Junk Engineering

do not be offended, but, i think they call it Recycling

Yes, word often used is Recycling. I thought it is more closer to junk engineering where you pick some junk items and use whatever you feel are faluable and create another junk for the discarded things.

My question was, if they do recycle (or junk engineering) the used PC, TV etc? If yes, then what becomes of these and how?

you cannot process plane parts into cell phones. You can recover the aluminium and make new metal parts.

Usually these parts are shredded and go into a smelter and the metal goes into the melt and the plastic burns. It is not economic to remove surface mounted parts and reycle them(except in rare cases)

www.arlens.com

http://www.norandarecycling.com/

Thanks for information. My question was, about recycling of PC, TV etc. These electronics items could be environmental hazards under bad disposal schemes. So, really what happens to them where you live? Is any one reprocessing these things?

those two companies are in my area. Plastic from assorted computers are mainly used for fue value by the smelter in noranda. Here in North america the labor cost of separating them, hence the burning,

A lot goes to china and there they extract the copper tin lead etc from it. China has cracked down on the dumping of this stuff into valleys and the use of primnitive methods, so anything you export from here now must go to a compliant recovery place. Recent high price s for copper and aluminum have changed the economics of this and they can now afford to do a better job.

Sounds great. Thanks for information. Perhaps other countries can give contract to China to clean their countries of this mesh. Good information.

well, in the long run wages in China will rise and ruin the ecnomics of shipping them scrap.

One hopes that by then laws will force makers into adopting a recycling deposit of 5% paid by the buyer as he buys the item, each item with have a 512 bit serial number on it. That 5% goes into an interest bearing fund and the item waits until it is ready to be recycled the recycler reads the serial number and gets the money in the fund to recycle the item.

So a $1000 computer has a $50 bond that goes up by 3 to 5% annually. After a few years, say 5, the computer is useless and someone tosses it out onto a tip. Scavengers see it and realize it is worth around $60 to the recycler and pick it up and take it to a recycler who gives them part of the $60 and recycles it for the full amount. They will have to place a minimu of $2-3 on keyboards and mice, to get them into the system. Main components have enough value to enter it.

Very interesting. Perhaps we can make computer that are easy to dispose off. If we can't eat them then at least we can make them from material that can become fertilizer for our Garden. All other types of production should be banned to exist on earth. We all living beings are nature's computers can be disposed easily. Why can't we do the same thing to our technology. Bio-computers will be great thing.

there has been a lot of research on plastics made from cellulose and from chitin (shrimp and similar exoskeletons), which biodegrade and as an added bonus are not made from oil.

Currently they are more expensive, but with oil at current prices and if they add a carbon tax to items made from oil, they may drive people to biodegradables. The sooner the better, IMHO

Hum, Isn't it also the way most of us got started in all segments of the great field of engineering? Long before recycling was a word, lots of us scavenged and built machines and devices out of junk that had been discarded. In fact, I would be willing to say and bet my next consulting fee, that all great ideas came from viewing discards in a new way. I scavenge to this day, not only mechanical, my field, but E stuff now also and still innovate. It is innovation, not junk engineering, my esteemed colleagues.

I agree. I love using those motors in drives and printers to make robots for education. They come damn cheap and some time free. We use that heavy metal as paper weight but may like to melt and make some monuments.

Thanks, I grew up on a farm and we never threw any machines or equipment away. I started dismantling at the age of 5 or 6 out of curiosity and devised many useless along with useful things. Some even received new lives in the farm's daily activities as I aged. Teaching my Grandsons these things today, neat that one is Mechanical like me and the other is pure Electronics. They amaze me at 5 and 6 sometimes at the questions and what they have found.

People with brain find usefulness in everything while some find the entire world useless. Junk engineering is also learning about how others have designed things. It is worth doing once a while and perhaps some time or other you do it in your life. Rapid life makes one feel that all good things to me and all bad thing for the rest of the world to solve. I am having great feeling looking at junk engineering. Some people are so good that they can make anything out of junk. They must get Nobel Prize.