As I said in antoher thread I'm taking apart about 30 years of electronics I've built up + aboug 10-15,000lbs of computer/networking equipment (and probably many times more than that), and I'm trying to do it in a way that I don't waste a lot of good stuff if it is possible - I'm not saving resistors that can be had for a penny of 10 for 1 cent, but IC's mosftes, LARGE caps and components with precious meals.

I cane across some caps and was extremely happy b/c I thought they were really large tantalum or MLCC's and the were some of the biggest I had ever seen and there were A LOT of them! So I was excited until I used the heat gun and found that what I thought were ceramic caps were melting.

This is a newer APC "Control board" not the main board. It had about 50 of the silver/grey caps and about 20 of the blue ones. The blue ones are similar to the last 2 pictures where there is are white caps, and that is from an APC unit from 1996-1998 on the main board. . The 3rd & 4th pics are some of the caps that melted VERY easily from a heating gun from the top, they melted before the blue cap, so that is saying something. . The grey/silver are the oddest I've found to date. All the blue, grey and white all have a "CXXX" listing on the board, so they are caps.

Now to another point in the thread, I think we should have a single thread where people can post questions like this instead of having to start our own threads. I'd like to see it as a sticky so it could be seen by anyone. OR, maybe a sub forum where we just post pics of items and then people could give their suggestions of what it might be. Anyway just a thought.

 

Anyone interested should have to peruse a thread that keeps growing continuously. Nobody reads long threads in full. I did it with two (maybe three?) in my whole life because I was extremely interested on the subject.

 

Now to another point in the thread, I think we should have a single thread where people can post questions like this instead of having to start our own threads. I'd like to see it as a sticky so it could be seen by anyone.

As @atferrari has said, that thread would be continually expanding and would rapidly grow to gargantuan size; few would bother to read it. Moreover, few would probably post to it, preferring to create their own thread to gain better visibility.

OR, maybe a sub forum where we just post pics of items and then people could give their suggestions of what it might be.

Good God, please not yet another sub-forum for people to mis-post in! We've got too many already in my opinion, and noobs often seem to have a lot of difficulty already figuring out which of them is the proper place to post their question. Why make the situation even worse?

I don't see any benefit to either of these ideas.

 

It could be interesting, and certainly it would grow because of the large number who comment but have no clues.

 

Forums like this in general are not good for archiving. Another forum, for example, does have a sticky thread for component ID. So far as I can tell, no one ever searches that thread,* and there are still new threads created for "what's this?"

*Even if one were tempted to search the 100+ replies there, what would your search terms be?

 

You may be better of using 2 irons, tweezer iron or atleast wick and 1 iron and gently lifting one side at a time to remove those things if your trying to salvage them. Or maybe you could heat the backside of pcb with a larger hot air gun and then scraping them off if your more interested in speed. What ever you where doing before isnt working very well.

 

You may be better of using 2 irons, tweezer iron or atleast wick and 1 iron and gently lifting one side at a time to remove those things if your trying to salvage them. Or maybe you could heat the backside of pcb with a larger hot air gun and then scraping them off if your more interested in speed. What ever you where doing before isnt working very well.

Thanks. That is basically what I did after noticing the first 3-4 I heated were melting. Talk about a surprise when i thought they were ceramic! So instead I heated the underside and pulled them off with needle nose pliers/


But has anyone come across these types before?

Another idea I was thinknig for component ID would be to have a section dedicated to that where you could view a long list of components seperated by type (resistor, cap, mosfet, inductor, etc and then pictures of those that have been submitted by members. When a new post is made with pictures and it is verified as to what it is, that picture could be added to the section for the specific type of component. There could also be a keyword database for them like color, shape, etc, which could pull up similar pieces that are not of the same catagory, like some SM caps look a lot like the inductors among some other things.

IDK, it's just an idea tat I think would be extremely helpful to newer users and I'd recon a small book/pamphlet could be published to ID all the different parts as a handy desk reference. For those of us over 30, we still use that old fiberous stuff made of cellulose believe it or not, and some actually prefer it!

 

Those look like mylar caps. A heatgun is almost guaranteed to destroy those. Mylar caps have a specific soldering profile that MUST be followed, or destruction will result.

 

I will know how to make this work in the fairly near future because I will be removing surface mount LEDs to use as repair parts for LED strips. My current plan is to use two soldering pencils, one on each side, and very quickly unsolder and release them aside. I will post back with my results when I have some results.

 

Those look like mylar caps. A heatgun is almost guaranteed to destroy those. Mylar caps have a specific soldering profile that MUST be followed, or destruction will result.

I found a way to salvage with less damages. PCB resting on the edges of a large enough saucepan, upside down, so you can apply the heat to the solder side. Use gloves to play safe.

Not sure I will do massive salvage again as in my past but it worked OK.

 

I will know how to make this work in the fairly near future because I will be removing surface mount LEDs to use as repair parts for LED strips. My current plan is to use two soldering pencils, one on each side, and very quickly unsolder and release them aside. I will post back with my results when I have some results.

Well you will not be able to just "release them" they will stick to one of the irons. You may be better off to get a pair of the tweezer style irons for one hand and normal tweezers in the other hand to pull the part away from irons.

 

I will know how to make this work in the fairly near future because I will be removing surface mount LEDs to use as repair parts for LED strips. My current plan is to use two soldering pencils, one on each side, and very quickly unsolder and release them aside. I will post back with my results when I have some results.

This will work just fine, if you can touch the solder with both irons (not always the case with surface mounted LEDs). If you can, hit them first with some leaded solder to lower the melting temp. Also, preheat the area with a heat gun to ~100°C - it will make things come off easier and lessen the chances of damaging the PCB with excess heat.

If you do this a lot, consider investing in a hot-air soldering station. I picked up mine for about $85 US.

 

I found a way to salvage with less damages. PCB resting on the edges of a large enough saucepan, upside down, so you can apply the heat to the solder side. Use gloves to play safe.

Not sure I will do massive salvage again as in my past but it worked OK.

Forgot to say: I am using a heat gun.