A workbench of Thermo analyzers, several tagged TO REPAIR in yellow, with a gas cylinder standing alongside

Recover. Repurpose. Redeploy.

Two names, one business. Phoenix Surplus buys the equipment. Q&W Instruments puts it back to work.

The bench · units tagged for repair before they are listed

Thirty-five years with this equipment

Before any of this was a business, it was a career: thirty-five years installing instrumentation, testing it and servicing it. That is the whole reason we can tell what a unit is worth from a photograph of its data tag, and why we are comfortable buying something that does not power up.

The business started in 2016 with an eBay store, selling refurbished instruments. What happened next was not planned. The same companies we were installing new equipment for started asking whether we wanted the old units coming out — the obsolete ones, the spares nobody had opened, the racks being replaced because a permit changed. Phoenix Surplus grew out of answering yes.

It is now a full-scale instrumentation and equipment business, run out of a warehouse in Broken Arrow. We are small and direct: when you email us, you are talking to the people who will value your equipment and arrange to collect it.

What we do

Industrial instrumentation rarely fails all at once. A CEMS rack is replaced because a permit changed. A lab consolidates and a good bench goes into storage. A technician retires and thirty years of spares sit until somebody needs the room. Then it is either forgotten or scrapped for weight — while somewhere a plant runs the same model, hunting a board the manufacturer discontinued years ago.

Phoenix Surplus buys that equipment, working or not. Q&W Instruments identifies, tests and cleans it, then lists it for the next plant that needs it. What cannot be recovered whole is parted out, so the good components stay in service.

Why sellers work with us

Most people sitting on surplus instrumentation are not in the business of selling it. They have a room to clear and a deadline, and no interest in photographing forty items, researching model numbers and answering questions from strangers for three months.

We do that part. Send a nameplate photo or a spreadsheet, and you get one written offer for the lot. If something has no value we say so, rather than letting you find out after you have packed it.

Why buyers work with us

The instruments we sell are hard to get anywhere else at a sane price: discontinued analyzers, board-level spares, detectors and sample components still in daily use in hundreds of plants, but no longer on any manufacturer's price list. Every listing states plainly what was tested and what was not, and sales run through eBay, so buyer protection and tracked shipping come as standard.

The place itself

Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

Every unit we buy comes back here to be identified, tested and listed.

A full CEMS rack of stacked Thermo analyzers, hand-numbered 227 in red marker
Complete CEMS rack, numbered on intake
A second CEMS rack, its analyzers lit and numbered 229 on the frame
Rack 229, powered up for testing
Warehouse shelving holding analyzers, instrument cases and boxed spares
Shelved spares, sorted by type
Pallet racking with instruments alongside gas cylinders and a pallet jack
Racking, cylinders and the pallet jack

Giving industrial equipment a second life.

Recover / Repurpose / Redeploy