I got to the point where I was already shipping several things on a pallet that I just included the whole drives I had to save me the time of tearing them down. If you have the time, and nothing else to do, might as well tear them down.
When I have the time:
I pull the motors off those boards in the first picture; use a pair of pliers to grab the sides and twist clockwise and counterclockwise and cw and ccw until it pops off, don't pull or try to pry under the motor.
The logic boards, pull the ribbon cable off, older models may have a small brass or copper heatsink on one or more of the chips that you can also pull off. Newer models may not have all the necessary chips to get CD board grade.
The bulk of what's left is steel as noted by thearchivebooks. I usually pull the two motors and the laser assembly. The motors can both have brass in them and the laser assembly:
lostinlodos wrote:
My general suggestion for the disc laser modules is to toss the plastic ones into low peripheral and metal ones into midgrade.