Last week on my way to work I discovered dozens of obsolete CRT televisions placed out for the hard rubbish collection – this week I walk past and a half dozen of said televisions have had their screens shattered and the back panels ripped open.
So why have the backs of these televisions been broken open? It appears someone wants the deflection yokes, not to be confused with someone stealing egg yolks.
Boom boom tish!
This is what the back of a cathode ray tube normally looks like (photo from Wikipedia).
By themselves the deflection yokes are rather boring: they are just a coil of wire that produces a magnetic field, and a functional equivalent can be made in the workshop in an hour or two.
However, there is a far more interesting component at this end of a CTR: the electron gun. A colour television has three of these guns – red, green and blue – and each of them produces a beam of electrons which is used to draw the actual image on the screen.
So what could someone do with a few dozen scrounged electron guns? I would like to find out.
I’m guessing it’s for the copper. After all, if it’s worth risking your life destroying railway infrastructure, it’s gotta be worth destroying some TVs
It seems that the ‘stealing copper’ theory is a good one – apparently the yoke contains a useful amount of copper wire:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1577182&#r5
The same reason why the electrical cords are the first thing to go on anything you put out, copper.
Yes, you can take stuff to get recycled, but that costs money and you have to drive there.
There seems to be a few non-copper theft theories regarding cut off electrical cords as well…
To indicate that the appliance doesn’t work:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1577182#r13
Or to avoid liability if somebody picks up the abandoned decide, plugs it in, and gets electrocuted:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1577182#r9
Iridium.
There seems to be all kinds of exotic metals inside a CRT:
http://www.google.com/patents/US6348770
I would how one would go about extracting them at home!