Scrapping televisions (general question)

[Emperor Findus Cladius]

For those that have been in the scrapping trade for a while, is there anything in televisions that make them worth scrapping?

 

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[Frank1960]

In my opinion they aren't worth the effort.

 

[hypoman]

they do tend to make a mess as well.......but whatever.....it all adds up

 

[hyderconsulting]

There isn't much unfortunately in a TV set for that matter to scrap out. There is a copper yoke made of No. 2 copper wire that weighs from a quarter pound on up to about a pound in weight. Figure about one to two and a half dollars there. There is also a little insulated wiring worth about 50 cents. Maybe some aluminum in the TV case but not over a pound. The plastic case and the leaded glass cathode ray tube have no value and are difficult to dispose of properly. The circuit board will have usually a little value but not much because it is low grade copper breakage. Figure about 15 cents a pound. What steel made be in the case will be worth about 8 cents a pound. The older sets will have a copper transformer and more metal in them making them more valuable. Computer monitors are better in scrap value compared to TV's.
I've been in the scrap business for nearly 20 years and I don't like telling people if something is worth your while scrapping it out. It really depends upon what your time and effort is worth to you. I know people that all they ever scrap out is TV's and computer monitors because that's all they can get. They don't make much money but they stay busy. If copper eventually goes to nearly ten dollars a pound in the distant future as some people have been predicting then you could make about 10 to 20 dollars apiece on a TV or computer monitor. Something to think about. Regards, Chris.

 

[Cherokee_Kidd]

It depends on how many tvs you have to scrap. My brother in law only scraps tvs and computer monitors and he does pretty good because he has a deal with businesses that give him tvs and computer monitors . He gets the appliances to but he usually lets his brother scrap them because the scrap yard here won't buy appliances so his brother has to haul that stuff almost 200 miles to the scrap yard to make any money from it.

 

[pickaway]

I just cut the power cord off tv I've never tore one apart mite have too.

 

[boogeyman]

Good market for tubes from old TVs if you sell them on EBay or Craigs List. sometimes two tubes are worth more than the whole TV

 

[theirratonalist]

CRTs have a good deal of copper! I scrap TV and Computer monitors whenever I can. There is a copper yoke plus a good sized degaussing cable in every CRT. It actually doesn't take that long (5-10 mins) and you make 2.50-4 dollars at least. That's over 15 dollars an hour!
Check it out here.

 

[DemonWolfe]

tore apart a computer monitor i had laying around to see if its worth the while. not much in there. more crap to throw away than there is to keep. but if u have enoough of them it would definatly be worth it in my opinion. about 15 to 20 minutes and i had everything that was worth it out and the rest thrown away.
first pic is all the trash to throw away, and the second is what i was able to keep, not much maybe 1/2 to 3/4 of a pound

 

[theirratonalist]

I notice a lot of things wrong with your technique.

• It looks like you spent the time sawing the top off of the plastic with a jig saw... Why not use a screw driver or power drill to unfasten the 4 little screws holding it down?
• It looks like you hit the Yoke off with a hammer...Why not take the two stainless steel fasteners off with a power drill. If you do that, you can just twist the copper yoke off without breaking the glass.
• What happened to the rest of the wire? There is a decent amount of industrial grade wire in each CRT, a power cord and a video cord.
• Why didn't you include the rest of the metal in your picture? There is a whole circuit boards chalked full of small transformers in there too!
• There is usually a fair number of aluminum heat sinks on that circuit board I'm guessing you looked over.

I can understand ignoring some of these metals if you only are taking apart one CRT. But I'm not.



I spent my morning disassembling half of this pile of 40 CRT monitors. I spent roughly 15 minutes per monitor...And that was because I was harvesting EVERYTHING. (sometimes it was more if the monitor was bigger and older, sometimes it was less if it was newer and smaller.) I use a power drill, some big pliers, side cutters, a hammer, a bolt cutter, and a long screw driver (to reach deep screws).

I made separate piles for

• Copper breakage (transformers, inductors, and the black box controller thing that I ripped from the circuit board with some big pliers)
• Aluminum heat sinks/aluminum magnetic shields
• Stainless steel shields and stainless steel yoke fastener rings
• Wire
• Copper Yoke
• Degaussing coil
• What ever metal is left over (shred pile)

After I'm done making all these piles, I take a hammer and break the copper out of all the yokes. (I sweep up the metal left over from the yokes and throw it into the shred pile). I strip all the degaussing coil with a straight razor by hand. Here are my numbers for my 20 monitors I broke open in a just under 5 hours.

• Copper breakage: 24# @ $.25 per = $6
• Copper 2: 22# @ $3.00 per = $66
• High Grade Wire: 13# @ $1.90 per = $24.70
• Contaminated Aluminum: 19# @ $.40 per = $7.6
• Non-Magnetic Stainless Steel: 5# @ $.66 per = $3.30

Brings my total to $107.60

My total time was 5.2 hours including travel, bringing my hourly wage for this morning to $20.69 per hour, not including the shred pile that I left behind.

 

[cdltpx]

I notice a lot of things wrong with your technique.

• It looks like you spent the time sawing the top off of the plastic with a jig saw... Why not use a screw driver or power drill to unfasten the 4 little screws holding it down?
• It looks like you hit the Yoke off with a hammer...Why not take the two stainless steel fasteners off with a power drill. If you do that, you can just twist the copper yoke off without breaking the glass.
• What happened to the rest of the wire? There is a decent amount of industrial grade wire in each CRT, a power cord and a video cord.
• Why didn't you include the rest of the metal in your picture? There is a whole circuit boards chalked full of small transformers in there too!
• There is usually a fair number of aluminum heat sinks on that circuit board I'm guessing you looked over.

I can understand ignoring some of these metals if you only are taking apart one CRT. But I'm not.




I spent my morning disassembling half of this pile of 40 CRT monitors. I spent roughly 15 minutes per monitor...And that was because I was harvesting EVERYTHING. (sometimes it was more if the monitor was bigger and older, sometimes it was less if it was newer and smaller.) I use a power drill, some big pliers, side cutters, a hammer, a bolt cutter, and a long screw driver (to reach deep screws).

I made separate piles for

• Copper breakage (transformers, inductors, and the black box controller thing that I ripped from the circuit board with some big pliers)
• Aluminum heat sinks/aluminum magnetic shields
• Stainless steel shields and stainless steel yoke fastener rings
• Wire
• Copper Yoke
• Degaussing coil
• What ever metal is left over (shred pile)

After I'm done making all these piles, I take a hammer and break the copper out of all the yokes. (I sweep up the metal left over from the yokes and throw it into the shred pile). I strip all the degaussing coil with a straight razor by hand. Here are my numbers for my 20 monitors I broke open in a just under 5 hours.

• Copper breakage: 24# @ $.25 per = $6
• Copper 2: 22# @ $3.00 per = $66
• High Grade Wire: 13# @ $1.90 per = $24.70
• Contaminated Aluminum: 19# @ $.40 per = $7.6
• Non-Magnetic Stainless Steel: 5# @ $.66 per = $3.30

Brings my total to $107.60

My total time was 5.2 hours including travel, bringing my hourly wage for this morning to $20.69 per hour, not including the shred pile that I left behind.

If you have no job this is a good way to keep food on the table but if the economy don't get better these prices will get lower too. Your comment is good you gave me another thing to consider since I am without a job and need some side work to make money.

 

[DemonWolfe]

the monitor i tore apart was an old 14 inch monitor and didn't have as much useful stuff in it, and the scrap yards around here don't take as many types of materials as some others do, so I just take out what they do take. I would keep the other scrap but i need to get a trailer to haul it in first. i have hundreds or circuit boards and stuff, and nowhere to take them, most of them work and thats the only reason i hold on to them.

 

[DemonWolfe]

oh yeah, and i did use a jigsaw, the craps getting thrown out anyway or scrapped out in your case so why bother taking evrything apart nice and neat, it took me 30 seconds to cut the thing apart and open it up, and the only reason it took me as long as it did was it was the first one i have taken apart and i was really just looking at the insides of how it works.

 

[theirratonalist]

There are a lot of answers to why I take the screws out, but the simplest one is that it adds to the systematic deconstruction of each CRT which insures the complete harvesting of all recyclable resources.

I actually save all the plastic shell too! There is plastic recycling place not to far from me that pays 10 cents a pound for the ABS plastic that the housing is made from. I'll probably make more from that then I did from the aluminum...

And I don't recycle the CRT leaded glass tube. That won't get taken by any scrap yard!

 

[DemonWolfe]

its great that you can recycle all that where you live, I wish the places around here took more of a variety of stuff than what they do, steel, copper, brass, and aluminum is about all they take. I see evryone talking about electric motors all the time, I called down to the place about 45 miles from here cause its the biggest one around and they don't take them, maybe one of these days kansas scrap yards will wake up and realize they are missing out on alot of money to be made!