Computer Metals Scrapping & Recycling

A. Sorry for your hardships, Marvin, but they don't mean that recycling this stuff will prove feasible just because you'd like it to be. Read on or see thread 18889 for some data. But good luck with it!

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Well, where do I start...... As far as the knowledge I hold on recycling computers goes...... Monitors, printers, and scanners are supposedly worthless. You basically have to pay people to take them. The tower itself is a different story. First you have the steel frame around it which is basically worth a penny a pound to any scrap dealer. There is also the steel cover, but sometimes it is plated with PVC vinyl which may be able to be recycled for about two cents per pound, and the plastics facilities probably want the material to be clean, and not stickered up. Past the frame there are wires, boards, drives, and hopefully a few chips (every computer has different components in it - some with added hard drives and some with no drives..... really depends on what the previous owner did with the confounded thing anyway before it wound up in some trash pile and into your hands.

The insulated copper wire in the computer averages about 7/10 of a pound. Relative scrap price is probably about 15-25 cents per pound.

The disk drives and cd drives are somewhat worthless, however there are a few that are built on a cast aluminum frame. Removal of all parts can be quite tedious, and some of the parts may not come out of the casting without some form of industrial destruction. Average price of cast is about thirty cents per pound. One may get a little more if they separate the clean cast from the dirty cast (dirty having other metals/plastics/contaminants/etc......... The older cd drives may also have a cast aluminum base, but have a few hunks of copper behind a steel plated magnetic disk(a precision screwdriver set would probably be helpful if an attempt at the diamonds in the rough is going to be made).
Not sure of an average weight on the bare copper wire, but average scrap prices are ninety cents for dirty and a dollar for clean.

The hard drive is probably going to be the most valuable drive in the computer, provided you are lucky enough to get one. All of the hard drives that I have seen are aluminum and most require torx keys to open them ⇨
T-10 Torx is the largest size that I have had to use, and T-9 is the most common, but a T-8 is definitely needed if there is an attempt to consistently recover the nickel coated aluminum disks. Unfortunately I am not too sure what the recovery value is on a pile of those disks because nobody can give me a straight answer. I was told however that they should be able to go in the old sheet category at almost any scrapyard. Price on these disks is probably about twenty five to thirty cents per pound. A T-7 key may also be needed, but I am not too sure on that one. There is also all the crap from the reader and a lot of aluminum spaced between the disks. That aluminum is in the category of clip, and has about a five to fifteen cent greater value than old sheet. The motor?...there is a little flying saucer shaped disk at the bottom of the hard drive after all the disks are removed. Not sure what all the components of that are maybe aluminum, stainless, and steel?.. Anyways that is an item that is considered Irony Aluminum, also known as breakage, and goes for about seven to ten cents per pound.

The boards are supposedly where all the money is..... right? Usually there is a motherboard, network drive cards, sound cards, and other various cards. On most motherboards there will be a heatsink with a cpu chip below it. Once removed from the board a hammer and screwdriver will usually chisel the aluminum heat sink off. The heatsink is another item that can go in the clip category.
The cpu chip is what is supposedly so valuable, but I'll get back to that one in just a moment. Also on the motherboard there should be a battery, memory cards, some ic chips (black plastic chips that are removable....pry off with a flathead, and caution because the prongs are very sharp), and if one really wants to be a shrewd miser there are sometimes small aluminum heatsinks by torroid inductors(the little circular things with copper windings all around) grab those and the copper wound inductors. Beneath the copper windings is ferrite. Not sure what the value on that is but they can go as a copper recovery item at the yards - about ten to fifteen cents per pound. Haven't really messed with the male female connectors that are to have all the gold plated pins. Also there are probably some cylindrical looking objects with a silvery top covered with plastic. I believe those are tantalum capacitors. I don't really mess around with those either. After removal of the simple objects the boards can go to select scrapyards for ten to fifty cents per pound. The network and drive cards are usually the main supplier of gold fingers and sometimes have IC chips on them too.

Now to the worst part of this whole "science experiment" is the little metal box with all the wires coming out of it. Have been told that they are worthless, so clip the wires and try to get a penny a pound out of the things (there is a copper wound torroid inductor inside the box, but since it says don't open the box due to possible live electrical current in a dead box or whatever and I have opened a couple of boxes.....my best description is that it is the dirtiest and ugliest mess in the computer so my best advice is don't waste your time). Some places may not want to mess around with the boxes or the disk drives so calling around first may be the best route for these items.

Now to the best part of course are the cpu/sim chips and ic chips. There are a couple of styles of sim chips. The best are the flat backed grey pentiums with the gold pins and square on the back. Aside from the gold the chip itself is 76% Tungsten, a semi-precious metal worth between two to four dollars average at some scrapyards. (Removal of these pins would probably be best suited for recovery of tungsten at a yard. eBay seems to be a good place to sell these chips). The other chips are believed to be ceramic - they all seem to have an aluminum plate stuck to the top and a grid in the center of the square of the gold pins - the cyrix chips are I believe silicone with gold pins -Pentium II are junk - Pentium III are plastic with gold pins. There are only about three different kinds of removable ic chips that I have seen. Out of the three there are some that are in a little square on boards which can be removed with precision tools, they and other light chips are silicone chips, not sure what the metal tips are, but copper and silver can be found in these chips (very hard to get to with a hammer...........trust me.........and what a mess). The other IC chips, believed to be high grade, have a metallic body usually with a holographic sticker covering a glass window.....below the window is quite the rare looking metal and very tiny too....I believe that it is platinum (even harder to get to due to the metal once again being 76% tungsten).

And finally to the hardest part of this experiment the time and effort to research all the metals, organize the various categories to accumulate the material, know where to cash what in at, and have enough space to store most of the scrap. It probably won't be a big money maker unless there is somebody truly dedicated to recycling these things, and can accumulate enough of them in a short amount of time to turn them over for any large amount of profit. There is always money in quantity, hence that's half the battle.

Computer recycling is not only needed but on the rise, and really now is as good of a time as any to start figuring out new ways and methods to properly dispose of technologically advanced materials (especially if they are causing ecological damage to society by going to the landfills). There are a lot of other odds and ends to computers too. I have been in the scrap industry for a few years now and having had access to a thirty five thousand dollar hand held Niton x-ray machine ⇨
I guess curiosity got the best of me at times and helped me stumble across the percentages and values of certain objects. Know your material and don't get ripped off. Know how much weight you have before you cash in, and remember that some items are only worth going for if one were to plan on saving a considerably large amount. It may be worth the time to you or it may not. Who knows?...

Well I hope that what little knowledge I possess will benefit somebody else as it has myself. If you choose to recycle computers there are hundreds of ways and many possibilities - just find your niche and have fun.......

Bruce O [surname deleted for privacy by Editor]
- Willoughby, Ohio
2005

A. When considering recycling in the computer arena, remember that there are other things of value besides the metal. Bruce above stated that printers are worthless. (They probably were in 2005 when he made this comment) Now, however, printers can be an easy money item. The cartridges can be removed and recycled for up to near 20$.

Some will pay for shipping and send preprinted labels when you sign up. Demand for old/broken printers appears to be pretty low so they may be had fairly cheaply.

Mark Parrish
2007
- Kansas City, Missouri

? I was unaware that there was any platinum on hard disk platters. Where can you point us that will tell us how thick and pure it is and what it is mixed with please?

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. I believe that the plated hard drive disks have a mixture of cobalt, chromium, and platinum. Platinum being about 5% to 12% of the plating. Not all the disks have the platinum plating on them either. Not real sure on the scrap value of this item yet, or how to refine it. With a guess from my research, about 15 tons of platinum are used in the electronics field, with the main source being the hard drive disks. There are plenty of hard drives out there, so I'm sure that at some point somebody will figure out how to refine the material and offer a monetary value for the item.

Bruce Opdahl
- Willoughby, Ohio

A. First you have to liberate your precious and tramp metals into solution, use either ion exchange or electrowinning for recovery. You'll need many permits and you can expect a visit from the HAZMAT fellows in their goon suits. You're far better sending your metals out to a licensed refinery, pre preparation is the key to saving money. Good luck with your endeavors and remember a Hazmat visit could be very expensive.

Gill Almgren
- Melita, MB, Canada

A. I work in hard drive production. I can tell you the manufactured disks have either a glass core or an aluminum magnesium core, and then a super thin-film coating of magnetic material, then diamond-like carbon, also thin-film. The platinum is sputtered on with other materials in a layer just 10s of angstroms thick, along with cobalt, chrome, etc. Total manufactured price is under $1 per disk, the amount of platinum involved is minuscule.

Sng Guil
Engineering - San Francisco, California
September 13, 2011

A. It's taken me just about forever, but I've finally found some way to answer the simple question "How much platinum is in these hard drive platters showing up on eBay for salvage?" "The Chemistry of Computing" over at extremetech.com (www.extremetech.com/computing/77316-the-chemistry-of-computing) has all the facts: surface layer of Co-Cr-Pt alloy is 40-50% platinum, and the layer is ~30nm thick. I don't have a hard drive platter in front of me, so let's just forget about the hole in the middle for a moment, so one platter from a 3.5" disk is 3.14*(3.5/2)^2=10.4 sq inches or 67.2 cm^2 ... times the 30nm thickness (3x10^-6 cm) is 2.0x10-4 cm^3, times the (optimistic) 50% Pd, times the density of Pt (21.45 g/cm^3) and I estimate one platter has at most 2.2 mg Pt. As of 08/29/2008, the platinum spot price was 1470.00 USD per troy ounce, or more usefully, 4.73 cents per milligram.

So, congratulations, you've just spent an hour of time and three cents of chemicals (just a guess, probably high) to reclaim 10 cents of platinum, probably still contaminated with cobalt and chromium depending on your recovery method. I hope you bought a whole bunch of platters cheap and rode a bike to pick them up because I doubt you'll be paying for gas let alone the shipping with the platinum. Or hope those early hard drives used a much thicker layer....

Kevin Hughes
Looking for work - Tarzana, California
July 19, 2012

A. Hi. I have one on my lap I got from the dump and have gotten a LOT out of it so far.
No one mentions the magnets. They are typically Neodymium magnets though some like for the hard drive motor itself tend to be ceramic.
In the hard drive the part that moves across the drive has a somewhat banana or curved shape to it.
Use care when removing! I recommend (goggles ⇦ on eBay or Amazon [affil links] for sure) putting one end of its casing in a vice then using pliers or other means to bend the CASE the magnet is mounted to as if to peal it away from the magnet. Get that as far as you can then use a knife (so the edge can cut any glue) to complete the separation. Use caution. Neodymium magnets are very brittle and can send shards flying. There power also makes them likely to attract sharp metal objects so watch out for nearby items that are metallic.
Also the parts of the DVD and floppy and CD often contain Neodymium magnets. Use a screwdriver (metal) to find them next to the lenses. I then use a knife blade to pry them the mount away from them (not them from the mount - again they are brittle and can be dangerous of they shatter).
I then recycle these into wind generators.

Other parts I question (and fishing for answers here) like the contact wires inside the plastic cases that the gold plated contacts go into (not knowing if silver or aluminum) I hang onto.
Just because we may not know an easy way to extract the valuable materials now - doesn't mean we won't find an ecological and economical way to do so a few years from now.
So would anyone know regarding the capacitors if there is any metals or value to those? (I'm seriously considering using them for batteries) And THANKS for all the wonderful contributions here I really learned a lot!
And if anyone wants (or can) to email me if they allow that here I don't have much $ but could really deal with more of these Neodymium magnets since I don't just make my own wind generators I'm wanting to make enough of them to sell.
They use the larger and the small magnets.
Thanks again!

Tree Kneeland
- Anchor Point, Alaska

Ed. note: Hello, Tree. We're publicly discuss subjects like recycling of e-waste, but the internet is gigantic and when we tried to offer to print email addresses and be a free eBay we were quickly swamped. Apologies.

A. I'll give you guys a little insight since I actually work in the e-recycling industry. The name of the game here is VOLUME. In order to really net any money, you need to either deal in large volumes direct to a smelter like we do or at a step down from that, find a company like mine that has those relationships and can give you top dollar for proper disposition of the items (beware of all of the droves of Chinese companies with American names who just send your stuff out the back door in a container bound for Asia...they'll usually pay the most for computers since they have no dismantling costs).

CRT's and broken LCD's cost money to get rid of; no way around that...leaded glass in the CRT's and mercury in the LCD's which have to go to EPA certified facilities for proper handling once the units have been dismantled. There's money in the yokes & boards, but that's quickly eaten into by the cost to get rid of the glass and your labor. Printers are worthless other than the toner cartridges out of laser printers and the free paper that's usually left in the trays ;)

The high value items in the PC's are indeed the motherboards, the RAM and the processors and older is better = more precious metals. For example, a Pentium 4 is worth about $9-10/lb, Pentium I is worth about $110/lb. Motherboards/high grade boards will typically fetch us around $4.20/lb (we'll pay around $3.30/lb to get them...we *do* have operating costs that have to be covered with a large facility and $2 mil in shredders and optical sorting equipment). My last batch of mixed RAM netted just shy of $19/lb and is probably closer to $20-21/lb now. Mixed processor lot sent at the same time (heavy on Slot 1 processors which are about the cheapest) was about $29/lb. BUT, in order to get these returns you need volume (as well as storage space as most large smelters take a truckload at a time and you have to ship on THEIR schedule based upon how they've scheduled their processing) and you have to wait about 2 months to see your money. We'll typically pay $0.20/lb to get low grade board like what comes out of the CRT's and TV's, but you need to bring us at least a gaylord full to make it worth our time. IIRC the yokes are up around $1/lb. We have several local recyclers who bring their stuff to us because we pay more than anyone other than the Chinese exporters (and we match most of their pricing). If you're looking to get into this, your time is best spent accumulating, doing very basic dismantling and sorting and letting a company like ours do the 'heavy lifting'. I'll typically pay upwards of $0.30/lb for a PC, then we'll dismantle it separating the battery (goes to a battery recycler), processor, motherboard, memory, DVD drive (still has some resale value, CD's stay with the case & go through the shredders), heatsink & processor fan. Plastic is basically worthless and everything else is basically a game of pennies...you need volume to make money off of that stuff. Hope this was of some help.

Schuyler L [surname deleted for privacy by Editor]
- Mansfield, Ohio USA
December 28, 2010

A. Your question is very complicated and simple at the same time. In the current market whole PC's are purchased as a commodity as are all the components (HDD, board, processors etc).

While opinions vary, most recyclers are doing things in an environmentally responsible manner. By the way, every pound of Cu, Al, Fe recovered via secondaries (like scrap wire or hard drives) is a pound we don't need to mine!

Scrapping of all sorts can be somewhat lucrative if your expectations are low (spare money as opposed to living wage). If you want to go full force it can be very lucrative but you need deep pockets (at today's prices anyway).

The main problem is that most individuals who are willing to give you a PC also need you to take an old CRT. (If they give you an LCD with an unbroken screen and case, take it! LOL).

Now you have a positive (PC) and a negative (CRT). The CRT is most likely going to cost you money to get rid of the right way. Some municipalities have free recycling programs for TV's and CRT's. If yours does best thing is to use it.

Some printers have reusable value, some cartridges do as well. Right now if I have large volume of printers I am lucky to get a few cents a lb. delivered to the recycler.

Stay away from your aluminum can recyclers with your scrap PC's. If they take it they will pay almost nothing. Instead you can collect a few hundred pounds of high grade stuff (such as old RAM, processors, PC mother and peripheral boards) and send off to a refiner.

A lot of people advocate refining at home. I am not one of them. The potential health hazards cannot possibly be worth it.

While you are waiting to get enough high grade to ship make sure you sell your "content" items. Power supplies, harness wire, things like that. What you can get depends a lot on how much you can collect before selling. Call around, shop a few prices before selling.

I am in this business but I won't discuss pricing because it changes regularly and it also varies with quantity. However, it can be worth it.

I hope my response to your question is helpful. Recycling is a lot of fun! Even if doing it on a personal level may not make you a fortune you learn a lot about things by looking at a waste stream.


Hope you enjoy and good luck.

Mike Ainpour
- Chicago Illinois