FuryFight3r
commented
8 months ago Hi there @aus2004 and thank your for your suggestion, there could be potential for a Soldering Iron, though in my minimal experience in IRL Scrapping, pulling out my soldering iron, plugging it in, waiting 5 mins for it to get to temp was far too slow compared to the 1 second it took just cutting the wire(s) with wire cutters, and just for the miniscule amount of tainted Tin/Copper on the ends it certainly wasn't worth the time in my instance and for what my aim was while scrapping.
In my time Scrapping the only time I used the soldering iron was to delaminate Gold Fingers/Foils from RAM/GPU PCBs, otherwise when pulling chips I just used a flat head (or Chisel and Hammer if they were stubborn) and wires met their maker with wire cutters.
Understandably IRL if you wanted to keep the chips and potentially re-use them for what ever reason, then the soldering iron would be the best way without a question, though in my vision for scrapping, the resin/plastic that shatters when prying chips is only going to require more chemicals/time to dissolve to retrieve the precious metals within if it were 1 solid chunk rather than little bits of broken material giving more surface area for the chemicals to work.
If there were potential in Scrapping Sim to have the ability to be able to rebuild PCs etc and replace busted chips to re-sell the unit, then a Soldering Iron would absolutely be necessary in the game, but in the sense of purely scrapping and dismantling for the purpose of accumulating Raw Materials, taking components off cleanly and without breaking them is not really a concern, whatever is the most efficient way.
In the sense of a Material Scrapper, you might be able to scrap say 30 PCs in a day carelessly removing wires and components, where as a Part Scrapper if you were meticulously removing each chip and wire with care in order not to break it to re-use or re-sell the chip or PCB it's being removed from, you may only be able to pull apart 2 entire PCs in an 8 hr work day, so it really does come down to what your purpose and intentions are with scrapping electronics 🙂👍
As for my initial intentions for the game was to rip apart electronics, gather and hoard Raw Materials and forge the materials into Ingots to also hoard and collect and create a big wall of collected materials/ingots, but as time has gone on and feedback has come in it's somewhat been moulded to add re-playability, longevity play and attempting to keep veteran players interested with new/improved content.
Nevertheless things back in the day that I thought wouldn't be viable have in turn made a big difference and improvement in the game, so I guess time will tell 😅
What is your Suggestion?
A purchasable Soldering Iron and Heat Gun which can be used to dislodge components from circuit boards and motherboards. The Heat Gun is necessary to remove surface-mounted chips from circuit boards, as fitting a screwdriver under them is likely to just make the chip crumble. The Soldering iron is a faster tool that can be used to remove components such as capacitors, the upcoming wires which would be soldered to said boards in cheaper devices, and the smaller transformers attached to the motherboard at the cost of a small spike in electricity usage. The soldering iron will also have a small bonus with copper and aluminum as the soldering process removes the chance of the leads breaking off of components, most especially capacitors as they are the most susceptible to such abuse. De-soldering components also comes with a chance of a small amount of leaded tin, which is the common alloy used to make solder.
The soldering iron may have to be maintained by cleaning it using a wet sponge after usage, as it will leave a build-up of garbage on the heated tip
How will this suggestion fit into the Scope of Scrapping Simulator?
soldering is a very big thing when you are trying to dismantle electronics for scrap. sometimes yanking off bigger modules is impossible. A good example of this is the FBT (Flyback Transformer) found in CRT TVs, is logistically impossible to remove without de-soldering.
How would the Game and Community benefit from this suggestion?
this suggestion adds a concept of potential scrap over currently obtainable scrap, as any scrapper may know, you need to expand your library of tools to make use of some of the scrap that you can obtain from one device.