I am very sure this is old hat.... but it is the first time I have gone to the effort to dismantle some E-Waste as I think it is called.
I have always wanted to see what is inside a keyboard.
Just need to say, it was disappointing and amazing all at the same time.... with printed circuits, soft touch silicone inners etc.... all I really salvaged from there were the letters.
Then there were some optical mouse's which yielded a bit more interesting circuitry and the little wheels may end up somewhere some time.
I grew up in the time of valves and stripped many a broken radio/radiogram as a kid, winding up rolls of copper wire, to be used later etc.
No I know how electronics have shrunk and shrunk over time, but again, I was amazed at just how small and complex these things have become.
Yesterday afternoon I stripped the Router which yielded a very nice motherboard......
So I showed it to Nicola last night, and was going to toss it on the fire to see if anything went " POP!!" Ultimately I did not, as it could of course create all sorts of havoc having to explain to an insurance company why you lobbed a router onto your indoors fire.
This morning we cut back the garden for winter and cleared all the hanging baskets etc..... soon the job was completed.... Nicola went indoors to have a bath and then clean the house, which left me at a loose end.
Which is when I decided to start dismantling some old computer powerpacks, keyboards, mouses to see what they contained. I already had the motherboard from the router and Ideas began to form in my head.
In the end I decided to see if I could make Nicola a picture frame using the bits from the bin. I have bottled all the letters from the keyboard.... Scrabble anyone ?
So some measuring, marking and a Dremmel with diamond cutting blade later......
The stand may have been part of a multiple USB box, it came out of the pile of E-Waste Mickey next door had generated.
When he does any sort of office or other clearance he cuts all the wires back and weighs them in, often netting £300 to pay his bar bill with.
It often hurts me to see the perfectly good stuff he kills just to get to the copper wire inside.
So before cutting I tried it all out to see if it would work once I had modded the stand so that I could slot the motherboard onto it.
Then the fun began..... I have to say, I am petrified of this little whining blade.... it could hurt you before you realized what happened.
For a change I used more than my usual safety gear, both Mask and Glasses.
Much cutting later, there was a hole and I had the rear supports where the photo will be slotting into cut and ground. I also decided to use part of a mouse motherboard just to tidy up the front of the stand.
Then the hot glue gun was tested. I actually bought it for the Steampunk build.
DONE !!
Then I bought it indoors and took a pic from a TV magazine to see what it looked like......
Nicola has seen this one now, and seems happy (or is that tolerant as she always is of my builds) I did offer to wrap it for Christmas, but it seems I wont be getting away that easily.
Now I need to pull my finger and start making up the Steampunk Tophat.......
