Services that recover components? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2023, 12:53:07 pm
content: Hello,we have a design that have been sitting on a shelf for at least five years. One project that was never finalized. We are thinking about repurposing the board all the time, but in reality there were design choices that we regretted (connector painful to work with, too bulky and analog part that is now not adequate) and if it was for me I'd redo everything from scratch.However there are a lot of components i would prefer to recover (mainly the microcontroller).I believe i can probably handle everything to our usual CM but it would be interesting to know of other services that take your board, recover the parts you need, dispose of the rest, and sends you back the parts, nicely packaged

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2023, 01:36:19 pm
content: I have friend that owns a professional business that does something similar, however they keep the salvageable parts and resell them themselves. The rest, they salvage for the metal scrap, plastic scrap, etc. I've never heard of a business that salvages parts and then returns them to the builder. There would be not only be no profit in it for them, but it would also be at considerable labor and expense for them to do so. FYI "Nicely Packaged" to these guys means means one of those long plastic tubes that ICs used to come in.Also, FWIW, they very rarely bother with salvaging soldered in parts and generally only recover the socketed parts. (In the trade, those are referred to as solder pulls and socket pulls.) A soldered in part would have to be of exceptional value in order to be worth the time and effort. That said; I have gotten boards from them with a lot of very valuable (to me) parts such as complete Intel 4004 CPU systems with all of the support chips.I think that if you want to salvage the parts, then you'll need to do it yourself.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2023, 05:01:21 pm
content: Quote from: Stray Electron on January 18, 2023, 01:36:19 pmyou would pay them exactly for this jobQuoteexactly what i expect in a nice package. What i fear is receive the parts wrapped in bubblesQuotewith the current prices and lead times of many of the parts in these boards, they are worth it.As you also say, i would do it myself but i also want the CM to use those so they have to be packaged for production and to be in good shape (this means that i probably have to give the boards to them of course)

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2023, 05:16:47 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on January 18, 2023, 05:01:21 pmOnly if you're going to use them yourself. No one else is going to pay anywhere near the current New price for your pulled parts that are of questionable quality. And the recovery company might have to wait YEARS for anyone to buy them. IF anyone ever did.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2023, 10:40:38 pm
content: These companies (purely parts salvage and repackaging) definitely exist in China, haven't heard of them anywhere else though.Many CM's will gladly do soldering modifications, part removal, swap, etc. So you could ask a local one what they'd charge. But they are not used to refurbishing parts and may refuse.As Stray says, might make sense to do it yourself. As in, hire someone in house and get them the proper equipment (multiple preheaters and hot air).They could swap the components from the old board to the new one.Quote from: Stray Electron on January 18, 2023, 05:16:47 pmI thought that was the clear purpose of this thread.

author: Rat_Patrol
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 03:06:26 am
content: Definitely in house for your own use. If you don't care about the board, and the components you want to salvage are on the same side, a hot ir pre heater can get the board hot enough quick enough to get the components off with little effort and lots of fumes. Still need to remove the old solder and/or adjust stencils for the new pcb though.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 03:12:52 am
content: You'd probably be better off selling the boards as-is on ebay for salvage. If the parts are valuable and/or unusual people will sometimes buy them, you'll probably only get pennies on the dollar at best, but it's better than throwing them out. You could also try a surplus company, places like All Electronics often sell random PCBs for salvage or hacking.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 01:52:11 pm
content: Quote from: thm_w on January 18, 2023, 10:40:38 pmIndeed that's the idea, we desperately need the microcontroller

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 03:00:54 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on January 19, 2023, 01:52:11 pmWhat MCU and what package?

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 10:48:58 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on January 19, 2023, 03:12:52 amAgain, the clear purpose of the thread was re-using components.So not sure why we are talking about selling off boards for pennies, then re-buying the presumably very expensive microcontrollers OP already has, using that money.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 11:45:40 pm
content: Quote from: thm_w on January 19, 2023, 10:48:58 pmThat was not clear from the original post. Those would have to be some quite expensive or unavailable microcontrollers to be worth recovering, and I'm not sure I'd be comfortable using them on boards that go out to customers.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2023, 04:36:01 pm
content: I think it’s perfectly clear in the original post, since they say they’re looking for someone who will take their boards and return the recovered chipsto them.

author: edavid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2023, 05:06:20 pm
content: Here's a company that claims to do component salvage:https://www.greencircuits.com/services/bga-rework/(OK, they say BGA, but you would think they could handle non-BGA just as well.)And, more relevant for OP, here's one in Scotland:https://retronix.com/component-reclaim/