|
|
Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Apr 25, 2018 1:30:56 GMT -5
I discombobulated the dropped Panasonic doorless uwave I found a couple of weeks ago. It was only three years old, so everything inside was clean and sparkly; no grease. Even the timer panel still had the protective plastic sheeting on it, which made the buttons look like they had been damaged by a zillion pushes; peeling it off makes it look like new.
Another destruction was two RC cars that had been through the mill of long juvenile ownership. Both of them used a small motor to do the steering instead of that magnetic-compass-like actuator, which I've never liked. One of the cars was a faux race car design and had on it the typical array of sponsorship decals (but miniaturized, of course). Every one of them was a careful fake, e.g. Vitaline, Mood, etc. No transmitters, though, so just parts.
Found out on the street was a HDF (faux wood) vehicle launcher. As the cars (auto? train?) left the launcher by gravity, they would push a button on a plastic box about half the size of a pack of cigarettes. The four screws that hold the box together are triangle drive, so its mystery is preserved. But it is a self-contained box, including a 2 AAA batt holder, so there may be no reason to ever open it if the noise it makes is cool. It has a speaker and the button—that's it.
In a lifetime collection of greeting cards saved by a 90-year-old deceased lady, I found one that plays a tune when you open it. I just can't throw those things away, even if the tune is stupid.
Lastly, I reduced to recyclable bits a very-well-used BBQ. I extracted the piezo-electric ignitor module. Unless the spring inside is rusted to bits (which I have seen), it is almost bullet-proof and should work. I was too chicken to try it out on myself. From years of high heat, the wire to the spark gap had a couple of places where the insulation had crumbled off. That's what happens when you get old; crumbly bits start falling off and you just don't have the same spark any more.
And all in one day.
|
|
|
|
Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Apr 26, 2018 2:43:45 GMT -5
The car launcher noise box attempts to mimic the sound of a running car engine, 3 secs of audio for each button push. Sounds more like a sewing machine that needs oiling, but what can you expect from a 1" speaker. Not very useful as is.
|
|
|
|
Post by picturefreak on Apr 27, 2018 12:30:05 GMT -5
pictures, pictures, pictures!
from the picturefreak!
|
|
|
|
Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on May 8, 2018 15:29:12 GMT -5
If you are asking for pix, I am trying to hold back on those until I can sort out the pix hosting site situation. I have a lot of time-consuming things going on right now, so I haven't been able to get that done. Too bad there aren't 48 hours in a day.
----
Another little noise maker is an Incredible Hulk-like plastic figure about 3" tall. It has speaker holes on its back and a power switch. The batt has run down, but there is no batt door, so I can't replace it even for a test. The thing is held together with a couple of deeply-recessed screws that take a tri-blade bit that I don't have, so I will have to smash it to get the guts out. It probably just growls.
----
A homeless guy died here, and he had a storage unit near mine where he kept all his recyclables and stuff he had found. The sister was here to have everything hauled off as junk, and she let me pick through it. The best item was a 1,000 watt inverter and a marine battery to run it. The 3' cables are as big as your finger and commercially made. There were also lots of consumer electronic items that he had collected, most probably with something wrong with them. Also dozens of LED lights of various kinds. It will take me several days to go through about a dozen cardboard boxes full.
|
|
|
|
Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on May 12, 2018 0:25:29 GMT -5
Today I saw in a dumpster a gynormous RCA CRT TV. The CRT had been broken into a zillion shards of glass, else it would of been so heavy that I couldn't have horsed it around to get at all the cabinet screws. It was unusual in that it had speaker terminals on the back for subwoofer, etc. (but still had built-in 3" speakers*). It had a big bunch of PCBs with heatsinks running the length of the back, so lots of parts. The degaussing coil was a monster in order to cover the big CRT.
Next to it was a VHS VCR, so this was probably a tape-watching station. Maybe next will come big cartons of someone's VHS tape collection.
*Alas one of the paper surrounds had big gaps in it from being eaten by something. Too bad as they were 5 watters. Maybe some kind of rubber/silicon film could be applied to plug the gaps (rubber medical glove material?); there is enough of the original surround to keep the cone centered.
|
|
|
|
Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on May 14, 2018 17:09:53 GMT -5
More TV stuff:
I misremembered about the TV speakers; the surrounds were of very thin foam plastic, not paper. And both speakers had gaps in the surrounds. So this was just a very old TV. One of the ROMs has a copyright date of '94, so after 24 years, the speaker surrounds disintegrated. I wonder, due to the small size of the speakers, if the spider is sufficiently stiff to hold the cone in place while I glued a 3" flat rubber surround between the cone and the speaker frame? I just hate to give up on them.
I am sure anyone that has torn apart a modern pre-HD TV has encountered connections between RF modules made with jumpers having RCA phono plugs. This one was no exception. The plugs are typically soldered to the jacks to prevent contact problems over time, and, of course, to keep the connections from working loose in shipment, etc. But this TV had a new twist—each of the plugs' segmented grounding skirt had a groove rolled into the skirt. In the groove was a ring that makes the skirt segments grab the jack reliably, so no soldering required; the cable can be plugged and unplugged as desired, and good contact is maintained forever.
Finally, the degaussing coil was about 5' in diameter when it was spread out. What a honker! There was another coil also present around the CRT neck. It appeared perfectly round, precisely wound, was impregnated with varnish (so hard as a rock), and looks cool as the dickens even though I have no idea it's exact purpose. This is not the first time I have seen such a coil, so I guess I'll have to research it, so as not to "lose it" in my geezerdom.
|
|
|
|
Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on May 23, 2018 12:34:15 GMT -5
My next door neighbor had a relative on the edge of death (alcohol damage) in an LA hospital, so he had to drive down there again after having just returned a week ago, so another couple of days of housesitting for me. He had a defunct clothes dryer in his back yard that needed to disappear, but the relative who was going to haul it off for him got his truck impounded for 30 days. So after all this drama, I started a tear down on it to reduce it to pieces so I could carry them to a dumpster at my storage place that gets emptied weekly whether or not there is anything in it.
The construction consisted of a three-sided box into which a vertical wall plate was inserted 6" from the shell's rear wall. Into a hole on the plate was inserted one end of the motor, the other end of the motor being tied to the base by a steel leg brace. Then in front of that comes the drum and in front of that the front plate. So you can see that the motor is very well buried inside, and that if one had a mind to lube the motor bushings periodically, one would literally have to tear the dryer apart to get to the motor. But I'm sure that it was cheaper and easier to build that way. Now he has a Costco-branded dryer that appears to be built to the same design, Use it until it stops and then buy a new one.Fooey! A dryer is so simple to understand and maintain that one should last lifetime.
I got the motor out as well as a nice wad of wiring, a few controls, and a 7200-watt, compactly-well-packaged heater element. Everything was covered in thick dust, but it was clean dust from clothes. I took a garden hose and blasted it all clean in seconds and let it dry in sun.
The heater, if run at 120VAC instead of 240VAC will make a nice 1800W test load that would not require any forced air to keep the coils from self-destructing. (In the dryer, the blower air flow allows it to do 7200W.)
|
|
|
|
Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on May 25, 2018 2:44:00 GMT -5
Three goodies today. The storage yard dumpster today yielded up an AC-operated DVD player and a smart phone. My neighbor gave me another smartphone. If the player doesn't work, it will get deconstructed. The two phones will give me a chance to try out some phone tools (miniature screwdrivers, etc.).
|
|
|
|
Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on May 25, 2018 17:19:49 GMT -5
My next door neighbor's dad in LA did consumer electronic repair at one time. He has three 55-gallon drums full of "unrepairable" stuff squirreled away. My neighbor says he will bring it all back for me on his next trip in June. My goodie-detector is quivering in anticipation.
|
|
|
|
Post by Guest User on Jun 28, 2018 9:26:09 GMT -5
Lucky bastard!
I recently bought an old VCR from a Goodwill. It was $1 and had wax melted all over one of the vents. Of course I didn't want the VCR, I wanted parts! So I parted it, got a line frequency transformer, motors, wires galore. What I was most interested is swiping the tuner diodes from it for another project. Saved me from ordering them at $0.60 a piece from Mouser.
|
|
|
|
Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Aug 22, 2018 20:00:44 GMT -5
My next door neighbor cleaned out his garage and gave me a JVC 36" analog CRT TV. The thing was just too heavy to keep, as I could barely move it around with a hand truck, so I scrapped it. The CRT's front glass was 3/4" thick and absolutely razor sharp when broken! I kept the PCBs, speakers, yoke and ginormous degaussing coil. The CRT was a Trinitron type like Sony invented.
|
|
|
|
Post by Guest User on Aug 22, 2018 21:56:03 GMT -5
Dangit, I don't know what to do when I come across CRT TVs or monitors, knowing that me getting rid of the tube will cost. The rest of the circuit is juicy...very juicy... whether the TV/monitor works or not. Dilemma.
|
|
|
|
Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Aug 28, 2018 21:36:36 GMT -5
I suppose you could strip out the goodies, then put the case back together and drop it off at an E-waste site. Surprise!
The yoke from the big 36-incher TV was one of those that comes glued to the CRT (you have to buy a new CRT to get a yoke and vice versa), Today I took a pair of slip-joint pliers and picked away at the plastic coil form until there was nothing left but coils. It cleaned up easy, because the plastic was so brittle from years of heat.
----
I found a discarded RS HDTV (I think) antenna about the size of a large license plate and about 3/4" thick. The F connector was hanging by a thread, so I opened it up. There used to be 10 plastic screws holding it all together, but the last guy glued it back together and the screws were missing. There was a few oddball shapes of tin not resembling any antenna type I have ever seen. Running it was a small-matchbox-sized, soldered-shut tin box that evidently houses an amp. That means it took power up the cable to run it, and I didn't get that with it. So I pried it all apart and will unsolder the box just out of curiosity. The F connector was mounted in a hole on the edge of the plastic case, which didn't hang on to it very well. What a piece of crap. For some reason there was well-aged blue painter's tape all over the front of it.
|
|
|
|
Post by Guest User on Sept 6, 2018 13:43:19 GMT -5
Alas the e-waste site charges money, and my free parts just costed $disposalfee  |
|
|
|
Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Sept 11, 2018 18:53:27 GMT -5
In my town from time to time there are free E-waste turn-in events at a church, school, etc. Maybe you can check with your county solid waste people and see if you have the same thing. Boy, would I like to run one of those and have the pick-and-chose of what gets turned in. There has got to be the occasional juicy test equipment and hifi that lands on the pile just for me.
----
Suppose you had 50 analog CRT TVs. You put all the CRTs in a pile wired up in parallel as a ginormous high-voltage cap, and fire up one TV to charge the whole array. Now when you zap something, you will really get results! You could make a big spark gap—too big for the HV to jump—and toss things in to see if they survive (not live things, just in case you think I'm cruel).
Or you could use the CRTs in a voltage multiplier string to get things up there so high that you can't keep HV from leaking around all over the place and keeping it from working as intended.
|
|
