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Member's Forum Dumpster Diving - What is your best score?
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  • State Not Answered
  • Replies 33 replies
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  • salvage
  • dumpster dive
  • free equipment
Related

Dumpster Diving - What is your best score?

dougw
dougw over 1 year ago

We had a question previously on what is the best deal you ever got when procuring electronics, but what is the best free deal you ever got from dumpster diving, trash salvage or discarded material?

It is okay to mention the great free stuff we get from element14, but also mention your best score from trash.

My stereo microscope came from a dumpster. It didn't have a stand, but I built a stand and I use that microscope all the time. It was a a phenomenal score - an expensive device for free, that I use extensively.

From element14, I got to road test a 4 channel R&S scope, it is now my main scope - the highlight of the decade ...Heart

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Top Replies

  • javagoza
    javagoza over 1 year ago in reply to beacon_dave +8
    I am a volunteer of " Ingeniería Sin Fronteras " (Engineering Without Borders), a Spanish Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) dedicated to development cooperation, which seeks to put technology at the…
  • genebren
    genebren over 1 year ago +5
    I worked at a few companies that had great dumpster deals. At one of the companies (manufacturers of Liquid Chromatography systems) they were doing an ongoing repair and retrofit of a sampling system …
  • DAB
    DAB over 1 year ago +4
    My best score was a carton of Opamps I picked up for about 5 USD, turns out they were needed by another group and I sold them for 400 USD.
Parents
  • beacon_dave
    0 beacon_dave over 1 year ago

    Not really into 'skip/dumpster diving' but I know a few people that are experts in that area.

    I managed to get some mechanical counters, a load of nice relays and a very loud mechanical bell out of an old scrapped arcade machine once.

    Unfortunately it looked like someone beat me to the coin box though...

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  • dang74
    0 dang74 over 1 year ago in reply to beacon_dave

    As soon as you said mechanical counter I was thinking about the old Gottlieb pinball tables.  I love the noises they make from all their moving parts.

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  • beacon_dave
    0 beacon_dave over 1 year ago in reply to dang74

    I'm not sure what the arcade machine was as it had already been pretty well broken up by the time I had got to it. 

    There were six fairly robust looking mechanical counters (with 5 or 6 digits) driven by solenoids but without any reset. Not sure what they were counting. May just have been coin counters for tracking different coin denominations.

    I recall it was covered in small orange plastic beads as if it had some sort of granular display mechanism that had been broken open. 

    I had a colleague once who had an old relay logic pinball machine and it was interesting to listen to it click and clunk away.

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  • dang74
    0 dang74 over 1 year ago in reply to beacon_dave

    Sounds cool either way.  I am going to see what the after market cost on mechanical counters are now.  If they aren't to expensive I might get one.

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  • dang74
    0 dang74 over 1 year ago in reply to beacon_dave

    Sounds cool either way.  I am going to see what the after market cost on mechanical counters are now.  If they aren't to expensive I might get one.

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  • beacon_dave
    0 beacon_dave over 1 year ago in reply to dang74

    I've just been having a quick browse to see if I could spot any old arcade machines that it may have been.

    The counters were too small for the Gottlieb pinball tables and they would need to be able to reset.

    Flip-dot type mechanical displays could be interesting but not often you see an old petrol pump in a skip/dumpster. 

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  • dang74
    0 dang74 over 1 year ago in reply to beacon_dave

    I'll have to keep an eye out.  In the meantime my wife has a knack for finding free electronics, stereos mostly, on Facebook Market place.  It keeps me out of trouble, lol.

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