Recycling Handbook

Standard Volunteer Tasks

Template

• Bins Required:
  • name
    • Size:
    • Contents:
    • QC into:
  • name
    • Size:
    • Contents:
    • QC into:

• Special tools:

• How to Teach:

• Special Notes:

Systems at the Bench

Basic System Deconstruction is a few years old.

Optical Drives

This section is for desktop sized CD-ROM and DVD drives. Laptop size drives go into CBM.

• Bins Required:
  • Steel
    • Size: Meduim-large
    • Contents: Screws, the flat top plate and the bottom steel shell.
    • QC into: Schnitzer steel bin.
  • Circuit boards
    • Size: medium-small
    • Contents: Circuit boards that are green on both sides, with wires removed.
    • QC into: GBM gaylord
  • "Everything Else", guts,
    • Size: Large
    • Contents: The interior mechanism of the drive which includes plastic, smaller metal pieces, wires and small or low grade circuit boards(brown/tan on one side). Also, the plastic/metal disc that was embedded in the larger steel shell.
    • QC into: CBM gaylord
  • CDs
    • When a cd/dvd falls out of the drive it can be set aside in a pile.
    • QC into: Box of CDs, or return to receiving.
• Special tools:

• How to Teach:

Typically volunteers should start by removing the screws visible on the outside of the drive and the top steel plate. This should expose the main circuit board which should be carefully removed and cleaned of any wires. There is likely to be a second smaller circuit board that can stay on the plastic body of the drive. The large flat-head screwdriver should be used to pry the steel housing from the plastic drive mechanism. This steel shell will usually have a small plastic disc in it's center which can be removed by twisting the large flat head screwdriver between the plastic disc and the large steel housing.

• Special Notes:

Keyboards

• Hard Plastic
• Steel (remove rods from longer keys, screws, plates)
• Filmy plastic with printed silver circuitry
• Rubbery sheet (jellyfish-like)
• Circuit boards
• Wires/cables

Network Devices

• Plastic (remove all LEDs, wires, switches, etc)
• Steel (screws, etc)
• Circuit boards
• Wires/cables
• Misc (CBM, etc)

Daughter Cards

• Cards
• Steel (screws, faceplates)
• Aluminum (heat sinks)
• Fans
• Batteries (occasional button batteries)
• RAM

Floppy Drives (aluminum chassis only)

• Aluminum
• Steel (covers, screws, etc)
• Circuit boards (controller card)
• Misc (motors, plastic/steel mix, cable/wire)

Heat Sink Fan Combos (ZIF only)

• Fans
• Aluminum (heat sinks)
• Wires
• Steel (screws, clips, brackets)

Hard Drives

• Bins Required:
  • Chassis
    • Size: medium -They get heavy fast
    • Size, special: Milk crates leak and are not recommended for laptop drives or when harvesting magnets.
    • Contents: All parts of the hard drive except for the circuit board including screws and attached foam pads.
    • QC into: HD chassis gaylord
  • Circuit Boards
    • Size: medium or Small
    • QC into: Category 3 circuit board barrel
  • Trash
    • Size: Trash Cans
    • Contents: loose foam pads and rubber covers
    • QC into: Garbage dumpster

• Special tools:
  • A "HD Toolkit" has been created -contains Torx 6, Torx 4, Phillips 00 for laptop size drives.

• How to Teach:
  • Separate the Circuit board from everything else by removing all screws that are on the circuit board.(other screws are irrelevant unless harvesting magnets) We have a special toolkit for the smaller screws on laptop size drives. Once the circuit board is loose it should be cleaned of any foam rubber. The screws and main body of the dr

• Special Notes:
  • We should now have the tools required to remove the boards from laptop drives. In the past we have instructed volunteers to pry off the thing circuit boards so that they rip neatly around the screws.

• Alternate method
  • Magnet Harvesting:
    • When harvesting magnets from the drive, volunteers should be instructed to skip any difficult or drives. Some drives get warped by the drilland torquing too hard has broken many tools.

Advanced volunteer tasks

Aluminum Drives

• Bins Required:
  • Motors
    • Contents: motors with or without integrated circuit boards.
    • QC into: Motors barrel
  • Mid-grade Circuit Boards
  • Steel
  • Cast Aluminum
    • Contents: Clean Aluminum chassis with no steel, brass or other bits.
    • QC into: Clean Cast Aluminum Barrel
  • CBM
    • Contents: Everything else including: wires, low grade circuit boards steel that did not come off pure.

• Special tools:
  • Power drill if appropriate
  • Phillips bit #2 and occasionally #1

• How to Teach:
  • Stress that with the power drill it is easy to strip screws and that striped screws make aluminum unclean.

• Special Notes:
  • John's Experiment
    • In one hour of uninterrupted work with the corded power drill I disassembled 21 large 5.25 inch aluminum drives. Smaller drives have low grade boards and more annoying screws. (In John's opinion smaller drives may not be worth the effort.)

this yielded:
14 lbs of cast aluminum
18 lbs of motors
1.5 lbs of midgrade circuit boards.
1 lb of junk plastic
unknown quantity of steel that has the aproximate value of CBM
unknown quantity of cbm (steel plastic and wire)

notes: I stripped 2 screws which i was able to remove quickly. I set aside 2 drives that looked like they would require excessive effort. I'll cbm them or clean them enough for dirty aluminum. My focus was on separating motors and midgrade circuit boards, I let everything else that came off of the drive pile up and go into a cbm, unless it happened to be clean plastic.

Battery Sorting and Boxing

• See Sorted Batteries
• Ask John or Liane for more details

Motherboards

• See Motherboard Recycling.
• See also Clean Circuitboards

Bench Setup for Motherboards

• The volunteer group Central City Concern disassembles motherboards every Tuesday morning. The following are instructions for re-configuring the bench in preparation for their arrival.

Supplies =

these are up above the MoBo/Cards shelves by the windows =

2 very big pink plastic bins,

6 little floppy-disk buckets;

these you'll have to scrounge from Recycling or Adv Test =

RAM - 6 to 12 sticks,

Button Cell Batteries - 6 to 12,

Procs - Socket & Slot - 6 to 12

(Adv Test has a "Bad CPU" bucket you might need),

Heatsink/Fan combos - 6 to 12.

Rolling Steel Cart =

have volunteers empty it saturday nite,

install the 2 very big pink bins to hold the MoBos.

Non-Magnetic Metal & Small Steel buckets =

let them be empty, except for a little seeding.

BenchTop =

Red Bucket =

2 sticks of RAM

White Bucket =

2 ButtonCell Batteries

little floppy-disk Bucket =

1 for each workstation (volunteers will use these for screws).

UnderBench =

Speakers & Fans bin =

socket-type Heatsink/Fan combo

upper right MoBo bin =

a socket proc, a slot proc with plastic & heatsink attached

use 1 or both of the lower MoBo bins for plastic

GBM gaylord =

if it is more than 1/2 full, swap it out to gaylord country, we'll fill it for sure, & it's easier than having to swap it part way through the MoBo shift, or leaving it for the afternoon shift.

Notes: Batteries =

  We do not ask volunteers to remove older "Dallas" style batteries because these batteries too closely resemble IC chips that are soldered
  onto the MoBos.  Removing parts that are soldered onto the board involves breaking the board, which is a safety issue. 

future changes being considered =

 since RAM is now Cat3 like most procs, have volunteers put RAM
    in with the procs under the bench (easier for us to sort or
    harder?) - so far, this has proven to make sorting harder, we will probably not pursue this;