Good morning,
I have a few questions on some cards and items.
First up are modem cards. Do you need to remove the small transformers before sending them in?


Next up are DVD/CD laser units. Do they have any value or just scrap?


Last are LED strips and boards from an old LED TV. Do they have any value? Also can you cut them in half to fit in a box?


Thanks for any answers you can provide.

Okay my friend. We will start with the clean gold finger modem cards. These are good. No need to remove anything else from them. The only time I would remove the transformers is if they are big or oversized. This would be a personal judgment call. Just use your common sense here. Next would be the "laser units". I am pretty sure that BoardSort does not buy them. If you had like 20#'s or so of them, I would contact Chris personally and ask him if he would be interested. That being said, I personally tear these down as there is usually at least 1 - 3 gold plated diodes inside of them. Get enough of them and they would be worth refining. I am talking like 3-5#'s at least. Now the LED's with the lights and the copper backing I usually don't mess with. I do however save them in a box. Who knows where copper will go in the next year or so. The green strips, as a rule of thumb, if they have the gold connector strip that runs the length of the board, BoardSort buy's them at high grade peripheral (you might double check this, but I think I am correct). As long as you keep the pieces together, it's okay to break these boards in half. Good luck my friend, and have fun tearing stuff up. ;)

I would like to see a picture of those gold plated diodes. Please. I have a full five gallon bucket of cd/dvd read heads.

Plastic laser assemblies: low peripheral
Metal laser assemblies: midgrade

Per lostinlodos viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21215&p=43046&hilit=plastic#p43046

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

It takes a bit of effort to get those gold plated diodes I think he's talking about, but they are worth it. They are the actual laser sensors and have a small metal encased lens on them that I break off with dikes. You basically have to take everything apart to get to them but there are some other goodies like small IC chips, gold plated ribbon connector ends, and Mlccs (of course) to be harvested in the process as well.
Monolithic ceramic capacitors though small and requiring large amounts to recycle are in my opinion well worth removing as they will accumulate to sellable amounts soon enough. But to some this is probably getting too involved in the details of e waste recycling.
Oh yes--you will also get aluminum to put in your pile and those stripped little boards will have light gold plating.

Some of those are magnesium and not aluminum.

They are time consuming to take apart so I started following Lost's advice on grades (see two posts up)

_________________
Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

It takes a long time to break these down. And a lot of them to make real value.
I’ve done a few breakdowns of them by photo and video.
For most people the value just isn’t there.

I’ll break down old 1x and 2x drives. Laserdisc, and laser magnetic readers. You get some good ICs from those that are easy to pull and worth the efforts over all.
Anything newer everything gets smaller and smaller. It’s more trouble than the value for me.
We all have a crossover point. Just got to find it for ourselves.

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