What Is Salvageable From an Electric Toothbrush?

Your battery powered tooth brush has died normally because the seals have failed so is  there anything of use in there before you throw it away (or under EU regs send it for recycling)?

This one yielded a small electric motor & mounts, the metal components for a battery pack and a small eccentric gear box

Tools used small Philips and flat blade screwdrivers, pair of old eyebrow tweezers (needle nose pliers would have been better) a pocket knife and some brute force & ignorance.
  l don't do health and safety advice there are risks involved assess them for your self

Loosen / break the plastic lugs securing the battery bridging spring with the flat blade screwdriver remove with tweezers/pliers the rubber 'O' ring has ceased to be elastic had this been noticed earlier and replace water ingress may have been prevented and the useful life of the toothbrush extended
 

The two piece construction of this casing made its splitting quite easy. There was a gap inside the battery compartment where a screwdriver could be inserted and levered sideways splitting the seam this was repeated on the other side then the case was just pulled apart. I have disassembled cheaper brushes by cutting through the battery compartment with side cutters and peeling the case apart with 2 pairs of pliers.
Undo the screws securing the motor and it falls put, again on cheaper versions it is simply a case of prising the motor out of the plastic. It can be seen in the photo that the top seal was not seated properly the gearbox just lifted out of the case half as did the battery contacts.
 

The motor was suffering from some surface corrosion a quick scrub with scotchbrite and washing up liquid which was meant to be followed up with a squirt of WD40 removed the corroded terminal as well as the rust on the case.
  At this point I thought the next step woud be how to salvage the magnets and possibly the front bearing but on opening it up I discovered it was fixable. So here endeth this ible another will follow on how to repair a small motor.