Brass fuel-tank parts?

Nice find! Any idea what they are (or were) originally?

KariFS wrote:Nice find! Any idea what they are (or were) originally?

I work for a company that recycles electronic-waste. We recently received 20 skids of material from a CATV provider. You'll notice that there's two "pins" on the caps, that likely get soldered into a PC-board. For what purpose, I don't know. Being made from .015" sheet brass; they're pretty sturdy.

There was only one small plastic bag of them.. and immediately thought.. WOW.. pre-made "fuel-tank end-caps"! I dunno' how a square/rectangular tank would work.. but these would sure make it easy to build. Maybe plumb-it like a wedge.. and make a 90-degree "V-shaped" saddle-mount from some balsa triangular stock.

Probably just more pipe-dream/junk.. but they didn't cost me anything.

I remember you made some rectangular "speed tanks" earlier, those would be a good starting point for them too. "Side caps" instead of end caps

Could be they are originally some kind of heat- or EMC shields for some sensitive components.

KariFS wrote:I remember you made some rectangular "speed tanks" earlier, those would be a good starting point for them too. "Side caps" instead of end caps

That's an interesting perspective Kari. I'd like to think I could use them. "Side-caps" would merely involve the addition of one-strip of brass at least .400" wide, to allow for the .200" flanges/ea. side.

Adding-up the cap inner-dimensions = 3.68 linear-inches. A strip cut to 3.75" long would allow for some length-loss incurred at the three bends. As previously mentioned; the caps are not square. They have a .100" perpendicular-difference; making them rectangular. Calculating a tank's capacity, would depend on the width of the strip made. In a "side-cap" arrangement; its' inner-dimensions would be a constant.. with the thickness of the strip (x2) subtracted from that measurement as the variable. I have the formula to convert cu. in. to cc's.. somewhere for when I made my speed-tanks. I enjoyed the mathematical aspect of building them.. almost as much as physically building them.

KariFS wrote:Could be they are originally some kind of heat- or EMC shields for some sensitive components.

You're probably correct given the nature of the source. We receive a myriad of materials for disposal/recycling where I work. Electronic-Waste is a serious issue in this day and age.. and "end-of-life"/obsolete components/inventory need to be responsibly processed.. rather than ending-up in a land-fill somewhere. Information-systems are employed by virtually all companies doing business today.. and those systems have an average useful-life of 5-7 years currently.. before technology advancements render them obsolete. The responsible-recycling of this material is a global responsibility that needs to be realized.

The nature of our business is AVR (Asset Value Recovery).. whether through the re-purposing of individual system-components.. (some of the material that we contract is resold) or the value after being responsibly recycled into individual commodities i.e.; Steel, Aluminum (pure-extruded vs./cast-pot-metal), copper (bright vs./with contaminants), PCBA/Printed Circuit-Board Assemblies (4+ grades; depending on the AU/contaminate ratio..), Power-Supply's, PDU's, Data (shielded) cable, Power-Cable, Connectors.. (multiple-grades.. depending on PCBA/Copper-content. Copper currently has a very high value..) Our customers receive a "kick-back"percentage of the proceeds after re-purposing/re-cycling. The recycling is tracked by weight/commodity by separate "waybills" for each customer.

Commodities outside of steel/ferrous metals.. are considered "focus-materials".. and are recycled by a "smelting-facility".. Some materials (plastics.. for example..) cost our company to recycle. We make an effort to re-use any Styrofoam/foam-rubber materials for the packaging of sales-orders.. because those particular materials do not have any local recycling-systems available. Our company has container pick-ups.. of "trash".. and what's termed as "zero-sort" recycling. Zero-sort.. consists mostly of corrugated-cardboard (broken-down boxes).. and anything else falling within the acceptable criteria.. (glass, paper, plastic packaging/bottles) Our landfill footprint is miniscule... compared to what we recycle.

Thanks for reading. When we throw things away in the trash.. they go somewhere else. They don't just disappear. If they can be repurposed/recycled... it makes our planet just a little bit cleaner for the future.

My Mom was tasked with recycling several hundred 286 computers. She made some for her school. Took apart practically all of them. Found a jeweler who would give her cash for certain components based on the contained gold and copper value. Those old processors had quite a lot of gold in them. (This would be the late 1990's, when the original Pentium processor family was the cutting edge)

The hard disk drives and floppy disk drives were rather valuable for the die cast aluminum parts. Rare earth magnets were also sold for scrap, although a number still adorn the fridge and Dad's tool box.

The cases became floorboards in several old cars too.

I know the printed boards were "scrapped" but I don't know if they cost or were paid for. I do remember very strict rules about how the boards had to be bundled together, so I had to just sort them all identical to separate boxes so Mom could handle that.

Phil