This is an idea for budding revolutionary's. Modern army's are heavily dependent on technology. Electronics is a major force in warfare and it's cost is prohibitive to people at the bottom trying to fight back. This idea might help reduce the cost of experimenting and building technology. When I first started in electronics printed circuit boards (PCB) were assembled with parts that were called 'through hole'. The leads of the various parts were put through a hole in the PCB and soldered on the opposite side. There was a component side and a solder side. Getting parts in and out of the PCB was difficult. Today almost everything is surface mount technology (SMT). The parts are soldered on the component side. Hobbyists have found it difficult to work and experiment with SMT but it can be done. I think getting the parts off the PCB could be fairly simple as opposed to through hole PCB's. Using a vibratory could be helpful. A vibratory uses some sort of transformer principle to vibrate. The idea is this. Build a small enclosure 20 inches by 20 inches by 10 inches tall that will withstand high heat. Place a very small vibratory unit in the bottom that can be adjusted for small vibration or large. Above the vibratory, in the middle of the enclosure, place some rubber at a steep angle. Attach to the vibratory, above the rubber and at a steep angle, a harness that will hold the PCB being stripped of components upside down. Place a heating element in the upper part of the enclosure that will heat the entire space enough to melt electric solder. As the temperature of the enclosure rises the PCB is vibrated and the parts fall in the rubber along with residual solder. The only parts of any real value are the largest IC's. Part of the harness holding the PCB should have a cage of plastic to separate the large parts from the small and remove the residual solder. (see picture)

Once the PCB has had all the parts removed it's not worth anything except for the metal. I think it's possible to separate and recover some of the metal. Build an enclosure with a grinding wheel that is airtight. Automatically feed the PCB into the grinding wheel turning it to dust. Blow the dust into another enclosure where a gas flame burns away the fiberglass in the dust. Collect the metal. Build an enclosure with a crucible attached to a vibratory and put the remaining dust in the crucible. Different metals have different melting points. Slowly raise the temperature until the first melting point is reached. Vibrate the crucible to help whatever metal is in the dust bead together. Remove the heat, open the enclosure, and remove what metal has collected and repeat the process at the next highest temperature. (see picture)

I want to try to prove that surface mount parts can be removed and reused. The top picture is what's left of a cell phone I found while out walking. Initially the 4 metal pieces were covering the main integrated circuits. I had some difficulty removing them. I eventually cut the PCB up into smaller pieces and managed to remove them without too much trouble.

The chip I want to remove this time is in the picture below. It's a Qualcomm MSM 8909 SnapDragon SOS (system on a chip).

Cutting up the PCB had at least 1 advantage. It's like heating up a large frying pan or small frying pan with the same size burner. The small frying pan will heat up faster. Trying to heat up the entire PCB will take away some of the heat I am trying to concentrate on the chip. The same principle applies to the soldering hands. The alligator clips are made of metal. If the piece of PCB is too close to the alligator clip you will be heating up the clip and taking away from the area near the chip.

The idea is to apply heat with an ordinary heat gun, to the underside of the PCB until the solder melts on the other side. While applying heat I will tap the soldering hands on the bench until the chip falls off. Heat guns can be bought at any home improvement store. They are used to remove paint. They are also used in electronics for shrink wrap. My gun goes up to 650 degrees F which is well above the melting point of electrical solder.

It took about 2 minutes before the chip came off. I don't know if it's usable or not. Maybe something was wrong with the phone when I found it. Too much heat can destroy small IC's. I could get a temperature probe and make sure I'm not overheating it but I just wanted to prove it could be done. Once it's off I could re-solder it to a surface mount adapter and power it up.

Surface mount adapters come in all sizes. The picture below is a sample.