It's been around a decade now since CRT (cathode ray tube, basically particle accelerators) television sets were still being sold in large quantities compared to LCD TVs. That means that many are finding their way into the trash and the landfill. If you'd like to start messing around with making/modifying your own electronic devices, an excellent and free way to get parts is to salvage parts from these old televisions.

What you'll get from a typical CRT:

• Tons of capacitors, including some very large 200V+ electrolytics
• Several high power (1-5W) resistors
• 1 High-voltage Flyback Transformer per TV
• 1-2 Speakers
• Relays
• Tons of smaller miscellaneous components you may not find worth your time, including random resistors, coils, transformers, cables, a wall plug, copper wire, ceramic capacitors, and various transistors/switches.

What you'll need:

• A screwdriver with an INSULATED handle
• Pliers with INSULATED handle
• Double-side alligator clip cable
• Insulated Gloves - NOT OPTIONAL
• Wire cutters
• (Optional) Soldering iron

Safety note: This guide is based off of some TVs I took apart for salvaged parts last winter. Taking apart these TVs involves a high voltage shock risk. Do not attempt this if you don't know how to work with high voltage circuits safely. Please look up another guide before attempting this.

Where to get a CRT TV

Before you start taking apart a TV, you need to actually get a TV. Thankfully there are many options, all free. I got the units I took apart by driving around my hometown looking at the curb next to trash cans until I found CRT TVs left out for the trash to pick up. It's actually surprisingly easy to get your own free TV this way, although it is probably a hard to use CRT that you don't want to actually use as a TV.

You can also try any place that does E-waste collection. If you ask nicely, often times they will have no problem giving away the old CRTs people donate because they were going to have to spend time/effort/money to dispose of them anyway.

Disassembly and Safety

Once you get your free CRT from the trash, set it down and take off the plastic frame with your screwdriver. Don't touch anything inside the TV yet and make sure to wear your gloves. You should see something like this:

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You now need to locate the ground conductor. The giant round chamber is the vacuum tube and screen. There should be a metal braided wire going around the exterior of the tube. While wearing insulated gloves, clip one end of the alligator clip cable to this conductor. If you can't find this, look up another guide on how to locate the ground conductor. This step is crucial for safety!

Clip the other end of the alligator clip cable to the conducting part of your screwdriver.

Now for the slightly hazardous part: While wearing gloves, lift up the edge of the black suction cup connecting the high-voltage output (red) wire to the CRT vacuum tube using your pliers. You should see a shiny metal connector inside. Making sure that your screwdriver is connected to the ground wire and only touching the insulated part of the screwdriver, touch the metal part of the screwdriver to the metal conductor under the suction cup. Expect to see a spark, but you probably will see nothing.

At this point, you have discharged the big capacitors through the flyback transformer and the TV should be safe to work on. I would still wear gloves and discharge big capacitors as you go to be safe, but after the above you should be good to go. You can now, with the pliers, remove the suction cup connector from the tube.

Salvage!

Now for the fun part. Your goal should be to take anything that you can use for a future project, that isn't too time consuming to remove. Ideally it shouldn't take more than 30 minutes to get everything you need. Keep in mind I did this as a college student with barely any money trying to get parts for projects, so if you have a well paying job it's probably more worth your time to just buy parts online when you need them instead of wasting time scrapping TVs.

The first target should be the flyback transformer. You can use this to create 20,000 volt output, which can easily produce inch long plasma arcs and generate XRays in a vacuum. They're also worth around $20 so if you're doing this for resale value, this should be your number one target. The first image below is of one of my salvaged flyback transformers, and the second image is of some low-density plasma I made with it in a bad vacuum chamber.

Flybacks drive the electron accelerator inside the TV tube. These electrons bombard the screen to excite a phosphor and produce visible images. Flyback transformers have a ton of pins on them, which will all be soldered down, so I recommend just using clippers to cut out the flyback from the main board along with the surrounding PCB. You can desolder it from the PCB later with solder wick or a solder sucker. Be sure to keep the HV output wire, as the insulation is pretty good on it and it is very useful if you are planning to create a high voltage supply with the flyback.

Next up, remove everything that can be removed with wire cutters. Long-lead high value capacitors are my first target. Find the biggest ones that can be removed with cutters and cut them off the board. This is very quick and easy so cut as many components off as you can, since desoldering them is way more time consuming.

Finally, locate any other parts you want, grab your soldering iron, and start removing the parts. If you haven't desoldered before, an easy trick for most components is to add some new solder to the joints you want to melt, melt the solder there, then pull off the component while wearing a glove to prevent burns. Or you can use solder wick/sucker but that can be irritating and requires more equipment. Take whatever you want, focusing on more expensive parts: Relays, big coils, big capacitors, high-wattage resistors. Big components with 2-pins are not only usually the best things to remove, they are also the easiest things to remove.

High power resistors look this like. I recommend taking them from TVs you scrap.
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I went pretty overboard on my first TV teardown and basically took anything that wasn't absurdly tiny. This isn't really worth it unless you really have no way of getting the parts, such as if you live in a remote location and can't easily order your own parts.

Don't forget the speakers! Most of these TVs have one or two decent sized speakers attached to the outer frame. These can be handy for all sorts of projects - any time you need sound, really. They even work as crappy microphones in a pinch (Seriously! Speakers can absorb sound energy just as they output it. With an appropriate connector, you can use a random speaker as a computer microphone. Just don't expect it to work very well!).

Another interesting item to salvage are heatsinks. You can find a lot of heatsinks that work well with higher power transistors. The smaller ones could even be repurposed for stuff like Raspberry Pi's.

Again, unless you enjoy this, only take what is worth your time and what you think you will need. For example, I knew I wanted to make a High-voltage supply, so my primary target was the flyback and everything else was just a bonus. While you can remove every tiny resistor/coil/capacitor and measure them all, then use them in future projects, this probably isn't worth it when you can buy resistors for a Dogecoin.

I used TVs found on the road in my hometown to build up a somewhat decent collection of common components for future electronics projects. I still need to buy parts for basically every project, but it does cut down on the part list and lets me fix stuff on the fly.

Once you're done, be sure to recycle the cold dead remains of the TV! These things are made of lead glass to protect against XRay emissions produced when electron radiation hits the inner screen. Lead isn't good for the environment, and at least in the US you're not supposed to just throw these away (although perhaps someone should tell that to the people putting these next to their trash cans). Most towns offer free e-waste recycling events occasionally - just save the TV remains until then and recycle it. Unless you have a use for shattered lead-glass, I guess?

If you're lazy, you can skip this whole thing and buy a nice kit with pre-organized parts. But what's the fun in that?

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and learned something from it! Remember to be safe and only do this if you know how to avoid giving yourself an extremely painful, possibly lethal shock. And never take these TVs apart when they are plugged in if you value your life. Your life and health are worth so much more than $30 worth of 20 year old dusty electrical parts.

Thanks for reading!

Images not credited are my own. You are welcome to use them with credit on your own posts.