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What Do You Do With Bad/Extra PCBs?

Gough Lui

Recently, I posted this blog about inexpensive PCBs being a boon for hobbyists. I myself have benefited greatly from being able to turn my designs into reality and learn-as-I-go.

But there is a flip-side to everything - as it is so cheap, I often do end up making mistakes (unintentionally, of course) and they get manufactured and shipped all the way to me. Other times, the minimum order quantity means I have an extra few boards of a design I might not ever rebuild as it may have deficiencies or is just a one-off design to solve a one-off problem.

That brings me to the obvious question - what does one do with this ever-growing mountain of PCBs filled with paints, copper, fibreglass, etc?

Sometimes I have "bodge-wired" elements from boards to turn them into inelegant breakout boards, rewired certain sections to turn them into a new project. Or perhaps used them as spacers/shims for wobbly tables, as art, or as a piece of scrap to protect my bench. But even these applications quickly run out if one makes quite a few boards ...

So is there a better thing to do with them? I'm not sure they're really recycled? I know ENIG/ENEPIG boards often get coveted by those looking to extract gold, but what about the humble low-cost HASL boards? It would just feel a bit of a shame to be contributing to the "e-waste" problem, even if it wasn't immediately financially ruinous.

  • The ones that can be bodged to perform well, I usually keep. All other ones get dumped. I am not a museum.

  • I have a few in the shed to use as scrap material or shim, but the rest get junked (I might only use a couple from the 5 or so that the PCB factory will send).

    It's very rare a board is completely unusable, ordinarily it can be fixed with some bodge wires. The worst I recall was around 2014, so 8 years ago, when I accidentally numbered a high density (0.4 mm pitch) connector with pins ordered like an IC, but they were supposed to be odd numbers and even numbers on opposite sides! I couldn't stop the soldering of the parts (the time was already scheduled, it had to be done then), and bodge wires would have been a pain with the large volume of connections on the 5 prototype boards, so I had to then design a "correcting board" to take the messed up pinout using a mating connector, and then fix it on another connector! Total mess. Since then, I'm a lot more careful.

  • in reply to Jan Cumps

    Fair enough ... is there any specific way that you use to dump them? Or do you just throw it into the household rubbish collection?

    - Gough

  • in reply to shabaz

    I do like the "bodge adapter" idea ... much better than bodge wires for that kinda issue ... I once mucked up MOSFET connections on a schematic which translated into PCB carnage. As they were SOT-23, I didn't fancy trying to bodge wire 10 of those in close confines and just span a new board. Been feeling a bit guilty ever since and keep telling myself to sleep on a design before sending it in, in case I figure out something is wrong in that time.

    - Gough

  • I keep my extra PCBs. They pretty much all work, but I buy them 10 at a time and only use about 20% in the project they were designed for. I find a lot of uses for spare PCBs - structural components in mechanical builds, breakout boards, insulator material, conductor material, prototyping, etc.

    I still collect it way faster than I use it. It is useful to design your cards for re-use, add breakout pads and connectors, connector adapter circuitry, structural mounting holes, prototype areas, etc.

    I have coined a term for it - DFR "design for re-purpose". Maybe I'll do a blog on it sometime.

  • I’ve given quite a few sets of PCBs to the museum to put in their shop and sell as coasters.  TBH, they’re a bit sloppy for that purpose but they actually do sell, albeit slowly.  Those that I’ve used and scavenged parts off I would dump in the e-waste recycling.

  • When I have one of these botched PCB sessions I first weep, gnash my teeth, swear (A LOT, depending on the faux pas !) and at times go outside to experiment with the board's aerodynamic properties.

    I tend to hang onto them, moving them from location to location hoping to discover something they can be used for in order to gain some absolution. Creating the occasional bullet-holed riddled mistake helps but is not sustainable.

    This a great question to which I do not have an answer outside of the emotional release. Hanging on to them because hope springs eternal is usually the case.

  • I keep them in the "job box" for that project.

    I have job boxes going back 20 years.

    Just recently someone asked me if I could help with a board I designed 10 years ago and I was able to offer them 2 half built examples.

    Every now and again I pillage the boxes for parts and very occasionally a board (rather than just the parts) is actually useful.

    More often I use them as spacers, glue stirrers etc.

    Eventually, when I have enough, I'll send them along with other E-waste to be re-processed but its not economical to get rid of less than 100kg at a time.

    I use PCBCART who have a delightful habbit of (almost) always sending more boards than you asked for or paid for.

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    I tend to do the same, but I don't have so many PCB projects that this is a problem. I think that it's definitely worth keeping one of each example - even if it's just a reminder of what you worked on.