Salvaging stuff / any good tips?

[nes]

Oh hai new forum. I've been looking for somewhere to post and get tips on what consumer items tend to yield what useful stuff. You know, like a Im-me buys you a pair of TI/Chipcon RF microcontrollers and a handy dev system, or a 3.5" hard disk will give up a really good three phase motor and drive electronics. Is this the right place or do you know somewhere better?

If you want to join in here, I'll kick off with the 3.5" drives. Handfuls of bust ones can be had for free at any PC repair shop if you ask nicely...

• 1 or 2 really strong neodymium magnets
• three phase motor with ultra smooth bearings
• controller ASIC for motor + all required components (leave the controller board intact and cut the pair of traces from the CPU and inject your own PWM signal)
• .1" pitch headers (good for AVR or PIC ISP connections)
• SPI eeprom, usually about 1 or 2Mb
• A 3.3V 3 terminal voltage regulator
• Molex style 4-pole power connector
• big chunk of light alloy (maybe good for a heatsink or for metal casting if you've got your own foundry)
• 1 or more shiny aluminium disks
• SMT capacitors, especially high value MLCs and tantalums (get a multimeter with capacitance function if you want to know the values though)

[Error 404]

I think this is an excellent idea!

Scanners/Printers - Easy to find dead ones. Contain fun things such as...

• Stepper motors - Usually bipolar, very useful
• LCD/LED displays - Anything from 7-segment to GLCD
• Lots of hook-up wire
• Tons of connectors, may be .1", usually something else
• Discrete/Passive components - Tons
• (Depending on the model) Digital logic chips
• (Sometimes) EEPROM/flash memory in SMD packages
• Many, many gears/wheels/belts/sprockets

[Tomato]

You see so many RC toys around and they're usually only superficially damaged:

• Motors and associated gear boxes.
• H bridge circuits
• transmitter receiver pair
• passive components
• battery boxes
• NIMH / NI-CAD batteries and chargers

[Acedork]

Definitely a great topic idea! Wish I'd had a reference like this back when I was first salvaging parts. My observation has been that the best sources for usable circuit components are generally not newer consumer electronics (IC's and microcontrollers aren't very useful when they've got a hundred pins crammed into 1 square inch). Here are a couple of item that have been good to me:

Old network switches & hardware are a dime a dozen if you work anywhere near an office or IT facility. Now granted, most of the heavy lifting in these pieces is done with surface mount components and custom IC's, so in that respect they're not very useful, HOWEVER:

• Free regulated power supplies! Pretty easy to mount in projects, since they don't come in those plastic/epoxy enclosures. This also means you can get a bunch of other components:
• Transformers
• Capacitors
• Inductors
• Resistors
• Semiconductors (diodes, transistors, etc.)

Non-digital thermostats. I've picked up several of these lying in electronics junk piles:

• A full complement of components listed above
• Mercury switches!

I'll post more when I think of them.

[Stephanie]

Old CD-Roms have a lot of usefull stuff

• Usually 1 DC motor
• 1 stepper motor with corkscrew gear
• 1-2 plastic gears
• 2-3 micro switches
• Lasers! and some optics.
• 3 rare earth magnets (one donut shaped and 2 square/rectangular)
• 1-2 magnetic sensors? Not sure because I never tried using one.

The main stepper motor may or may not be usable, along with the motor control chips.

[PhilKll]

I like old VCR's myself, have had real good luck with them, plus they are so unwanted I've found it hard to even give a working one away. Also computer power supplies. Both of them contain all sorts of thru hole components.

Resistors
Capacitors
Inductors
Switches
Connectors
Lots of good wire (PSU's)
Misc. IC's
Misc Transistors/FETs
Motors and misc odd parts(vcr)

[Volectorus]

Spent Disposable Cameras (Free from Drugstores if you are nice)

Battery
300v Capaciter (may vary)
led

and more, i dont have one on me right now.

[zool]

disposable cameras can also be used to drive a couple nixie tubes
i also like VCRs for motors buttons and VFD displays

radio/stereos:
capacitors
ferite core
buttons (sometimes hard to find "radio buttons")
LEDs
tapeheads
small motor
speakers
cheap slide potentiometers
3.5mm jack
1/4inch jack
CD stepper motor
CD motor
lens
wire

Power Suplies:
several big capacitors
inductors
transformers
fan
large resistors
wire

[wellernumber7]

Old network switches & hardware are a dime a dozen if you work anywhere near an office or IT facility.

As well as the components that you mention you also get a pretty nice case. I've had several really nice 1U 19" rack cases, and all they needed was a new fascia.

[acomputerdog]

Computer speakers are good for a lot of stuff, and they are cheap and easy to find:


2+ speakers, depending on the quality/ model
capacitors
resistors
wires
1+ 3.1 mm jacks
1+ 3.1 mm connectors
audio amplifier chip
1+ potentiometers
power supply
1/4 inch jack
other audio jacks/ connectors