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Ask Slashdot: How To Safely Saw Up Motherboards?
James-NSC writes "I like to do arts and crafts. I've been saving up motherboards for a while as a new medium and I started working on it last night. I wore the same gear I wear while painting – fine particulate respirator and safety goggles. I just cut some templates out of some motherboards and when I was done I used the shop-vac to clean myself & workspace up before removing my mask. Even after 5+ minutes, in a well ventilated area (not as well as it should have been apparently) my first breath was pins and needles. I'm looking into containment and exhaust solutions – ala baby's first iron lung, but seriously, am I nuts? Are these materials just too toxic to work with?"
Motherboards are essentially epoxy bound fiberglass. If you are going to be sawing it up, you need gear that is designed for extremely fine stiff fibers. You need filtration equipment suitable for removing fiberglass, or better yet asbestos, particles from the air.
Good luck. Try not to give yourself lung cancer.
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When cutting things that make lots of dust, its best (if possible) to cut them underwater, or submerged in a fluid. This way none of the particulates become airborne.
Asbestos on the other hand is a bi-product of a fungus
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Once it gets into the air, fine fiberglass dust is going to remain there a good while. It's light enough that it will effectively never settle in any useful amount of time, and your typical house probably doesn't completely recycle its internal atmosphere nearly fast enough to solve the problem that way.
If you are going to be doing much of this, you might want to consider building a negative-pressure work area large enough for your tools and workpiece to be comfortably manipulated:
Basically, a reasonably adequately sealed box(doesn't need to, and won't, be airtight, because of the negative pressure) with a slot for you to stick your hands in, a plexiglass window to see what you are doing, and a shop vac or similar pulling air out of the box and through a HEPA filter. Because of the suction, air will continually be flowing into the box(preventing the egress of most dust, even though the box isn't fully sealed) and the dust-contaminated air will be filtered before it leaves to ruin your day. Still probably not a bad idea to have the outflow vent outdoors, rather than into the room; but the filter should scrub most of it.
First off, you need the correct saw blade.
Most motherboards (all? I've never seen one on phenolic), are G-10 fiberglass.
G-10 Fiberglass is nasty stuff. While it will not give you cancer (this has been studied because people thought fiberglass seems similar to asbestos, but it isn't) it's definitely an irritant. Your lungs will expel the fibers.
That said:
Wear a dust mask. A full nose-and-mouth mask from the hardware store is fine. You don't need to go overboard.
Use a vacuum pickup.
Use the correct saw blade. A silicon carbide blade (particles bonded to a steel band saw blade) is ideal.
You also might want to try using a tile cutter saw that uses an abrasive blade and flood water cooling.
Don't try to cut with a steel blade.
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BMO
You are using neither the proper tools nor proper containment nor proper suit nor respirator for machining fiberglass. It is dangerous, it can damage your lungs, eyes and other parts of your body, it can give you cancer.
It ain't friendly to flood your neighbours' airspace with fiberglass particles.