larger and I have always wondered where all that stuff went. The system I am working on was at least $60 to $100 million when installed. After all this is shipped off I will be retired. I will have to. I can't use my hands anymore! They are worn out.

 

[akgold]

OK. After some cogitation I realized I had made an incorrect statement in my earlier post. Most of these small readouts were actually in the TX and RX units in the cell gear but they were also in the site monitors. I realized I had way too many for them to be only in the monitors. I found a couple of pictures (not real good ones but will give you a idea) of some stacks of the gear they came from. They are the distinctive brown Nortel gear. When I took on the project little did I know how big the job was going to be. I had a private moving company showing up every couple of days with 10,000 to 30,000 pounds and unloading it in my yard. My parking lot was filled with several hundred 7 ft racks of the stuff. All I could see was aluminum, copper, gold, and silver. Somehow the amount of work it has taken to liberate all the non-ferrous and PMs escaped me at the time. But it was a job that occupied me and a couple of others for several years. There are opportunities like this all over if one was to pursue them. For me it was just word of mouth and showing some enthusiasm to the providers. And it did not cost a thing. They were happy to have someone take care of the stuff for them. One caveat though, the newer gear does not contain the levels of PMs and non-ferrous that this generation of gear had but it can still be lucrative.

The units that the readouts came from are the ones in the stack in the lower left of the first picture. It shows the cast aluminum cases that had been stripped of the boards (2 gold plated boards in each plus some readouts and some smaller boards).
The other pictures show just some of the gear from the same system and some of the silver plated wire pile. The second picture shows just the front of the pile. It was actually 30 ft long and 8 ft wide.
Also that stack of stripped out cases outside represents about one day of work from a couple of months of doing them. They were seemingly endless. The stacks of other units to the right of them in the picture are the amplifiers for each channel. They weighed about 10 pounds of aluminum each and had quite a bit of gold on the boards and connectors. Unfortunately each PA board had approx. 50 screws holding it in. Almost all small T6 torx screws. But near 8000 of them at 10 pounds each did pretty well at the scrap yard.
Plus the TX and RX cases weighed about 6 pounds of AL each.
I estimate we have removed around 4 million screws now in taking this stuff apart.

I am sure there is still some of this stuff laying around down there in the lower 48 just waiting for some enterprising person to scoop it up.

 

[scrappappy]

When I took on the project little did I know how big the job was going to be. I had a private moving company showing up every couple of days with 10,000 to 30,000 pounds and unloading it in my yard. My parking lot was filled with several hundred 7 ft racks of the stuff. All I could see was aluminum, copper, gold, and silver. Somehow the amount of work it has taken to liberate all the non-ferrous and PMs escaped me at the time. But it was a job that occupied me and a couple of others for several years. There are opportunities like this all over if one was to pursue them. For me it was just word of mouth and showing some enthusiasm to the providers. And it did not cost a thing. They were happy to have someone take care of the stuff for them. One caveat though, the newer gear does not contain the levels of PMs and non-ferrous that this generation of gear had but it can still be lucrative.

Thanks for the info, AK. You make some really good points about obtaining telecom gear at no charge. Before I became interested in PMs, I worked on a project to decommission one of the old Nortel switches and there was an agreement with someone to haul away all of the old gear. No money exchanged between either party. The company I worked for was just happy to have the equipment gone. There was probably close to a hundred of the 7ft racks of the brown Nortel gear (DMS switch). The gear was from the old 2G wireless service, the first digital cell phones. It was probably very lucrative for the gentlemen that hauled it away. I wish I had known more about PM recovery at that time.

I haven't worked on those projects in years but I do think about how that era might be coming to an end soon. Technology moves so fast that Wireless companies move to a new generation of equipment every few years nowadays. By the time most people heard of 3G service they were already developing and planning 3.5G and then 4G and LTE. Every time they move to a new generation of equipment the footprint gets smaller and the PM content in the equipment is reduced. Now some companies are moving to distributed cloud servers so there really is no central equipment and one shelf is replacing racks and whole isles of gear. I would image it will have a significant effect on Telecom e-scrap.

In the meantime, for those interested in Telecom e-scrap I would suggest watching the FCC decisions that allow wireless carriers retire certain technologies or frequncies, as was the case with the 2G switch mentioned earlier. 4G LTE (850 Mhz) is replacing 3G GSM & UMTS (850 & 1900 Mhz) so following FCC decisions on those would probably be a good place to start. Best of luck to anyone interested!

 

[techsales]

OK. After some cogitation I realized I had made an incorrect statement in my earlier post. Most of these small readouts were actually in the TX and RX units in the cell gear but they were also in the site monitors. I realized I had way too many for them to be only in the monitors. I found a couple of pictures (not real good ones but will give you a idea) of some stacks of the gear they came from. They are the distinctive brown Nortel gear. When I took on the project little did I know how big the job was going to be. I had a private moving company showing up every couple of days with 10,000 to 30,000 pounds and unloading it in my yard. My parking lot was filled with several hundred 7 ft racks of the stuff. All I could see was aluminum, copper, gold, and silver. Somehow the amount of work it has taken to liberate all the non-ferrous and PMs escaped me at the time. But it was a job that occupied me and a couple of others for several years. There are opportunities like this all over if one was to pursue them. For me it was just word of mouth and showing some enthusiasm to the providers. And it did not cost a thing. They were happy to have someone take care of the stuff for them. One caveat though, the newer gear does not contain the levels of PMs and non-ferrous that this generation of gear had but it can still be lucrative.

The units that the readouts came from are the ones in the stack in the lower left of the first picture. It shows the cast aluminum cases that had been stripped of the boards (2 gold plated boards in each plus some readouts and some smaller boards).
The other pictures show just some of the gear from the same system and some of the silver plated wire pile. The second picture shows just the front of the pile. It was actually 30 ft long and 8 ft wide.
Also that stack of stripped out cases outside represents about one day of work from a couple of months of doing them. They were seemingly endless. The stacks of other units to the right of them in the picture are the amplifiers for each channel. They weighed about 10 pounds of aluminum each and had quite a bit of gold on the boards and connectors. Unfortunately each PA board had approx. 50 screws holding it in. Almost all small T6 torx screws. But near 8000 of them at 10 pounds each did pretty well at the scrap yard.
Plus the TX and RX cases weighed about 6 pounds of AL each.
I estimate we have removed around 4 million screws now in taking this stuff apart.

I am sure there is still some of this stuff laying around down there in the lower 48 just waiting for some enterprising person to scoop it up.

still for sale and what's the ask?

I have to pay a truck driver to haul the **** a thousand miles each way

 

[akgold]

Most has ben processed. I am in severely failing health so I have a couple of guys working at breaking it down as fast as possible. getting ready to ship a full container to smelter. I, myself, can no longer stand or even get out to the piles now. I do have my helpers bring in loads of boards for me to go through but I have pretty much lost good use of my hands/arms. I am sure there will be a lot left but at this point it may be up to my heirs. I will have a better idea in a month or so. It really needs to be someone local that wants to process. Shipping from Alaska is very expensive. Remember it is al least 1400 miles just to Seattle. Barges out of Anchorage are the best/cheapest. Even backhauls which used to be cheap compared to loads coming up but now are very high cost. A 20 ft container with 20,000 lbs tare to Chicago is $5500. Best to break it down and scrap aluminum, copper, steel, brass, wire, etc locally in Anchorage and ship PM bearing stuff out. The other problem with all of it is that a lot of it is best sold as parts or units to maximize the income. The rest to be scrapped and broken down. But all the parts and sellable units need to ne advertised, packed, and shipped. It is a full time job with this much. Also there is a continual stream of equipment that will come in for someone who wants to stay with it. I cut off incoming last year but there is still a opportunity but if shipping raw units/materials it would not pay. I would like to talk to other Alaskans that may be interested.