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Component leg off cuts

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RodneyB

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I have been wondering for some time if there is anything constructive than can be done with the off cut legs from electronic components.



It seems such an environmental injustice to discard them into the rubbish dump.
 
They're often useful as jumper wires for strip-board/matrix-board/breadboard layouts.
 
Yes I agree I often use them for this, However was wondering if they could be either melted down and sent for reclaiming or something along those line.
 
48 years ago when I worked in a factory that produced car radios and TVs they sold the wire cutoffs to a recycler. They were valuable, not garbage.
 
You could make something ornamental with them. Some kind of spiky monster? I was going to say jewellery but that would be a bad idea... Of course if you have very many, audioguru has the right idea.
 
Like Audioguru I had a friend that owned a cable manufacturing company. He traded his scrap for gold. It was the only thing he got in the divorce. :rolleyes:
 
Considering how much a hobbyist generates in lead cut-off, I'd expect he/she would probably get a dime if turning in ten years' worth of wire ends. If it were solid copper, it'd sell for more at recycling, but being most is tin-plated copper, it lower the value.
 
Use them to make very low turns coils...
 
1001 uses.... they come in handy for a lot of things. the only limitation is your imagination.....
 
My uses:
1) Thru hole connectors for home made dbl sided PCB
2) Occasional eyeglasses hinge screw substitute.

And i gotta mention this....plastic wire insulation use........repair of my 16 year old's mouth retainer, which is made of s/s wire which is kinda brittle and can break. I just sleeve the break with #24 AWG plastic insulation from my ELENCO breadboard jumpers. The patch lasts about a month and costs zero to replace. A new orthodontist retainer is serious $$.
 
fixing breaks on pc boards, or fixing lifted traces...... you can also use them with meter or scope probes to plug into connectors for testing.... best if the wire diameter is about the same as the pins that would normally be plugged into the connector
 
Breadboard jumpers from side rails to normal rails. Or other short jumps.
 
My uses:
1) Thru hole connectors for home made dbl sided PCB
.

i remember some of the earliest double sided PCBs used in TV sets. i think it was General Electric TVs in particular, used metal grommets for interconnects between the layers. the grommets were made of a metal that didn't take solder very well. the best fix for the grommets going open circuit was to take a cut-off piece from a resistor, feed it through the grommet, and solder it to the traces on both sides of the PCB. time consuming, but much more reliable than just resoldering the grommets...
 
I feel pretty strongly about this issue too. I have used them as makeshift probes by sticking them in alligator clips, put them in breadboards to make test points, used them to bridge pins, various connections. I don't think you can recycle in that small a quantity though.
 
So more importantly by volume how many cutoffs are we talking here?

It would take a few thousand of them to equal the mass of one soup can and how many of them do you toss out in a given time. :rolleyes:
 
hmm, good question, there's gotta be some use for them! i just cinda hope there 'aint one that i can use, as i am even currently struggling what i throw away.....i even save items like, empty solder tin container, (or is it spool?..., sorry my english is limited in some occasions) just in case i need to make custom-made inductor....
 
we toss nothing... recycle everything, from soup cans to cut off leads. They really pile up, but don't sell them for scrap, I just put them in the recycle metal containers. I hate to throw anything in the trash that can be recycled...
 
yeah, i too take recycling pretty seriously. Like stamps from papers/magazines, they go to metal bin, and paper, well paper recycling...
 
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