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What's In Your Parts Box?

M

Mark Healey

Jan 1, 1970
0
I am crossposting this question since I think it will be of general
interest...sorry if that offends someone.

Now to the questions....what kinds of electronic and mechanical "trash"
is WORTH disassembling and keeping for parts to build other projects?

What did you keep that you should have thrown long ago?

What did you throw that you still kick yourself for tossing?

I look forward to your suggestions, experiences and jokes. ;<)

I strip printers CD and floppy drives for stainless steel bars,
microswitches, springs and stepper and regular motors. I save all wall
warts, multi color LEDs, Lots of switches, attractive knobs.

Magnets and aluminum spacers from hard drives,
Connectors from older computer cases.
Any bearing I can find (Where do I buy small numbers of bearings?)
And of course anything that looks unusual and hard to find new.
 
B

Barry Lennox

Jan 1, 1970
0
I am crossposting this question since I think it will be of general
interest...sorry if that offends someone.

Now to the questions....what kinds of electronic and mechanical "trash"
is WORTH disassembling and keeping for parts to build other projects?

What did you keep that you should have thrown long ago?

What did you throw that you still kick yourself for tossing?

I look forward to your suggestions, experiences and jokes. ;<)


I used to collect "good stuff" like power transformers, meters, pots,
switches, heatsinks, power transistors, big caps, etc, but the boxes
are getting bigger and bigger and I use so little of it (sob!) that I
now have to be a little selective and ruthless. However, I always grab
fuses if they are easy to get at.

Household crap is barely worth fighting with the covers to get the
innards out these days, however, commercial, industrial, medical and
military stuff is worth spending the time on. Also I highly recommend
photocopiers, full of motors, optical bits, power supplies, switches,
and other interesting bits.

And I still find unlimited uses for Magnetron magnets ex microwaves,
so while I'm in there, I grab the many microswitches, thermal
switches, power transformer on the control board, and HV parts. I can
strip one of these in about 5 minutes now. Dunno quite what for, but
I'm sure they will be useful one day.

I went through a phase of collecting the boards from disposable
cameras, they have a few interesting bits on them, but what can one do
with more than 50?

Of course, you need a big barn to keep all this crap in.

Barry Lennox
 
B

Bob Kaplow

Jan 1, 1970
0
I am crossposting this question since I think it will be of general
interest...sorry if that offends someone.

Now to the questions....what kinds of electronic and mechanical "trash"
is WORTH disassembling and keeping for parts to build other projects?

What did you keep that you should have thrown long ago?

EVERYTHING!

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD"Kaplow Klips & Baffle: http://nira-rocketry.org/LeadingEdge/Phantom4000.pdf
www.encompasserve.org/~kaplow_r/ www.nira-rocketry.org www.nar.org

Homeland Security Administration: The Gestapo of the 21st Century
 
C

Christopher Tidy

Jan 1, 1970
0
Brian said:
It is probably illegal to remove material from a scrap metal bin. Scrap
metal is worth money so someone will make less money if you take some.

It is better for the environment to reuse scrap metal than to recycle it,
but the local police might not like that argument.

When I want stuff from a scrap metal skip I usually get to know the
people who fill the skip and ask their permission. Here these skips are
often provided on a "free skip for scrap metal" basis, so it's no odds
to them whether items go in the skip or are taken by me.

Chris
 
T

Tom MacIntyre

Jan 1, 1970
0
I am crossposting this question since I think it will be of general
interest...sorry if that offends someone.

Now to the questions....what kinds of electronic and mechanical "trash"
is WORTH disassembling and keeping for parts to build other projects?
Capacitors...resistors...


What did you keep that you should have thrown long ago?

What did you throw that you still kick yourself for tossing?

Books...NEVER get rid of a book...

Tom
 
T

Terry

Jan 1, 1970
0
On 24 Jun 2005 13:01:09 -0700, "Too_Many_Tools"

=>....what kinds of electronic and mechanical "trash" is WORTH
disassembling and keeping for parts to build other projects?

"Trash?" Never. "Stuffe" and "Junque," maybe, but never the "T" word!

I think I have managed to save about every single bit and piece of
anything I have ever owned (I'm 71 now) and have actually used one or
two items in other projects. My wife and I built rows of heavy shelves
in our basement so we could store treasures for possible use in the
future (I had three shelves and she the rest--she's as bad as I). I
was lucky to have worked for an electronics company for 20 years and
managed to squirrel away mounds of valuable goodies. On several
occasions, several cartons of obsolete components would appear in the
hallway near the stockroom with a sign reading, "Take all you want,
but have it out of the building by 5PM." Oh, the good-ol' days.

I have stripped boards for valuable, i.e., hard-to-find parts, tossing
them when they are down to vanilla R and C components. Always save
large electrolytics, power transistors, heat sinks, high-wattage
resistors, easily removed connectors (bless he who invented the
thodderthukker!). Wire is always saved, whatever its configuration, as
well as cases, plugs, sockets, relays, etc... ALWAYS save screws!

As for disposing of stuffe and junque, it can be traumatic as most of
you know. Tossing that rusty 4-inch encabulator will defintely prompt
a project several months from now that requires a 4-inch encabulator.
Right?

In this vein, allow me to share a (maybe not so) humorous story. Not
too long after getting my ham license, I was fatally bitten by the
Teletype bug when a fellow ham and co-worker sold me all his TTY gear,
which included spare parts, manuals, and other good stuffe. Wow! The
smell of hot oil, the thunderous din, dodging gear teeth as they
ricocheted out of the case! Ecstacy! From then on I was hooked, and
collected, cataloged, and stored every bit and piece that even vaguely
could be used in a TTY application.

Over several years I acquired several more TTY machines, in the end
managing to have five running simultaneously on HF and VHF radio
circuits! The sound was deafening! But what fun it was to keep them
all running. A local radio station surplussed all their paper and tape
when they converted from mechanical to glass terminals, and of course
I was there with my little LUV truck to help them out!

Moving time came finally and I decided that it was time to cut back a
bit. (Actualy, the new house didn't have room for a tenth of our
stuffe, let alone all the TTY equipment.) A local ham and I had been
conversing for months about TTY and he said he would take all the TTY
gear I didn't want. He came over, looked at it, and came back a week
or so later with a mid-size U-Haul truck. We loaded it all in and I
watched him slowly roll away, the sides of the box bulging as he
disappeared arround the corner.

I heard a few months later that he was in divorce procedings! I guess
she just couldn't take it!

Moral: Be careful what you toss out. Better yet, build more shelves!

Cheers--


Terry--WB4FXD
Edenton, NC
 
L

L.

Jan 1, 1970
0
Terry said:
On 24 Jun 2005 13:01:09 -0700, "Too_Many_Tools"

=>....what kinds of electronic and mechanical "trash" is WORTH
disassembling and keeping for parts to build other projects?

"Trash?" Never. "Stuffe" and "Junque," maybe, but never the "T" word!

I think I have managed to save about every single bit and piece of
anything I have ever owned (I'm 71 now) and have actually used one or
two items in other projects. My wife and I built rows of heavy shelves
in our basement so we could store treasures for possible use in the
future (I had three shelves and she the rest--she's as bad as I). I
was lucky to have worked for an electronics company for 20 years and
managed to squirrel away mounds of valuable goodies. On several
occasions, several cartons of obsolete components would appear in the
hallway near the stockroom with a sign reading, "Take all you want,
but have it out of the building by 5PM." Oh, the good-ol' days.

I have stripped boards for valuable, i.e., hard-to-find parts, tossing
them when they are down to vanilla R and C components. Always save
large electrolytics, power transistors, heat sinks, high-wattage
resistors, easily removed connectors (bless he who invented the
thodderthukker!). Wire is always saved, whatever its configuration, as
well as cases, plugs, sockets, relays, etc... ALWAYS save screws!

As for disposing of stuffe and junque, it can be traumatic as most of
you know. Tossing that rusty 4-inch encabulator will defintely prompt
a project several months from now that requires a 4-inch encabulator.
Right?

In this vein, allow me to share a (maybe not so) humorous story. Not
too long after getting my ham license, I was fatally bitten by the
Teletype bug when a fellow ham and co-worker sold me all his TTY gear,
which included spare parts, manuals, and other good stuffe. Wow! The
smell of hot oil, the thunderous din, dodging gear teeth as they
ricocheted out of the case! Ecstacy! From then on I was hooked, and
collected, cataloged, and stored every bit and piece that even vaguely
could be used in a TTY application.

Over several years I acquired several more TTY machines, in the end
managing to have five running simultaneously on HF and VHF radio
circuits! The sound was deafening! But what fun it was to keep them
all running. A local radio station surplussed all their paper and tape
when they converted from mechanical to glass terminals, and of course
I was there with my little LUV truck to help them out!

Moving time came finally and I decided that it was time to cut back a
bit. (Actualy, the new house didn't have room for a tenth of our
stuffe, let alone all the TTY equipment.) A local ham and I had been
conversing for months about TTY and he said he would take all the TTY
gear I didn't want. He came over, looked at it, and came back a week
or so later with a mid-size U-Haul truck. We loaded it all in and I
watched him slowly roll away, the sides of the box bulging as he
disappeared arround the corner.

I heard a few months later that he was in divorce procedings! I guess
she just couldn't take it!

Moral: Be careful what you toss out. Better yet, build more shelves!

Cheers--


Terry--WB4FXD
Edenton, NC

While I may not have as much as some, I may have more than others. Certainly
more than "I" thought I'd ever have and desire at the moment to keep.
However, there is I believe - a saying which - even if not well known and
perhaps not verbatum, "I" live by - "you won't need it until you've thrown
it away." Sure enough, often it happens. Ya toss an item in the trash today.
A day or so after it's gone, you are in need and you kick yourself for
having tossed it.

As for screws, I have about 6 - 3 lb coffee cans full of them. I strip them
from ANYTHING I cannibalize - be it electronics, furniture or anything in
between. I save all parts I can get off PC boards or out of chassis - in
decent condition. The rest - well.... someone else has to have some fun
going through the dump!

Way before E-Bay and the internet, I had about 1000 tubes of all sorts that
an old TV/Radio repair shop gone out of business - threw away.
It took me about 2 weeks of a few hours of sorting. I kept some of the more
popular ones then - such as for Tube set TVs which some folks still used,
the then still current Tube AM/FM Radios/CBs/Ham. NOW I see people needing
many of those I destroyed - for the older tube "Car" radios and such. Yes, I
"destroyed" the others by smashing them. My theory is, if "I" can't prosper
from it - no one will. About the only thing one "can" prosper from where I
don't play, is the scrap metal from any chassis I throw out.

There was "an" occasion or two where I sold some containers of surplus parts
and "pulled" parts. I got my price for them. In one instance, I sold about
12 bigger electroylitics at a hamfest. They were pretty hefty but I had no
use for them. A woman apparently sent her boy over to buy them from me, to
resell (unbeknownst to me). Someone told me about it once they were bought.
I said simply - "I" made my profit, who cares???? I got from them what I
wanted. God bless her if she got hers. A big part of my collection now, is
I've bought out a few businesses, computer shops, etc. I've got boxes of
unused parts still not even catagorized. I've got some RS stuff bought in
bulk, some of which isn't even sold by them anymore.

I'm working on a web site as I speak, I hope to offer much of it there. I
won't do E-Bay as I don't want much for a lot of it and the selling/listing
fees wouldn't make it worth my while. I'd have to add it in just to make it
work and I don't want to do that. My purpose is to get the parts out as
cheap as I can to those in need. Shipping, I can't do much about, except
hope they order enough to make it worth "their" while.

Collecting can be fun and meaningful, but as others have witnessed, it can
"over take" you.

L.
 
M

MOP CAP

Jan 1, 1970
0
Futher about taking from scrap bins. Back in the 30's there was a Co.
here in SF that made plumb bobs for K&E. They made them for free. All
K&E had to do was supply the brass. Their profit was in the turnings
and it was all set up in an orderly production basis. It was send back
to the brass supplier as guaranteed content.

Chuck P.
 
P

Pooh Bear

Jan 1, 1970
0
Tom said:
Books...NEVER get rid of a book...

I have some National semiconductor data and applications books here dating
from '76 and '80. Gems.

I'm not sure but I think one ( or even two ) may have finally made it *back*
into print ! Unaltered in content too.

Graham
 
C

Christopher Tidy

Jan 1, 1970
0
MOP said:
Futher about taking from scrap bins. Back in the 30's there was a Co.
here in SF that made plumb bobs for K&E. They made them for free. All
K&E had to do was supply the brass. Their profit was in the turnings
and it was all set up in an orderly production basis. It was send back
to the brass supplier as guaranteed content.

A friend who works for a very large engineering firm (who buy maybe
10,000 tons of steel a day) told me they pay less than the regular scrap
value for it. Don't know if this is true or not?

Chris
 
R

Richard Henry

Jan 1, 1970
0
MOP CAP said:
Futher about taking from scrap bins. Back in the 30's there was a Co.
here in SF that made plumb bobs for K&E. They made them for free. All
K&E had to do was supply the brass. Their profit was in the turnings
and it was all set up in an orderly production basis. It was send back
to the brass supplier as guaranteed content.

A place where I used to work paid for the annual holiday party with money
from recycling the aluminum from hogged-out cases.

Until DCAS heard of it.
 
C

Catman

Jan 1, 1970
0
What I threw that I kicked myself for was a Cibiko.

My wife is a bigger gadget freak than I am and she had insisted on
getting one when they came out. Since she didn't have anyone else
around with one she never got to use its primary feature (wireless chat)
and the rest of its game features were fairly lame so it soon ended up
in a box in the crap - er I mean craft - room.

We were sorting stuff in the room when we were getting ready to move and
decided to toss it. One month later there was an article in Servo
explaining how to use a Cibiko as a portable rs232 terminal interface
for debugging mobile robots.

ARRG!

Catman
 
G

Gunner

Jan 1, 1970
0
And by the good graces of Jerry M, who posts here, a scrapped pressure
washer that will be investigated in the morning to see if the pump is
good, then modified and reworked for here at the homestead.

The pump is good, though tired <G>

Gunner

"Considering the events of recent years,
the world has a long way to go to regain
its credibility and reputation with the US."
unknown
 
B

Bob Kaplow

Jan 1, 1970
0
A place where I used to work paid for the annual holiday party with money
from recycling the aluminum from hogged-out cases.

Back in the 70s, the place I worked was the #1 recycler and user of recycled
paper products. They even designed the three arrow logo that is on all of
the recyclable goods you see today. So what did we do with all of our
computer printouts? We threw them away.

This was back in 80 column punch card days. That card stock is made from
virgin paper fibres, and is very valuable to recyclers. S one of our
operators would save all the card batches, collect a few months of them,
drive downtown, load up his car, and take it all to one of our recycling
centers. He too used the money for parties that he invited everyone inthe
office to.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD"Kaplow Klips & Baffle: http://nira-rocketry.org/LeadingEdge/Phantom4000.pdf
www.encompasserve.org/~kaplow_r/ www.nira-rocketry.org www.nar.org

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. --
Benjamin Franklin Historical Review of Pennsylvania. 1759
 
M

Mark Fergerson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Too_Many_Tools said:
I am crossposting this question since I think it will be of general
interest...sorry if that offends someone.

Now to the questions....what kinds of electronic and mechanical "trash"
is WORTH disassembling and keeping for parts to build other projects?

Pretty much anything, for suitable values of "project". IOW it
depends what you like to build.
What did you keep that you should have thrown long ago?

That pile of lumber. I don't have a fireplace any more...
What did you throw that you still kick yourself for tossing?

An assortment of synthetic laser crystal castoffs (impurity
levels off just enough to make them useless for that application,
but still pretty).
I look forward to your suggestions, experiences and jokes. ;<)

I just acquired an old electric wheelchair (for free!); I plan to
adapt the snazzy magnesium wheels to a bicycle. The controller box
is a joke, full of paralleled transistors and humongous relays.

Mark L. Fergerson
 
P

pyotr filipivich

Jan 1, 1970
0
Let the record show that Gunner said:
The pump is good, though tired <G>

It is interesting how equipment which is too worn for commercial use is
still good for home use.
Knife makers in the Portland area used to snagg the "used" belts from
back of the Gerber plant, because what the Gerber workers considered
"shot", they considered, "a little worn".

tschus
pyotr
 
D

Dave

Jan 1, 1970
0
Too_Many_Tools said:
I am crossposting this question since I think it will be of general
interest...sorry if that offends someone.

Now to the questions....what kinds of electronic and mechanical "trash"
is WORTH disassembling and keeping for parts to build other projects?

What did you keep that you should have thrown long ago?

What did you throw that you still kick yourself for tossing?

I look forward to your suggestions, experiences and jokes. ;<)

TMT
Well, since you also asked for experiences...

When I was in college I found the EE dept was cleaning out a lab and had
scrapped a machine for scoring IC chips. Probably from the 60's or early
70's. The machine was mounted on a plate metal base about 1/2 inch thick
and about 30 inches by 18 inches. Mounted on it were various various
motors, steppers, slides, a vacuum table etc. I grabbed it and stored it in
a friends garage.

A couple of years later, I was still in school and working for another
department at the University. A researcher there told me they needed a
stepper controlled slide. I went back to that old machine and unbolted the
perfect motor/slide combination. Sold it back to the University for $100!

Name and University withheld to protect the guilty...
 
N

none

Jan 1, 1970
0
Well, since you also asked for experiences...

When I was in college I found the EE dept was cleaning out a lab and had
scrapped a machine for scoring IC chips. Probably from the 60's or early
70's. The machine was mounted on a plate metal base about 1/2 inch thick
and about 30 inches by 18 inches. Mounted on it were various various
motors, steppers, slides, a vacuum table etc. I grabbed it and stored it in
a friends garage.

A couple of years later, I was still in school and working for another
department at the University. A researcher there told me they needed a
stepper controlled slide. I went back to that old machine and unbolted the
perfect motor/slide combination. Sold it back to the University for $100!

Name and University withheld to protect the guilty...
Good for you. Get that tuition back any way you can.
 
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