Restoring vintage electronics can lead to a lot of waste being produced – failed ICs, failed components, irreparable circuit boards, and obsolete parts are usually the main offenders. As all of this is original and irreplaceable, and to help the environment, I try to recycle my electronics waste as much as possible.
I often spend some time adapting scrap components into decorative items, for display throughout our house or even as gifts for people – this is usually picture frames, but I plan on expanding into resin items (such as drinks coasters) at some point in the near future, maybe fridge magnets too.
It’s been about four years since I last posted about some of the items that I have made, so I thought I’d provide a small update for what else I’ve been making.
Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Frames
For my circuit board frames, I take an irreparable circuit board (usually one that has been “repaired” by a previous owner), desolder all of the components from it leaving just the bare board, thoroughly clean it, then mount it inside a high-quality open box frame using thick double-sided foam adhesive tape.
I made the following frame out of a butchered ZX Spectrum Issue 2 mainboard which I bought as part of a job lot, which is now on the wall in my office.
I made the following frame out of the mainboard from my battery-damaged Apple Macintosh SE/30 which I replaced with a modern PCB, which now hangs on the wall in my office as a reminder never to buy compact Macs sold-as-seen on eBay again.
Miscellaneous Frames
A couple of years back, I bought a Bush PB12 table-top radio from 1949 – the radio was cheap because it was non-working, and the case and controls were in very poor condition. It also weighed a tonne and was impractically large. I quickly realised that I didn’t have enough room for it, and I couldn’t find anyone who wanted it, so I decided to salvage it for parts – the vacuum tubes, chassis, and speaker in particular. It also had a very beautiful “Bush Radio” painted logo on top, which I couldn’t bring myself to throw away, so I cut a section of case out around it and mounted it inside a frame.
I also like to collect old PC desktop CPUs, and I have quite a number of them – but because I’m not too bothered about keeping more than one of each type, I have a stack of duplicate parts that I want to make into decorations, including frames and resin coasters.
CPU Earrings
I also wanted to make a gift for my wife, so I decided to make some CPU earrings, a win-win! Specifically, I chose a pair of old Intel Celeron M CPUs, they’re circa 2006 so probably came from old Windows XP/Vista laptops. I just drilled a small hole through the PCB and adding some hypoallergenic gold earring hooks and link wire.
These don’t have an onboard heatsink so the silicon chip die is nicely visible, which is also good because the CPUs are much lighter and it means that you don’t need to worry about skin irritation due to nickel content – though no part of the CPU is in direct prolonged contact with the skin, anyway, with these being drop earrings. It’s also worth considering lead content, which was restricted in desktop CPUs as part of the EU’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive in the run-up to July 2006, so these ones should be lead-free. They do have pins on the CPU themselves which can get caught in your hair so you have to wear them carefully, but they are very pretty.
I prefer having the chip dies at the front but she prefers the nice gold pins and decoupling capacitors instead, but they’re reversible anyway so either way around they look great!
CPU Coasters
As well as making some frames and earrings out of surplus old CPUs, I also decided to try my hand at resin drinks coasters using a resin kit and a set of coaster moulds.
My first attempt used four Core2 Due E7500s, which I cleaned up then casted in a single pour – I didn’t have a vacuum chamber so they came out a bit bubbly, but for a first attempt I was very pleased with the result!
Since then, I’ve successfully made up a few more sets out of some more CPUs, this time flipping them in pairs so both sides are visible at any time.
