Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Feed Link: https://www.engadget.com/
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Title: Watch a recycling machine shake apart old hard drives to recover
components

Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2024 16:34:43 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/watch-a-recycling-ma...

Traditional hard drives typically contain useful components. But dismantling
them manually would be too labor-intensive. As things stand, old hard drives
tend to go through a shredder and it's often down to luck whether there's
anything usable left after that process. A company called Garner Products
claims to have a better solution with its DiskMantler.

This machine (spotted by Ars Technica) uses a mix of shock, harmonics and
vibration to shake apart a hard drive. The process loosens screws and other
fasteners ΓÇö no matter what kind of oddly shaped screw heads are used ΓÇö to
free up parts like circuit boards, drive assemblies, actuators and rare-earth
magnets. The process reportedly takes between eight and 90 seconds for most
hard drives, and around two minutes for welded helium drives.

The DiskManter can seemingly disassemble as many as 500 hard drives a day and
only a fifth or so of the planet's e-waste is recycled. So at least for now,
Garner's recycling efforts may seem a bit like a drop in the ocean. However,
if the company can help to retrieve valuable components such as rare-earth
magnets without having to break them down into elements and starting the
production process over, that surely has to be a net positive.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/watch-a-recycling-ma...
drives-to-recover-components-163442500.html?src=rss

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