Salvaging electronics bits and pieces….
For quite a while I’ve had a tendency to take a soldering iron to the pc board of ______fill in the blank______ electronics that has “expired” or outlived its usefulness. Sometimes, it’s just to salvage the REALLY large (scary) capacitors from a power supply, sometimes though it’s a bit more ambitious than that, (blocking diode for instance). I hadn’t done a whole lot of it though because after the leads on components are clipped it gets a bit more difficult to work with them, so I usually just look for things that are unusual or have a long wire lead left.
(Sometimes I’ve salvaged the big 1 watt resistors from power supplies too….) Anyway, I’ve found I’m not the only one doing such salvaging and now that I’m into amateur radio, I’m finding reasons to do more (salvaged a 14.318 mhz crystal from an old 486 motherboard…) Anyway, the soldering iron has been my tool of choice, but I’ve read that a heat gun can be highly recommended as well.
This Wagner 0503040 HT3500 Digital Heat Tool with multiple temperature settings looks highly recommended…
