[sdiy] Scavenging the electronics graveyard

[Thomas Hudson]

I've been playing a lot lately with building various CNC applications  
(guitar pickup winder, circuit board hole driller, etc) using parts  
scavenged from old scanners. These have good stepper motors, nice  
steel guide rods and other type of guides, etc. Anyway, I was with my  
wife at the local Goodwill store, and there was an entire aisle of  
old all-in-one office machines (scanner, printer, fax, copier, coffee  
maker?) that were selling for cheap ($5 to $15 USD). I bought one and  
disassembled it and it was chock full of goodies. I've also found  
that the older the model, usually the better the parts. My old SCSI  
scanner had a huge stepper motor in it, while the later and cheaper  
USB scanners have much smaller motors and guide rods. Also, the older  
stuff is less likely to use SMT parts.

All this got me to thinking about all the old obsolete electronics  
destined for the landfill, and what other goodies I might be able to  
scavenge. For example, old high speed modems would probably have some  
decent quality isolation transformers in them, right? Maybe not good  
enough for high quality audio, but maybe good enough for an old  
school ring modulator.

I've found nice heatsinks in some of the scanners. I know there was a  
discussion  on here once about using the CCD's from scanners for  
audio, but don't remember the details. I know pedal builders who buy  
up old Japanese radios for the original JCR4558 chips.

Seems like there would be web sites devoted to this, but I haven't  
formulated the magical search query to find these though google.

What other things useful to the DIYer might be lurking in things like  
dsl or cable modems, printers, or any other cast-off consumer  
electronics?

Tomy