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Hardware

New Glue Could Reduce Computer Trash 48

Posted by timothy from the are-you-just-going-to-throw-that-away? dept.
LostScorp88 writes: "An engineer at Cornell University, Mr. Chris Ober, has developed a new glue for computer parts (mainly mobos/circuit boards) that allows them to be recycled. Previously, the glue used was too strong to be easily separated. The new glue allows the parts to be separated at high temperatures. Read the article [here]." Considering the problems (and expense) of properly and legally disposing of computer equipment, this small advance could have a big impact.
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New Glue Could Reduce Computer Trash More

New Glue Could Reduce Computer Trash

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  • We will hear of all the accidents of script kiddies due to this. They are going to find out there is glue in their computer accessories, then proceed to shove a DIMM up their noses in an attempt to get high. We really need to work on making this safer so these kids will not lose their nostrils to such a terrible mistake.

    C'mon people, it's for the children.

  • don't say the food is bad... just ask for ketchup and mustard...

    //rdj

  • Recycle materials, not parts (Score:3)

    by 4im ( 181450 ) on Thursday November 23, 2000 @04:04AM (#605583)

    Funny how the first few posters seem to think that this would affect the recycling of parts, when actually the goal would be to be able to seperate different kinds of materials, thereby to allow reusing them instead of just burning or throwing away a strange mix of stuff, which has its own kinds of negative impact on the environment.

    Being able to cleanly separate the layers of a circuit board is currently one of the biggest obstacles in recycling electronics.

    Remember, you don't want to reuse 8088's or somesuch, but the raw materials.

    So yes, I think this may be a big issue.

    4im

  • I also wouldn't think that heating computer components up to 430F will do them a lot of good!

    I wonder if instead, they're talking of recycling the materials that make some of the components as opposed to recycling working components? It's hard to tell from the article. I'm not sure how economically feasible this would be either.

    Do any computer manufacturers actually try to build recyclable computers at present? perhaps current computers are hard to recycle becuase they're not designed to be recycled and having such a glue available may help strat such a design process off?

  • I suppose this means that we need to make sure bill gates gets his share of broken glass.

    [shrug]

    on a more serious note:

    the glue is important because solder alone is not used to bind components. but you know this if you read the article. This is because the through hole strength of wire is often not sufficient for the big stuff, among other things.

  • Separation requires high temperatures... such as those generated by a Pentium IV operating under normal conditions.

    oops.
    --

  • I currently attend a university where old computers are sold at a surplus sale once a month. They have over 100 monitors (them old VGA 640x480) and many 386 and 486 on sale for about $10.00 CDN.

    They are never sold, and most end up in the dumpster as a result. These computers still work, and usually are just too slow for the advanced computations, that they need faster ones.

    Making new glue that would separate components from the PCB is all well and good, but the reality is that most of the boards that are causing a problem (high lead content in the solder) are older models. Unless we can find a way to decrease the content of those ending up in a landfill, then the problem will remain.

  • For starters, the technology would have to be cheaper and integrate seamlessly with existing manufacturing processes.

    It only has to be cheaper. Where did all the vacuum tubes go?

  • Can anyone see a potential issue waiting to happen? How about Pentium 4's disintegrating motherboards! Especially when Intel get's around to making them SMP compatible...

  • When building stringed instruments (violins, 'cellos, etc.), they use horse hide glue because it is heat sensitive. Sure, it's a pain to heat up the stuff (it stinks like crazy), and apply it quickly before it cools, but when the instrument gets cracked later in its life, and needs to be opened, all the repairperson needs to do is heat the seems. Much safer than prying things apart. Some of these instruments are hundreds of years old, and have undergone many repairs.

    Of course, I wouldn't want my overheating motherboard to start smelling like dead rats, so perhaps horse hide glue wouldn't be the best thing to use ;)

  • Ptbrown wrote:

    I always thought it was in the toxic materials used for making ICs, the PCBs in the circuit boards,


    They use PCBs [1] to make PCBs [2]? I didn't know that.

    [1] Poly-Chloro-Biphenyls
    [2] Printed Circuit Boards
  • If you do, I hope you don't let them browse the internet or watch tv so they'll be forced to read books for entertainment and they'll learn how to spell.
  • Now, THAT would be interesting!

    Dr. Ø
  • I can see it now: the newly released Pentium IV processor raises the temperature of motherboards to a point where the glue binding the layers melts. "It's like mozerella" moan overclockers, "I clocked my P4 upto 2GHz so it could compete with my AMD T-Bird, and the damn motherboard came apart!.

    It's a ploy by Intel to sell more chips and mobos I tell you!

  • Point out the obvious please, I like being patronised.

    I used to wonder what people were on about when they said that Slashdot had gone down the tube, but recently I think I've come round to their point of view. NO recent stories have caught my imagination, and the quality of posts is absolutely dire (as demonstrated by this one).
  • The articel says, in 2005 some 64 million computers will have reached the end of their useful lives.
    Uhmm...I give you my adress and you send me a few. How about 1000? :D
    I will recycle them completely... I promise
  • Although you are right that computer parts themselves are basically useless and recycling them will cost more than making new ones. I wonder though if some business type will think this is greatest idea and start recycling the computer parts and then testing them to resell, going by business logic recycling 1 computer will not be profitable but recycling the "estimated" 64 million ( I think there will be a lot more since I in the past 5 years threw away the parts to 3 computers, 286,386 16 Mhz, 386 33 Mhz, I think around 2004 or so as the computer frenzy that went on in 98/99 all those comptuers sold will be outdated and pointed at the trash pile. Although it makes me think that the Athlon and new P4 if it ever ships will be easily outdated. When the general public goes on the upgrade I think a lot more than 64 million computers will be in the trash.) The glue thing they were talking about might help the problem a little but I still think theres gonna be a lot of trash. Think about it though getting p3 gig chips for free cuz they outdated and slapping them together on quad boards might not be a bad idea. Later
  • Looks like araldite is out of bizness. e-glue is all set to take over
  • If you want to recycle parts, why not just heat the parts to just past the melting point of solder, then suck the parts off the boards?
    Because hot solder in the mouth is not a nice experience?

  • Another win for the "environmentalists" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Does anyone else here think that the entire crusade of environmentalism has managed to hoodwink an entire generation into believing that technology is not the answer to all of out problems but is instead something we should mistrust and fear? What happened to our glorious dreams of Progress and a bright future that we had not so many years ago?

    Unfortunately the more liberal elements that seem to be in power in most of the western world are pushing this idea, because it allows them to push guilt onto people, who then call for their governments to impose heavy legislative shackles in the name of the "common good". So much for the freedom which we are supposed to have in the Western world.

    Only one political candidate in America was willing to make a stand and decry the scaremongering over the environment. The rest are only too willing to pander to the popular vote and spread their lies about global warming. See here [lp.org] for the truth.

  • I've been glueing together computers using porridge for many years now, totally recycleable, and very nutritious.
    --
    Remove Me-Kilt

  • And for the rest of the system.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    New Scientist had an article a while ago on heat-sensitive fasteners which hold the whole system together, then pop apart at specific temperatures.

    Since the recycling problem in terms of whole machines is separating different plastics, electronics, metals etc., the principle is to run old PCs along a conveyor, heating them gradually higher as they go. Then it disassembles itself as it goes into suitable categories for easy recycling.
  • How about the current ones? Is any of that, horse glue?

  • In that case please sod off and save the bandwidth for someone who does read these articles. What do you do if you don't like the food in a certain restaurant? You eat somewhere else. You don't barge into the kitchen to tell the French cook the quality of his food is going down the drain. On second thought, maybe you should go tell a French cook his food is bad, he'll probably kill ya..
  • If you want to recycle parts, why not just heat the parts to just past the melting point of solder, then suck the parts off the boards?

    Because some components are glued in addition to being soldered. This is just the subject of the article : They invented a glue that melts too.

    ____________________
  • Yeah, but what about when I overclock, will the bond hold *GRIN*

    (tis a joke, s'ok to laugh).

  • I worked at Cornell recently. First, engineer Dr. Ober is a professor at Cornell. He is a polymer guru and well known in his field.

    He and his students have done a lot of research in the area of reworkable thermosets. Perhaps another (and better) use for this "glue" is the ability to separate defective components once they have been secured to a PCB.

  • Actually, there are quite a number of ways to "recycle" your old computer. The National Safety Council has a few basic guidlines [nsc.org] for way in which you can recycle your old computers. To paraphrase the link:
    • Donation of Computers to Schools, Charities, and Nonprofit Organizations. This is a good option if you're about to get rid of your old Pentium-100 system for a new one. Today's used computers make great tools for schools and nonprofits, charities, and other organizations, since they can all pretty much run a word processor, web browser, and more without any trouble. You can also get a tax break, if you're American! (dunnot about other countries, but I wouldn't be surprised to see similar incentives...)
    • Reuse. The type of recycling that is being discussed by most people on this post. Sure, the old components aren't terribly useful to your average Slashdotter, but again, todays computers are wuite powerful enough to serve a wide array of uses. Those "obsolete" mobo components or boards can be put to work in other systems that don't require huge amounts of power or complex circuitry.
    • Recycling. The hard core reuse, this is when they actually start melting things down to get at the trace amounts of lead, gold, platinum, copper, etc. that can be melted out of a system. Hazardous and hard to do if you try it yourself; less challenging if you give it to a company that specializes in it. These companies do, in fact, exist [nsc.org].
    Is there a market for recycling computers? You bet. Look at automobile recycling. I've seen countless successful junkyards filled to the gills with POS vechicles which are, quite frankly, completely and utterly worthless to the average person. Yet somehow, these companies continue to exist, do business, grow, and even thrive. There's money to be made in recycling, and given something like a computer (where you have a very high value to size ratio,) you can bet that an enterprising organisation can make a pretty penny off of computer recycling.

    Having a glue that allows parts to be melted off in a basic oven would considerably reduce the costs of recycling the components of a computer. Yes, a lot of components cost only a penny. These aren't the components they're interested in; if possible, they get hucked in the smelting pot. Things like CPUs, memory, and other more complex circuits (if you think nobody is saving those CPUs when computers get recycled/discarded, guess again) have a great deal of value to a computer recycler, though. The estimate of "hundreds of dollars" per computer may be a tad inflated (perhaps for discarded servers or high-end machines), but there is still very real income potential for recycling home computers, easily in the $50-100 range. If a company can squeeze an extra $15 of saved labor out of each computer, that's a serious boost to profitability.

    $ man reality

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Since the EU is wanting to enforce a policy where the computer manufacturers are responsible for recycling of the thrown out computers things like this are likely to move up on the agenda of computer companies. If computer companies are made to be responsible of recycling of old computers then they will go to any extent to find ways of reducing the costs of dealing with the old computers and still sound environmentally responsible. If computer companies aren't made to take on the responsibility then they are unlikely to use this new glue because "it's not their problem that recycling is expensive". Remember the car wasn't made people safe until Ralph Nader wrote his famous book.

  • Which class?

    I had him for ENGRI/MSE 124... He's one of the top three professors I've ever had, if not #1.

    Really smart guy, *amazing* lecturer.
  • From a recycling point of view this is rather boring, but then, recycling is one field of technology in which the Americans lag several decades behind the rest of the world. In Europe, people are already marketing printed circuit foil (1.0 to 2.0 mm thick), which can be applied to any rigid board (wood or metal, for instance) for the purpose of stabilisation and completely removed afterwards. Refer to this link: http://www.tu-dresden.de/presse/pi/messen-archiv.h tm#TWINflex
  • How am I supposed to run Linux on the box if the systemboard has been seperated into it's componant parts? Surely a better method of recycling old (or even new!) Windows boxes is to install Linux and actually make them productive for a change...
  • i want a mobo made out of recycled tyres.
  • Not quite sure how to feel on this one. I mean I don't think anyone really bothers with proper disposal of system parts anyways. I have to at work (I'm a tech) but at home I don't really care. They aren't really that harmful anyways, are they?

    Kleedrac

  • Nice solution to a sticky situation (Score:3)

    by ptbrown ( 79745 ) on Thursday November 23, 2000 @12:34AM (#605616)
    This sounds very convenient, but how much of the recyclability problem is in the glue? I always thought it was in the toxic materials used for making ICs, the PCBs in the circuit boards, and the lead in monitor glass.

    "The biggest obstacle is the glue that binds components to the circuit board"
    Funny, I always thought that stuff was called "solder."

  • I've always found that the easiest way to get rid of old computers is to donate them to schools, relatives etc - does that count as legal disposal?

    Note to the humor-impaired: This was intended to be a joke...

  • Can you imagine a Beowul.....NEVERMIND!

    I was always under the assumption that part of the problem with fully recycling was actually in the isolation of the materials themselves rather than that of the grosser scale of separating components.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • It is really an unfortunate paradox that many of the most interesting ideas never see mass production because of entrenched methodology. The PCB industry is huge and established. Conventional PCB manufacturing is well understood and cheap.

    To overhaul one of the most fundamental building blocks for modern technology would be an amazingly tough thing to do. For starters, the technology would have to be cheaper and integrate seamlessly with existing manufacturing processes.

    If you want to recycle parts, why not just heat the parts to just past the melting point of solder, then suck the parts off the boards?

  • Oh oh Overclockers Nightmare (Score:4)

    by Corty ( 186595 ) on Thursday November 23, 2000 @12:39AM (#605620)
    Just imagine one real gung-ho Quake3 session with your PC overclocked and your pride and joy will fall appart before your very eyes.

  • 31 (Score:1)

    by {Hecubus} ( 62076 )
    31furst poest

    weed
  • Nope. The tiny resistors (I think they're called SMC) and some other components are actually glued to the mobo before the soldering is done.


    ____________________
  • From the little I remember of high school chemistry, most of the glues are organic polymers which bond strongly under heat and pressure. I might be talking through my hat here, but knowing the chemical compostion of stuff mentioned in the article, should it not be RERLATIVELY easy to come up with something which could be used to unglue things or decompose them into something harmless? Of course, I know it is not as easy as that... there is a lot going on here, including the fact that chemical reactions are reversible, but it should not be TOO hard either. Just wondering...

  • Economically infeasible (Score:3)

    by Argy ( 95352 ) on Thursday November 23, 2000 @01:08AM (#605624)
    There are several problems with this. Landfilled microcomputers (and monitors and printers and scanners) take a lot of space due to their cases. Ungluing components from the circuit boards would not save any landfill space.

    Then consider the economics. The estimation of "hundreds of dollars" in a computer's components would be absurd for microcomputers, and that must be what the article is talking about if there will be "64 million computers" hitting landfills. If you carefully unglued all the resistors, capacitors, transistors, and chips off a motherboard, they'd be worth nothing, because it would take more work to sort them, test them, ship them, and load them for automated placement than it could possibly be worth. Even new, many of these parts cost around a penny. CPUs are the most expensive part, and you can already unplug them, yet hardly anybody does when the computer is obsolete. And if the components really were valuable, you could "unglue" them today just by heating up the solder.

    Maybe the glue will have some use somewhere, but it's certainly nowhere near the landfill panacea the article portrays.

  • I can not imagine that the article realy means that they want to reuse some of the component's. That simply make no sens. No matter how valueable the component was when bought after 5-10 Year's it's of no value anymore.

    Recycling them does only make sens if you want to get rid of them becourse there are parts and components which can not be recycled without spezial care. If this parts could be easily extracted than the hole recycling prozess could be much cheaper.

    But even then until the Glue is ready to use and the Companies are willing to use it where will the industry be.
    I mean it's realy possible that in 10 Years a hole PC will be one Microchip or that you will only have a Terminal and use the Supercomputer of your ISP or something like that.

    --

  • We won't be needing horse glue until we start glueing Plaomino's to each other...
  • Mwrah, who needs glue anyway? Gaffa tape is the way to go...a lot easier to dissasemble as well.
  • Now - when would they make that glue to stick bits together?... That'd give a whole new meaning to "sticky bits" :) and will create a new category called "gooey bits" with their cousins "spoogy bits" :)

    --

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