How To Get Cheap Electronic Components (Salvaging From Circuit Boards) 

I’m 22 and I’m honestly just now learning and applying myself to electronics and I’m in tears, I wish I was like you growing up! Youre so inspiring dude! Keep killing it!

I'm 38 and only now getting into hobby electronics, this video is a lifesaver and very informative, thank you! I had an old lcd tv that the screen broke and the lcd ruined, so i just today took it apart and saved the boards and useful parts, now i'm going to begin unsoldering!

Aside salvaging the components, you can also repurpose whole boards as they are; for example, I used a microwave oven control board to command a UV lamp for erasing EEPROMs or for making PCBs. As is essentially a timer, I choose one with display (VFD) that also display the remaining time. Other repurposed thing was a garage door controller with its own remote control to switch on or off the outside lights. The limit is your imagination.

good for you, young man. May i kindly suggest, that you obtain and install a 4 inch fan, (ALOT QUIETER) from your parts, and attach it to a dryer vent hose, and have a stove range hood over your de-soldering area. Vent that exhaust outside, if you can. I've been doing this along time, and that poison WILL HARM YOU....keep on going...

this guy has workshop that everyone is dreaming of

I like that you went through each step (including desoldering with different tools), component sorting & testing. Nice work.

Sooo encouraging. Good on you. I'm almost 56 yo and have lived offgrid for my whole adult life. In that time, I've watched seven very expensive inverters and other components of my solar system become junk when capacitors blew from old age or when they were struck by lightning surges. I get a lot of those here. I'm really over having to replace fixable gadgets I've paid a fortune for with new ones that arent so fixable because technology has changed and that excuse that "it's too expensive to fix and it's cheaper to by a new one" gives me no choice BUT to buy a new one. I fixed a junked spotlight torch the other day just by resoldering two wires. It had been dumped in the local skip. That was a simple fix I could do myself. An inverter is a safety issue, so I've enlisted a local electronics genius (like you) to teach me the basics and help me fix the latest casualty, the latest inverter that died from old age. It just needs some new capacitors to breath new life into it. And where will i get those capacitors? From broken gadgets. Great video. Good to see a young strapper innovating with old stuff in a world where old stuff isnt useful any more.

You are going places kid, smart, young and resourceful.

You remind me of myself when I was 15 and salvaging old electronics from broken neighbours devices and use it to build led flasers and radio transmitters. Now I am studying electrical engineering.

This is a great video! Reuse is the most effective form of recycling. In the late 60s and early 70s, I lived out in the boondocks of Northern California. (Red Bluff is a good place to be from. As far from as possible! But, I digress.) The Tehama county dump (land fill in modern speak) was one mile away overland. I'd grab the big Radio Flyer wagon, and some ropes, and off I'd go, over hill and dale. Hours later in the 110+ degree (F) heat, I'd return home with a console color TV, standing up on end, strapped to the wagon! And they claim nerds don't get any exercise. Wrong! I built most of the SW radio receivers in the 1954 ARRL ham radio hand book, with the parts I scrounged from old TVs, tape decks, radios and mystery items. The first 4 track cartridge tape player I found baffled me for a couple of years until I saw my first 8 track unit! I was only 10 years old in 1967! I used a propane torch to heat the PCBs to get the parts out.

I like to geat my electronic components by salvaging from circuit boards and it always make me imagine i'm in a post apocalyptic world of mad max lol ..

That is the way I started back in the 70's , I would salvage parts for Henpol TV Repair. They taught me parts and then how to use them. It is a great way to learn the skills needed. Ham Radio operators are doing this as well. This is wonderful to see, made my day

my mother hates that im a hoarder of electronic boards

Cool ideas... I came here from a link from an Aussie video talking about the decline of hobby electronics, and it's channels like yours that help keep it alive. I went though your videos & you've got yourself a new subscriber btw... I can also see that it hasn't been easy for you to get a good amount of subscribers, but keep on doing what you're doing & making videos . This will eventually pay off & put you up there with the other big youtubers. Take care, and I look forward to your next project!

EXCELLENT VIDEO! You were so thorough. I put this in my favorites.

THIS VIDEO IS AWESOME! You are an amazing teacher and you explain things quite well. I've subscribed and I wish you luck with your endeavors.

Absolute class, very educational and to the point. Thank you

I do the same thing... And I ain't no kid. Good job well done mate! Just one thing, I find that it is worth desoldering the little resistors, not because they are expensive but it means that there is more chance of you having the right resistor when you need it. It means you have a wide selection when you start making your electronic gadgets in the future. Just a thought. Peace from Scotland 🤓👍🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Thanks for the taking the time to make this video, it has sure helped me to save money and get some free components! Cheers from Tasmania Australia

Thanks bud. Just started bout a year ago getting into electronics like this. And I have built some amazing stuff since then. Keep it up kid. Wish I got started as young as you did. Now for builds. Get into power walls and solar, wind, water for power. N teach me more. Thanks bud.

super cool that you know this much about circuits, I can learn a lot form these videos!

Nice video. Great to see young people enjoying electronics. I've been salvaging components since I was about 8 years old. It was much easier back then as few components were proprietary. Today, so many components are difficult to reuse or just too small to deal with. Markings can be custom to a manufacture and no datasheets available. But it also depends on what you want to make. Most any transistor can be used for simple switching regardless of its value. Oh, and defiantly hang on to those Flyback's. You can have a shockingly good time with them. 😎 Keep on salvaging...

Very good work Tanner. I am using a Welder soldering gun that goes from 100W to 140 W on big projects.

Keep up the good work Tanner. Reminds me of of when I was doing the same thing back in the late 60"s and 70"s. Lots of fun. Mom was always calling down to the basement to remind me to go to bed. Couldn't keep me away from it.

Great video I am getting into electronics myself and this helped!

Wow... I'm so new to all this... I've been looking for someone with your credentials ... I learned everything that came out of your mouth... Well played Tanner 👍 I scanned through your page 👍 You Rock!!! New Subscriber 💯

Inspiration, I wish I had started young as you. Good work. This is the way to learn.

This is awesome! Thanks for teaching at such a good level!

I'm liking your transistor tester/identifier. Is that one of your build videos? (not finding it)

Hey Tanner, Greetings from Wales in the UK. Really enjoyed your video, I imagine that would be similar to a practical test from an electronics tutor, where they give you a pile of electronic bits, and you've got to name them, and explain what they're used for, even I could understand your descriptions!!. First one of your vids that I've watched, it won't be the last, I'm just off to find some more. Regards, Wayne.

Well put together video. You are a great explainer and smart fellow. Thanks for your work!

Good video. For as much desoldering as you do, you might want to just eventually get a desoldering gun. It makes things so much easier and faster.

I suggest taking all the ceramic capacitors (the blue flat ones) since they are useful for high voltage projects such as voltage multipliers and high voltage capacitor banks

Good for you kid, I only had the guts to start seriously building electronic devices when I was like 19 after I had some electrician experience. You must hail from good stock.

Wow!! Incredible man. Thanks for sharing this video.

Good video pal! You forgot to mention that opening devices and salvage components, you can always learn something new and can give you ideas for diy projects. For example a clever construction or try to get better at soldering or try something new with a new component found you didn't know it exists. Good practice to search the partnumber to see what it is exactly. It is also a kind of training to easily recognize components just by looking at it or configuration or just by part number. Very good practice. I collect also buttons, panels, plastic parts, gears and cabinets and can be very useful even when you have already a 3D printer. Some design stuff cannot easily made with a 3D printer or you don't need it anyway because the part is already useful. So yeah, that can be also a part of the job. ;-) One warning before take apart devices that can hold a high voltage charge, be sure there is no charge left inside capacitors. Very important to mention here because you talk about CRT televisions and power supplies. Be careful. Also be careful with the fumes that releases when desoldering parts. Many PCBs have old flux residue or other unknow chemicals on it. Burning the PCB is not a good idea. Overall, good video and hopefully this video will stimulate people to do the same to learn, to practice and to reduce the pile of e-waste a little. Thumbs up! 🙃🙂👍

I also really love desoldering components from circuit boards. You can sometimes get components that you can't easily buy or components that are expensive. I recently found an old stereo receiver dumped on the side of the road and there are lots of useful components inside.

What a coincidence! I had to desolder that EXACT same circuit board that I pulled out of my UPS!

Great Video. awesome bench setup with great ideas. Please continue to make more videos

Thanks for sharing. Please, make sure you have good ventilation, or better yet, work outside with a fan blowing away those toxic fumes.

Great video kid. I too salvage 'junked' boards and have a plethora of components. Instead of trashing the remaining boards , im hanging them on the walls of my shop as kind of a 3D wallpaper. Keep up the good work and educating so many others! 🤘👍

Indeed! Keep those vids coming!

That was a very fine video. Impressive, the way that you have your organization. Do you try to repair other peoples electronics?

mark k I'm happy to see the future of technology developing like this

Awesome antistatic precautions. Bravo.

Very good theme song!  I'm impressed.

good to see re use of electronics. The rectangle part that was with the mov are polyswitches they are resetable fuses.

Nice electronics bench, tools, and organization. Nice explanation of things.

Thats really cool that you repurpose old electronics. I really wish i knew what all these components did better so that i csn create stuff from recovered electronics. They always say we got to the moon on the electronicsl capability of a watch(this was before smart watches)

Cool stuff mate. Keep going

Maybe it's just me but I do not often salvage electrolytic caps from old PCBs especially high hour boards like those from old CRT and flat screen TV sets and monitors. Especially where heat is a factor involved.. Desoldering parts you can also use one of those cigarette lighter jet torches and heat the backside of the pcb up and occasionally tap the board on the ground or bench to knock parts off.. it's alot faster. When dealing with appliances like say a coffee maker. You can use the PCB intact but instead of turning on a heating element you can have a timer based system to turn on lights that run from the AC mains. I recycled a Kurig coffee maker into a dusk till dawn timer that operated a high current HVAC contactor to turn on bug sodium lamps on my property.. Same principle holds true for RF based remote controlled systems like a garage door opener.or a car alarm with remote key entry. I typically do not scavenge those PCBs right off for bare parts if I have a transmitter receiver paired device that still works because I know I can re-engineer them into another system. Also the appliances hold other goodies other than just PCBs. They may have meters, LEDs, sensors, switches, terminals, etc that are not on the actual PCB itself. Before salvaging parts you need to identify why the appliance the PCB came out of was file 13ed in the first place.. Find the bad part(s) so you know not to save them.. Those windowed IC's may or may not be useless depending on what they are. If they are UVPROMs then whatever programming they had on them is gone now since the windows are exposed.. EPROM and E2PROMS are more useful ONLY if you have the proper instructions and programmers / Burners for them. I have a pile of similar EPROMS that came out of old Motorola Syntor mobile 2-way radios but they are 100% useless in todays world since the programmer required an XT based PC

I personally use a hot air gun to remove components. It burns the board but it can get a flyback out in one minute.

Impressive video. I enjoyed watching it from start to end.

Nice video dude. How did you make that component tester? That looks like a really educational project.

That old circuit board from the floppy drive @ 1:57 is from a Commodore 1541 disk drive. I remember it very well even though it's been more than 20 yrs since I've had it in my hand. I used to take my drive apart many times before I even learnt a lot about electronics. I am very surprised to see it in your pile! lol

I do the same thing. I just started into electronics in the past few months. I've always had a general understanding of them but just started building/salvaging. I have a question about a component. What would be a few appliances/electronics that I could find some diacs in? I know CFL light bulbs, but other than that I'm having a hard time finding them (I have a couple of projects that I need a few for).

You can save a a fair amount of time desoldering scrap parts using a cheap heat gun and an air compressor. I'm sure you get the idea. Heat the solder and blow it off. I would recommend a sheet metal kinda backsplash to cut down on solder mess. DRESS APPROPRIATELY!

Excellent video, I'm kind of late to the party but really enjoyed it :)

your component tester and identifier is very attractive and useful and interesting for me

Great video man!

your young and smart , use it and dont lose it =) nice work man

I would add safety as well to avoid getting shocked it's a good idea to have an idea of any dangerous components... then also after extracting you might want to check if they are up to spec otherwise you'll put them into projects and later be hunting down issues and debugging for a long time...

Great videos Tanner. Quick question regarding safety in dismantling circuit boards. Many of these boards use large capacitors that could deliver a very bad shock. I know capacitors can hold a charge even when unplugged. So, how do you ensure the capacitor is safe to touch? How do you get rid of this voltage and when do you do this? Thanks and great videos!

Nice footage!!!

great vid, i didnt know a desoldering iron was a thing! i love soldering but theres only so much to be done, but salvaging components can be done whenever! ill find some busted boards i have and get to work

not often do i but great video and explanations

You are awesome. Shall I ask wheter you know where we can find diac and triac ?

"Thank You", thank you very much. Your presentation was REALLY Really really good. I like to get the device you used to check your MOSFETS, transistors and voltage regulator. PLEASE send me a link 😎

Thank you. I’m new to hobby electronics so this was very useful. One question though: wouldn’t static electricity be a risk factor when you place your circuit boards on a carpet like that?

were did you get your transistor checker from please I want to get one

Greetings from Puerto Rico 🇵🇷 you have here a new subscriber.

Geeat video, thank you so much for sharing with us. I wanted to ask you about the item you use for checking the transistors and mosfet, how is called amd where can I buy it.???

Great video!

Thank you for your time 🙂🙂

Great idea..! Thank you...!

What. in. the. heck. was that AMAZING tool you used in the intro!?

Very nice video, I wish I was this Interested or as smart as you are at your age.. I didnt even know a kid in my school that was doing any of this.. Not to mention the video editing and presentation is great, especially for a 1 man job im guessing.. And you haven't had 20yrs to screw around learning from different sources... Once again, good job man. Im working on editing a video... Any tips would be appreciated.. Thumbs up And Subscribed.

hi. what is the name of the device u used to check those mosfets,transistors..........etc.Thanks

@7:47 & 12:15; "TO-220 package" is what I think you meant to say there, lol!... That is what style package those larger transistors and MOSFETs are, NOT "TO-22", as you were saying. Also, @12:50; the TL780 series from Texas Instruments are indeed voltage regulators, but that number is only the first part of the full complete part number, and if ONLY given that number you cannot definitively tell what voltage the regulator puts out... you have to ALSO look at the -05, -12, etc. part after that *series* number in order to tell the voltage output. (-05 is 5V, -12 is 12V, etc.) Where did you get that component tester that you use towards the end of this video? That is really cool! I've never owned one like that, but I can see how they would be very useful for quick component identification!... I also see that you already have a very nice looking oscilloscope in the background on your workbench there towards the end, which is totally awesome!... You are WAAAAY ahead of where I was at your age, (and possibly even now?), because still to this day, I've never been able to afford to buy one of those. :( BTW, I would take nearly ALL of the components off of the circuit boards which you salvage, simply because you never know what you're gonna need for something in future projects, and some of those connectors and other such harder to find/less commonly available, or unique parts can be useful too! Of course what you keep and is most useful to you greatly depends on what kinds of designs and projects that you mainly work with and build, but I've found that unless you remove most everything from a circuit board, (except SMD components which are cheap to buy everywhere and hard to desolder anyway without damaging them), and then you throw that board away, you'll find that you'll end up needing something exactly like one of the components you left on a board which you tossed!... I salvage as much as I can because I find a use for it eventually! How old are you anyway? You look like about 14 or so years old... And you totally remind me of me when I was your age, because I was doing this exact same thing at that time also!... How did you learn so much about electronics already at your age? (I didn't know some of this stuff until I was at least in my 20's)... Enjoy electronics related stuff, as it can be very fun and interesting, as I'm sure you already know! One thing to be aware of though... Don't become an "electronics hoarder" as I became in my mid 40's now, with hundreds or even thousands of different types of electronic parts and components all around you, all sorted by type, etc., because it will definitely put a damper on your social life and your ability to live on your own later in life, always having so much "stuff" in your possession!... Try to find a "balance" between your more "nerdy" tendencies, (trust me, I know; been there done that, lol!), and the rest of the world, that way you don't end up a social "hermit" who is only always working on "projects" in his workshop, when everyone else is out having other kinds of (interacting with others) fun!... I'm NOT implying that you should just go out and regularly get "drunk and stupid" with all of your "less intellectually inclined" friends, (because they simply may not have anything good or productive to occupy their minds like you do with electronics), but don't just do that because it will detract from your smart mind... Having a very high intelligence is a great thing, just try to find a balance... I think it's a good thing though that you have started a RU-vid channel about your hobbies, because it will help you to keep a "reality check" on your passions/obsessions/tendencies... I certainly wish I had this platform to post all of my many "mad scientist" type ideas onto when I was younger, as the worldwide feedback from others will keep you more grounded and not so "in your own little world", as I was, LOL!... Just some fair advice from someone just like you, only older and (now) wiser... I always still am learning something new everyday though, so you should too... just don't end up finding yourself within the next 10-20 years or so, dedicating ALL of your time to electronic stuff, because there's much, MUCH else to enjoy about life also! Best of luck with all of your endeavors... I might even subscribe just to see what you come up with or build in the near future... Maybe I can even help you occasionally with certain electronic projects and/or concepts, etc., if you ever have any questions and would appreciate some real world advice from someone that's already done it before... Cool video dude! Keep exploring and learning!...

Great video, thanks very much. You also need ventilation. Don't breathe the fumes.

Tanner could you do videos focused on reusing flybacks and coils/inductors? I dont get how to reuse coils since they never have any markings. Love the channel, wish I was at your skill level at your age!

"Thank GOD", and thank you very much for your support and time 😉 If possible 🤔 I'd like to order the component tester you used in this video 😁 Let me know, I look forward to hearing from you 😎🙏🏾😎

I do the same thing as yourself, but have no knowledge of identifying voltage regulators from circuit boards. Can you explain?

nice vid. like the bench

hay part what you use equipment for desoldering transistors?

For your desoldering, have you tried using an iron for ironing cloth?

Amazing job

Love your intro!

9:00 Even after a long time since the board saw power, you will want to use a resistor to discharge each capacitor before handling it (and especially before handling the pins or through-hole). Use insulated pliers or something else electrically isolated to contact the resistor to the capacitor. How long you hold depends on the values on the cap and the value of the resistor. It's not safe to just short it out - that can actually be pretty dangerous!

Bamboo stick can be used as a brush for desoldering

How much bending can a PCB withstand before the traces on it crack and break? I'm looking at buying a high end video card that has been obviously bent, from the bent radiator fins, but not too much.

Very good thanks

Hey mate should i buy parts from aliexpress or amazon?

Harbor freight has a 120/or 150/soldering gun ,it looks like the seller so when you need more heat,it cost me fifteen dollars includes a case ,extra tips etc. Good invest ment

keep it going mate

Where do you find your circuit boards/ewaste?

This was awesome. Thank you

Hey batman -- i like your video...

what is the desoldering iron called plz

This is methodical cool!