Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
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"Every single one of them in the world has a decent amount of silver and gold on it, "
Not as much as one might think. The gold is in the form of a very thin plating on the connectors. Most of the silver is in the form of tiny wires thinner than a human hair inside some of the ICs.
Extruded aluminum heat sinks are good, in fact are worth more than aluminum cans. Both cans and the extrusions are high grade, and even though the heatsinks are worth more than cans that doesn't mean they'll pay more for it. Cast aluminum is worth less. Not worthless, but worth less. (and some heatsinks are cast, but not many) It's partly because of the zinc content, which is also valuable but apparently it's a bit harder to separate, thus it is less.
I saw an interestig vid of a place that does recycle circuit boards. They are probably making money, but it takes volume. They have to bring in truckloads and developed the processes that get the most out of it. Looking at the size of the place - what I could tell, I think they were getting most of it from dumpsters and landfills because I don't think there is any room for profit if they have to pay for it. Of course running tractor trailers around isn't free either.
It would be nice to have a way to get the copper off of the PC boards, especialy the multilayer kind found in PCs etc. They have huge ground planes. The problem is again separating it. They are working on it. The problems are one, a bunch of it is sandwiched between layers of phenolic or glass exopy (only really expensive things), and most of it is covered with what's called solder mask, which is harder than the copper itself and disolves in practiaclly nothing.
The other problem is to strip all the components. Heat will do but now they have lead free solder which has a higher melting point than conventional solder. The scale of operations required to turn a profit makes that a significant cost.
People don't realize just how much garbage we generate when it comes to electronics. It's not just the continual obsolesence, it's the fact that most of these things are unservicable. When that flatscreen stops working, you might as well throw it out. Depending on what it is you could take a chance getting it serviced. You will have to pay a diagnostic fee and it's about a one in four chance that it can be repaired economically. This is the fault of the menufacturers. They do it on purpose to assure future sales and in a way, it is actually a conspiracy. Only a few major plants are making this trash, so if you have bad luck with brand X, and you decide to but brand Y next time, the same people profit. Of all the brand labels out there, there are really only about a half dozen real manufacturers.
And I will say this - all metals are precious. Look at anything these days and you'll see that they use as little metal as possible in favor of plastic. However it may seem nasty what they do, it is the right thing to do from their perspective, for their dependents, employees and stockholders.
It's also always a give and take. In some places they grind up old tires and mix it with the asphalt to build roads. This results in more longevity, but that will put people out of work. They go about it wrong. Having people with jobs is a good thing but when the road crews come out it has an enormous cost in fuel and heat added to the environment. But the people the government really represents make money from this. If anyone really wanted to help the environment things would be different. Like in the old days manufacturers would be required for a number of years to make spare parts available. IIRC it used to be seven years, but other than myself and other crazy people, most don't even own a piece of electronic equipment even close to seven years old.
In alot of cases how they manufacture things is how they HAVE to manufacture the things. Some of it would be practically impossible, and if not prohibitively expensive.
The brightest and best should be on this. In time they will find more efficient ways to salvage what is used to make all this trash. Those people will make some big money - and well deserved.
T^T
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LOL- steel and aluminin are precious metals LOL - 
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RE: LOL- steel and aluminin are precious metals LOL - 
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