Recycling, Chines style

M

Martin Whybrow

Guest
I missed this on TV last night, but a colleague mentioned it; the UK ships
vast amounts of old PCBs to China for reprocessing (I guess it meets the
requirements of ISO14001); the footage included scenes of a guy holding a
PCB over an open fire and using pliers to pull ICs off a circuit board. I
dread to think where the recovered parts end up, but it makes you think
twice about buying Chinese manufactured electronic equipment!
Martin

--
martin<dot here>whybrow<at here>ntlworld<dot here>com
 
Don Bruder wrote:

meets the requirements of ISO14001); the footage included scenes of a guy
holding a PCB over an open fire and using pliers to pull ICs off a
circuit board.

Chinese-style nothing... I use the same process for mass-stripping
boards. Hundreds (at least - more likely thousands) of "torch-salvaged"
components later, I have yet to have anything other than electrolytic
caps give me any problem that wasn't directly related to me mis-wiring
it when I incorporated it into a project.
Click to expand...
This is not a good idea. PCBs are usually full of nasty chemicals (flame
retardants etc) that turn into sort of agent orange if you heat them
enough.

You can melt the solder with a solder bath, hot plate or hot air gun as long
as the temperature does not exceed 250 Drgrees Celsius / 480 Degrees F.

George
 
In article <3fcpd.229$zY5.101@newsfe5-gui.ntli.net>,
"Martin Whybrow" <aholeintheground@ntlworld.com> wrote:

I missed this on TV last night, but a colleague mentioned it; the UK ships
vast amounts of old PCBs to China for reprocessing (I guess it meets the
requirements of ISO14001); the footage included scenes of a guy holding a
PCB over an open fire and using pliers to pull ICs off a circuit board. I
dread to think where the recovered parts end up, but it makes you think
twice about buying Chinese manufactured electronic equipment!
Martin
Click to expand...
Chinese-style nothing... I use the same process for mass-stripping
boards. Hundreds (at least - more likely thousands) of "torch-salvaged"
components later, I have yet to have anything other than electrolytic
caps give me any problem that wasn't directly related to me mis-wiring
it when I incorporated it into a project.

(Note to self: cross-wiring +24V to an input with an AMR of 6.2V tends
to let the smoke out rather quickly...)

The trick is speed. Get the solder to flow temperature as quick as
possible, then get the chip gone from the heat just as fast, if not
quicker. The shorter the time the heat is applied, the less chance it
gets to "crawl up the legs" and bake the bug from the inside out.

Unless you severely cook 'em, most (not all - I'm certain someone(s) can
trot out dozens of exceptions if they want to go to the effort) chips
are amazingly tough, and will stand up to abuse that you'd expect would
kill them.

--
Don Bruder - dakidd@sonic.net - New Email policy in effect as of Feb. 21, 2004.
Short form: I'm trashing EVERY E-mail that doesn't contain a password in the
subject unless it comes from a "whitelisted" (pre-approved by me) address.
See <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd/main/contact.html> for full details.
 
In article <41a5d523@maser.urz.unibas.ch>,
Georg Holderied <Georg.Holderied@unibas.ch> wrote:

Don Bruder wrote:

meets the requirements of ISO14001); the footage included scenes of a guy
holding a PCB over an open fire and using pliers to pull ICs off a
circuit board.

Chinese-style nothing... I use the same process for mass-stripping
boards. Hundreds (at least - more likely thousands) of "torch-salvaged"
components later, I have yet to have anything other than electrolytic
caps give me any problem that wasn't directly related to me mis-wiring
it when I incorporated it into a project.

This is not a good idea. PCBs are usually full of nasty chemicals (flame
retardants etc) that turn into sort of agent orange if you heat them
enough.

You can melt the solder with a solder bath, hot plate or hot air gun as long
as the temperature does not exceed 250 Drgrees Celsius / 480 Degrees F.

George
Click to expand...
George, George, George... Give a fellow credit for at least minimal
smarts, huh? Such "mass-de-componentizing" ALWAYS takes place outdoors.
Anything else would be right on the edge of outright suicidal. To the
best of my knowledge, I have no death wish, latent, repressed, active,
or otherwise!

(Never mind the fact that most of the time, the torch isn't applied long
enough to even scorch the PCB material - leave soot deposits if the
torch is set rich, sure, but the objective here is melting solder, not
setting fire to fiberglass/phenolic)

--
Don Bruder - dakidd@sonic.net - New Email policy in effect as of Feb. 21, 2004.
Short form: I'm trashing EVERY E-mail that doesn't contain a password in the
subject unless it comes from a "whitelisted" (pre-approved by me) address.
See <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd/main/contact.html> for full details.
 
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