Depopulating Boards - Mid Grade Boards

Depopulating mid grade board discussion for new scrappers wondering what to remove from circuit boards for precious metal recovery.
Still not very exciting as it's pretty straight forward with these boards but mid grades make up for 80% of the boards we find in e-waste.
Stay tuned for the next chapter in depopulating boards, coming soon.
Keep scrapping & have fun!

[@markwyatt782]

I haven't read any of your viewer's comments but by the sounds of it, you've got one or two of those brilliant one's showing up for a visit. I, myself, have learned quite a lot from your videos. I can listen & occasionally view while I'm distracted on my projects. And you repeat yourself so damn much... something that would normally irritate me but being that circuit board components were foreign to me, i need it that way and it's working. Im finding that what you're teaching is starting to be understood and i appreciate that. Good job!

[@scrapyardmarkmetalpicker614]

Great video. I'm an old skool scrapper that worked in a yard for 23 years i know all the big stuff but e waste is something in just learning.

[@tinkerfabrication]

thank you for this sires of videos. was just what i needed for a good start. only one that takes the time to go all the way through. i watch them while im picking boards. learn something new every time.

[@marc-andrebrunet5386]

You are the "One" that I decided to subscribe ! Bravo👍

[@dimwittflathead639]

K is a relay. They are usually silver contacts but some need gold plating for corrosion resistance. Extremely rare are relays with mercury wetting but those will also have glass to hold the mercury and contacts.

[@damianstasek8946]

Those relays are my bread and butter.

[@raymondcote6669]

What a process Ben. You’ve got a great system there. I’m sure we all are all impressed

[@platinumskies7968]

Only Ewaste Ben can make an hour and a half video about scrapping 😂

[@geoffupton]

Platinum Skies but its a well worked hour... very informative and very detailed. remember this is done by ben who knows what hes doing and is helping new scrappers at scrapper level! basically, hes great at this!

[@marc-andrebrunet5386]

So true !! 😁

[@MalikSucksAss]

Forget the gold. I go straight for the COPPAH.

[@andrewcannon587]

he has excellent teaching skills, he would be a great teacher or professor

[@littlegandhi1199]

Thank you for your patient steady insight

[@strale5545]

Its good idea, im doing that, to have magnet when u take off mlcc and just take magnet and when u take mlcc from bord pick up with magnet, myb this will help u to do it faster not picking it from desk.

[@Alondro77]

LEDs, especially the older ones, have a secret treasure: RHENIUM!! It's usually alloyed with molybdenum.

[@raymondcote6669]

Enjoy mist if your videos. To depopulate, try using a wood chisel ( sharp edge) instead of a screwdriver, dull edge just Pushes parts off instead of getting “under” the parts. It moved much easier Tried it and works better in practice Once you do, you won’t go back. I also sharpened my blade on my air hammer but parts “GO EVERYWHERE “ as you probably know already. 🙂

[@ПунчоСапа]

Again Great video

[@robertirby5059]

Thank You Sir.....You have done a great job at teaching, I've learn something new each time I see a video.

[@Robbob9933]

Anyone who claims that obtained a marketable measure of precious metals from carbon (rainbow) resistors is trying to sell you the Sydney Harbor (our) Bridge.

[@gregoryhupp4118]

I have found when hand picking the ICs and VGA chips a sharp 5mm wood chisel works well. The chips you can use the chisel to cut the legs. A sharp knife will do as well.

[@grimmsshenanigansproductions]

I do gold recovery and you are right about the dangers and there being a lot to doing the process.

[@afineliner740]

eWaste Ben, Good video, very informative. Look forward to the next episode

[@shaneyork300]

Great Depopulating video! Loads of info!!! 👍👍

[@Alondro77]

I found a trick for getting the tiny components off: weak HCl with a tiny bit of EDTA dissolved in it! Leave it in a warm place. The EDTA acts as a catalyst, slowly stripping away the base metal. Copper will dissolve, redeposit, and then redissolve as the solder and more reactive metals are eaten away. When it's all done, the little components will all just fall right off and you're left with a very weakly acidic solution of base metal chlorides in an organic salt (EDTA). If you're really into cleaning up after yourself like I am, it's easy then to hit it with sodium carbonate to drop pretty much everything (most transition metal carbonates are insoluble), and then dry them out and roast to non-reactive oxides for disposal.

[@phillipbrewster6058]

Where is the best place to sell this stuff at???

[@nickhouck4309]

I wish there was better KZbin video on grading circuit boards. Ben goes over the components really well and I have learned alot from his videos but I mean for example I accidentally sold a bunch of telcom grade boards from the 70s as gold finger cards because they had gold fingers I didn't realize they were actually telcom so I mixed them in with newer ones that weren't telcom and devalued them. Then afterwards the guy showed me. And also he pulled a bunch of stuff out of my mid grade and put it in low grade. Like boards that had heavier plugs and ones that were less populated with chips.

[@Alondro77]

Important chemistry note: the ruthenium resistors are ruthenium oxide, which does not react with most acids. HOWEVER!! It DOES react dangerously with STRONG ALKALIS!! So, to depopulate the tiny components completely, it's best to use weak acid to remove the solder. Then you can capture the MLCCs with a magnet after filtering out the solid parts from the solution. The ruthenium-containing resistors will be left behind in the pile of solids. All MLCCs from boards with ruthenium resistors will be magnetic, as ruthenium wasn't used in the old boards with non-magnetic MLCCs. Make sure you sort the old boards from the newer ones, obviously. Mainly anything post-2000 is 'new'.

[@Alondro77]

The 'silver' fingers and contacts are tricky. They can have one of several types of plating: palladium, silver, platinum, rhodium for the good ones; tin, chrome, nickel for the crap ones. I'm developing a chemical reaction series to deal with them and recover the actual precious metals as a powder, while leaving most of the copper or brass cores behind! It's based on partial dissolution and then redeposition and displacement. Most of the precious metals flake off as the copper goes in and out of solution, while the base metal platings stay in solution. Then you can shake up the solids and filter through a nylon screen. You'll have a solution with grey and silvery dust (virtually all the precious metals), and copper cores (and some copper crystals).

[@spencerm129]

Hi, Ben. Thanks for producing all of this content. Great channel. Can you do a video on your current game plan/goals or your overall approach to e waste handling? Like, what are you in it for? What do you hope to do with all of these tiny bits of gold? You rock. Thanks.

[@mauriliozamora6627]

Good video Ben, but i'm not into gold recovery so that being said i had to fast forward to the things i'm into. I like the parts where you take things apart or picking up scrap. Thank you for sharing your video.

[@Alondro77]

I save all the ceramic capacitors and components of red, blue, yellow, brown, green, and even black. You never know which could have some precious metals in them, as manufacturing changes so much with them. If they're aluminum, then it's no problem. The first step is ALWAYS to clean base metals from the components with HCl after smashing them to bits, and that will completely dissolve aluminum away. Pure aluminum chloride aqueous solution is colorless to very pale yellow. When highly concentrated, it can even become a translucent gel. It's actually rather neat to toy with, and can be reacted with sodium hydroxide to make super-pure alumina powder for making ceramics and artificial rubies and sapphires (you can even get all the doping metals out of your base metal solutions!)

[@phillipbrewster6058]

Those specific resisters you pointed at specifically have tantilum in them which is 1850. a pound but you have to find a specific tantalum buyer which is fairly difficult to locate

[@shadowzedge5793]

Which version are you referring to? The rainbow or the SMD?

[@ewastegold6619]

I depopulate boards while watching eWaste Ben videos.

[@ernestpetzrick7741]

Thanks for another interesting vid Ben. I hand depopulate boards. I don't get the volume you do, so easy enough.

[@jetman1963]

do you ever use heat to remove IC memory chips?

[@Alondro77]

I do hand-pick all the big stuff. While watching anime. Perfect use of time! ;D

[@maryannrussell7255]

Very informative thanks

[@jensvolkmann5544]

What do you do with all the components? I scrap the IC, Copper, Aloi , Goldpins. for the rest i have never found a recycler or acquirers, i sell this bords as low grade bords to my recycler.

[@installelogique7721]

Another great video ty Ben. Is the board still worth low grade after hand picking good stuff on it?

[@eWasteBen]

if there's enough of the copper bits, aluminium and junky stuff then yeah, it should pass as low grade, you'd want to try your buyer with a batch and see what they say

[@Alondro77]

I like to save up all the big aluminum capacitors and smelt them all at once. Easy to do in just a steel drum with holes in the bottom and a wood fire. End up with a blob of highly-pure aluminum, since those capacitors are about 99.6% pure aluminum. The electrolyte is almost always nontoxic these days, just a simple salt.

[@woodworkingandepoxy643]

Its actually not difficult at all to recover and refine gold and silver from boards lol I learned on KZbin, it's very possible to learn on KZbin, and now have a business refining for others. If you have a basic understanding of safety practices and what acids can do it's easy to do

[@Jakopz]

Found a gold base crystal oscillators in those small slot cards from laptops.

[@pierreqiu8147]

What the purpose of the gold cap, when it is not for contact

[@geneschmall192]

thank u sir for teaching me so much

[@nathanaelgoodell7106]

Please forgive my ignorance. I just started scrapping. What are mlcc’s? The soldering materials?

[@eWasteBen]

multi layer ceramic capacitors

[@dlovett1771]

Get a huge bin and start keeping those aluminum capacitors. Takes 5 seconds to rip them off. Will add up over time.

[@aluminumcantheif6557]

yeah I love them things. It all adds up and its fun to see such small things turn into a giant pile

[@aluminumcantheif6557]

more like 1 or 2 seconds

[@ajmaeenmahtab8456]

Dear Sir I want to start off my E waste recycling business with a refinery. It can refine only silver and gold. Can you tell me which components of a PCB board the most amount of gold and silver. I would like to know. Thank you.

[@LordPadriac]

I don't really see the problem with the air hammer smashing everything up. I don't know how Ben does his precious metal recovery but with the acid baths I use the smashed up ones give up more of their goods. It exposes more surface area for the acid to act on which means I'm not potentially leaving something behind in undissolved IC chunks - which there always are. I don't throw anything out. It's as much a hobby as side hustle for me so I take everything off and kind of sort it while I'm watching TV or feel like tinkering in the shop without getting into something I can't drop at a moment's notice. very can capacitor and transformer gets cut open and the aluminum and copper bits get tossed into my piles for melting later. Shockingly the completely depopulated boards still sell for a bit on sleazebay afterward. I mean not for much but they're trash I paid nothing for to begin with so anything is really gravy.

[@METALLKZ]

Gold Gold Gold Gold 😂👍👍👍

[@nehush]

CAN they Supplying e waste for the Recycling purpous ?

[@walterf.mollerv.8035]

Well, how much gold obtains per month? You has very much material in others videos!!!!, I'm too are gold scrapper, but only cards RAM memory, PCI cards and Ceramics Microprocesators, in 2019 I again start buyed this material and save, when have very much material I start gold chemical procces, regards!!!!

[@وليدسعيد-غ1ذ]

i liked the video..but i have aquestion how much gold in 1kg. of rams , processores and mother boards..

[@bobjones9614]

36:34 pretty sure that a bios chip .

[@ednightingale]

Good Video Ben, thanks

[@mohammadarshad6932]

Sir How much 1kg price tantalum capacitors

[@SuperNinjazx6]

Good day buddy? I have a few ceramic GPS patch antenna chips. Do you know if they contain any precious metals?

[@eWasteBen]

most likely gold in there

[@plumbob916]

Are you going to see the foo fighters when they cone to Melbourne next month?

[@eWasteBen]

only if they want me to scrap their electronics after the show

[@shadowzedge5793]

@@eWasteBen 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@judybeckner5623]

Thanks for sharing

[@tomasusmagnus3475]

Have you thought about using electrolysis?

[@robertbunnell5932]

Are capacitors worth scraping?

[@TomlinsTE]

Why would people buy mid-grade or any other type of board, especially the ones that have already been stripped?

[@raymondcote6669]

Partial plated pins like you showed removing the plastic can be easily cut off with your snips. Here they are called aviation snips. They are right handed and left handed. Go for it What are those loud birds

[@RichardWilliams-lt9yv]

I like using a oscillating saw

[@lukerichness6036]

Hey E waste Ben The crystal The micc And some of the other things you keep ,I can’t remember if you ever said what’s the value of them are or what to do with them ?.

[@eWasteBen]

keep them incase silver goes up a lot, then worth recovering. crystals = silver, crystal oscillators = silver/gold, MLCC's - Palladium/silver

[@lukerichness6036]

Thanks Ben for the reply ,just now watching your strategic stockpiling vid more details in there . Maybe missing info scattered in vids . Another thing if your depopulating boards again can you please show us exactly what the crystal and other part look like it’s kinda hard to see when your working fast before u throw it on pile .

[@lokig8640]

Anyone else triggered by the wrong fitting on the air tool?

[@bigcountryscrapper6885]

Great video bro

[@xylz1798]

i hand pick everything off it i want and its usually a lot or most of it just not the tiny tiny stuff t hen can sell the boards with the rest on it. also when i'm doing it i get about 20 boards and put in a pile then i take off all of one thing from t hem all and do that through out the process so all mlcc,chips,and so on if you get what i'm saying so its kinda like ur draws of stuff ur making but i make a pile of everything and then add it to my jars. one day ill make a little video for you or youtube to see all the stuff i've collected so far. but like your new style of depopulating as i didn't like the air tool way or many other ways other then hand picking them but i wasn't gonna say it in your video a year ago was just gonna let u say what ever you say in your videos. :P

[@RafalScrapper]

good way of thinking, do not show what you havent idea of how to do it . i have try it, i have build my ovn small lab with vacum chamber and very expensive fire extinguishers, get extremly expensive respirator, huge amount of glassware you will need ,and a loot of time and you are not able to get the brake durring the process. it is no that easy how they show on youtube. i have use a houndreds of hours of reaserching and sort of things and steel not always was work out . so think before you do something to your self. regards rafal

[@tassoss13]

i would like to see a speedrun of this

[@shadowzedge5793]

Can always play the video at 2x speed. 🤣

[@theophrastusbaumast5936]

I save all the components for building electrical things.

[@hayevanleeuwen6018]

80% of my boards are the brown CRT kind of boards

[@xylz1798]

then those would be tv's boards not computer boards and those can still be scrapped out. and all the copper rolls on it u can unroll and make a bucket of copper

[@hayevanleeuwen6018]

Yeah those are from CRT monitors, and tv's, but also VHS recorders, radio's and such. I usually don't scrap those out but just sell them for 35 cents a kilo. Sometimes I do take of a copper coil here and there, but not much else. I don't get many computers and other stuff with higher grade boards, my comment was more for Ben so he would know not every scrapper gets the stuff he does.

[@geoffupton]

Haye van Leeuwen yea he knows that 😊

[@carpentryfirst3048]

@@hayevanleeuwen6018 he made a 1 1/2 hr video that's the most detailed you can find and your comment is that not everyone gets the same stuff he does? What the fuck lol.

[@Tina79893]

Im new here is i5 more profitable to depopulate

[@thomassidhoum5446]

v Good

[@DirkMays]

Stop smacking! omg 1 in a millions

[@davicamarabarboza1954]

Manda salve sou do brasil

[@platinumskies7968]

There is a guy on KZbin who refines stuff he is called sreetips why don’t you send your gold scrap to him to refine

[@janne6657]

its a shame nobody pays more to recycle these boards, if it weren't for people like you we would soon be swimming in old tech

[@rigo6156]

People please don't do this, this is a waste of time. Just sell the boards completely or throw them in the garbage.

[@OskarNendes]

Please stop using the word depopulate in your videos you are talking for hours and depopulating nothiing

[@AceBullion]

Great video and another one I enjoyed. Learnt a few things again. Your last 5 minute speech should really be at the beginning. I can't agree with you more on the dangers. Again thank you and well done

[@oldhamegg]

what is the total dollar value of recovery on a board like that? and how much could you sell the board for whole? I'm trying to figure out if it's worth it for me to collect the more particular stuff rather than just the copper and aluminum and sell the rest of the board to a scrap yard. I'm also having trouble finding an ewaste buyer or more specifically one who pays an ok price. I don't even know what to look for in a buyer.

[@bohemianmystik8602]

Great video very Informative. I am in the research phase on whether it is worth just depopulating or Just selling the boards. I am assuming the big refining are making most of their profit off the base metals and not the gold and silver. I am assuming maybe half the value of the board is actually the copper. Then you have the tin soldier with very trace amount of silver Of course they will process the silver platinum and gold. But the copper itself probably pays for the whole process. During my research on Resistors I did notice most of the brown ones are mainly base metals it is the blue rainbow resistors that have platinum and other precious metals. Now that being said I dont get many boards so I will desoldier all components and save soldier and components but I may want to play around with electronics and some of the components are expensive, Some of those components are worth more then the scrap value if they are working. On the practical level I may process the copper board by lye bath to get the green mylar off and save the tin soldier for reuse or scrap. Of course I will save the silver and gold to but more of a side product.

[@geoffupton]

now thats cool! these depopulating vids are ace! yea i have quite a few years of electronic/computer/tv engineering and im thinking... your right, why the hell does it matter what the components do or how they work?! they are just scrap! your not fixing them! ben your an ace guide and advisor and teacher... and a great scrapper 😊 keep going, these vids are cool!

[@wayneparker7366]

is there anytype of place you could send the things that u take off the boards that have gold/silver precious metals etc,that will recover the precious metals.then refine it and send it back in bar or button form.maybe charge you a price to do it or take some of the recovered precious metals for payment???

[@ohioguy727]

Do you still have any material?

[@synchroduv]

MLCCs are magnetic. I use a little magnet to pick them up after removing them. Great Video!!

[@Alondro77]

You can sort them even further with a weak fridge magnet. The least magnetic to 'non-magnetic' ones are virtually all silver-palladium. The most magnetic tend to be mainly nickel.

[@voyager319]

On the very thin IC chips, just score one side of the legs with a utility knife and that side just lifts up easily. Then just twist a few times and the whole chip pops off. Works great for 4 sided surface mount chips.

[@christopherdangelo3965]

I am a firm believer 😌 he knows that Mr. Smarty 👖

[@Slavicplayer251]

for me the crumble would go in a hammer mill then process the powder

[@sleepyoufool1]

There's a washing machine down saltley street if you want mate rode past it a couple hrs ago looked untouched

[@NickMeisher]

Is it still there?

[@sleepyoufool1]

@@NickMeisher bruh comment is over 2 years old 🤣

[@SaffordDelivery]

or what you could do to depopulate the boards on a much quicker scale... grab a large metal pan and fill it with a $4 bag of play sand and put it on your gas grill outside on high and stick the whole boards in it, the sand doesnt melt and it will melt the solder off and then take a metal ruler or an old large knife to just "wipe" the pieces off the board

[@johngay1981]

Nice video. Very instructive. I've been watching you for a year or so and scrapping, but I learn something new every time.

[@bmxtwins5685]

Watching in 2020 covid b.s. .... m8, u really enlighted dude !!! Love your stuff. Be wise invest in bitcoin, and yes gold DUHH

[@aluminumcantheif6557]

Hello former scrapper!

[@Chewy_GarageBandDad]

Hey, new to the game. I have enjoyed your work and learned much. How do you get the MCC's off by hand? Right now, and some may remember being at this point..I just stare at the board thinking ok, what do i do? What is that? Try a few things that never work, throw the board to the side for later. LOL I have found that using finger nail clippers to remove gold pins works well.

[@eWasteBen]

mlcc's you just push them off with a flat blade screwdriver, with a left to right motion and they pop off

[@Chewy_GarageBandDad]

@@eWasteBen thank you sir

[@Reasonist]

Good info Ben, at 21:53 you single out a small white box component. That’s a relay from what I’ve researched and I was wondering if you knew if there are computer relays that contain mercury. I’ve read up on relays in other industries containing mercury for conductivity without spark/arc risks... but I haven’t been able to find solid info pertaining to computer scrapping. Thanks and happy scrapping!

Yes right, they are relays.

[@tommygavan9663]

Champion. Cheers for all the great info especially regarding the toxic dangers etc ; Nice work fella.

[@Chewy_GarageBandDad]

so, why do you, once you remove everything you want from the board, grab the hammer gun and strip the rest. Cant you just take that to the scrap yard and get paid for weight?

[@phillgoodall8838]

I use wood chisels instead of screwdriver. Same difference but I can sharpen them. Like Original Fleets says: "Chisels are your friend". Thanks for the clear advice Ben.

[@bantalee2002]

Hi Ben: Good instructional video. I Dont know if you knew this but Vice grips does have smaller sized pliers like the blue handled one you have, 2 sizes smaller then the pliers you are using in this video. Even though my hands still get fatigued,they are not as fatigued using the smaller sized(less weight) vise grips.

[@supersneakusa4492]

Just wondering if you scraped the boards clean, separate out the obvious stuff, through everything else into a crumble bucket. Couldn't you recover the solder off the boards ? Tin is $24.86 usd per kg. I saw the guy from Mt. Baker mining run e-waist through a hammer mill onto his shaker table, which seemed to do a good job separating the heavy metals. From there, guess it would go to a refiner to separate the metals. That way you're getting more out of the boards. Looks to me in order to make a decent profit, you need to be able to mass process. I can see if you're processing a few and there, exactly as you demonstrate, but doesn't seem like a viable business, unless you can easily process thousands of boards at a time with not much effort.

[@johngay1981]

My biggest issue is grading my boards. Yellow, brown boards .. low grade, right? Are all green on green mid grades?

[@theophrastusbaumast5936]

The resistors and all the electronic components are still useful for other projects.

[@supersneakusa4492]

You should try one of those vibration saws, you can get thin blade scrapper tools with them.

[@johngay1981]

Ha! I never pegged you for a conspiracy theorist. JFK...

[@tomatexelon]

How much do you make? What is your cost to get the boards? Is it worth your time verses a minimum wage job?

[@Alondro77]

The brassy bits on the TeV boards is just brass. I tested several from different boards in weak nitric acid, which should not touch anything gold. They completely dissolved into blue copper nitrate and some tin nitrate goop. Nothing else was left. The inner pin can be gold-plated, but the casing is just cheap brass.

[@shaynewilliams8045]

This guy making fortune buys mid range boards 1.00 kilo dose this doubles his money depopulating board and selling that way way more profitable