Silicon Valley Scrap - Toll Time

Got my parcel in the mail from California today. Just unpacking and taking pictures and notes for each of the incoming materials.

Looks beautiful! All of it!

Microwave parts -1144 grams
Cylindrical pins - 717g
Pronged pins - 1503g
Partial plate pins - 1092g
Gold traces - 1083g
'sim cards' -776g + 69g
Gold mylar pieces -124g
Ceramic processors -654g

The "sim cards" arent really sim cards, I cant recall exactly what they came from, arcade machine cards I think?

Anyways, I will keep updating this thread with pictures as I go, I believe to start. The traces and pronged pins will be first in nitric. While the other pins will be getting treated for traces of solder.

I, of course, have more pics, but I need to trim them down and get them a much more reasonable size before putting them on here.

Thread will be updated after I get some of it going, and then have the chance to post up.

Thank you all again, without each of you here, I would never have learned this valuable trade, and would have never gotten this wonderful opportunity.

Get r done!!! :G

Nice... and may I say... Topher, how tiny hands you have! :lol:

Göran

He does have tiny hands doesnt he.

The top pics look like the kind of stuff I do. You'll enjoy those.

I decided to go with processors first. Started by breaking them up, removing the caps to run in hot hcl to remove the foil, and the rest of the ceramics in AR.



The peeled traces went into a 2L beaker, covered in water, then a bit of nitric to kick it off. I neglected heat initially, to prevent a runaway reaction, since i went about 2/3 full with foils (foolishly).. But, so far they have been doing fine. And now that some of the nitric is exhausted, its on to heat.

I was hoping for solid foils floating, but it appears they are a bit thinner, as far as plating goes, so they are disintegrating, but, at least its not fine black powder (yet)


I know, I have been SUPER self conscious about my itty bitty hands my whole life!
:lol: :lol:
Really though, as soon as I opened the box, Hendrix (my youngest) just HAD to see what goodies daddy got in the mail today!

Nope- put the caps in dilute NITRIC not HCl Chris. The Nitric will passivate on the iron lids and the foils will come off over a few days.

That's one of Sam's tricks I cannot claim credit for it but it works a treat.


Edit- also save yourself a load of time and reagents- put those sim cards in AR.

Mix up your AR- 6:1, heat it, add a few at a time. When the reaction dies, add more. When your beaker is full, flush it over to another beaker and carry on adding. You're doing proper batches now Chris- the processes change somewhat but the principles remain the same.

anachronism said:

Nope- put the caps in dilute NITRIC not HCl Chris. The Nitric will passivate on the iron lids and the foils will come off over a few days.

That's one of Sam's tricks I cannot claim credit for it but it works a treat.

Click to expand...

50/50 Jon? Or like 10% dilution?

I didn't even think the nitric would eat enough of the substrate before passivation, so I was just goin with the copper chloride etch (eventually, of course now its just HCl..but, starting to green a bit)
But! Thats good to know!

Ill take them out, incinerate to get rid of the HCl and get on with nitric

Topher_osAUrus said:

anachronism said:

Nope- put the caps in dilute NITRIC not HCl Chris. The Nitric will passivate on the iron lids and the foils will come off over a few days.

That's one of Sam's tricks I cannot claim credit for it but it works a treat.

Click to expand...

50/50 Jon? Or like 10% dilution?

I didn't even think the nitric would eat enough of the substrate before passivation, so I was just goin with the copper chloride etch (eventually, of course now its just HCl..but, starting to green a bit)
But! Thats good to know!

Ill take them out, incinerate to get rid of the HCl and get on with nitric

Click to expand...

15% is fine - add more every day - it's a very slow reaction. Also read the edit on my post above 8)

Check, and check.

As I understand it, there are bonding wires in the "sim cards", that being the case, I was under the assumption they were only liberated by incineration.

I was planning on roasting, grinding, then washing and AR. But, now wonder if direct AR will reach the bonding wires, if given enough time?

Thoughts, gentlemen?

Forgot to show the pronged pins in nitric. And while i was photographing that, I roasted the caps and switched to nitric.


Also moved the traces into a 5gallon bucket, so I could process them ALL at once.

FYI - So once you're done with the SIM cards you're going to end up with an epoxy / plastic substrate inside of which is the IC and 6 small gold-plated pads. After the acid, they become very brittle and crush up very easily.

Digibill said:

FYI - So once you're done with the SIM cards you're going to end up with an epoxy / plastic substrate inside of which is the IC and 6 small gold-plated pads. After the acid, they become very brittle and crush up very easily.

Click to expand...

I have yet to open the bag of the ones you ran, but I did see that a few of them were obliterated already. Since there isnt too terribly many of them (just 25,000 :roll: ) i think I will run them in ar, rinse well, dry, and try to crush in my massive mortar and pestle. If that doesn't work well, or is too difficult. They will get incinerated then crushed.

Once I get my shop up, I'll send you a barrel to mill in, that way you can just load it up and let it run. Ball mill of sorts.

Are the lids iron, or more of a steel (kovar). I have not tested it on kovar, but I know that with mild steel you can get away with 47% nitric acid. It passivates. I use it to separate carbide from silver soldered steel with minimal (if any) damage to the steel. It helps to keep the reaction cold. I ran them outside all winter. At elevated temperatures, you can end up with a runaway reaction if the % goes too far out.

How will you run the microwave stuff? I've got a lot of it.


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snoman701 said:

Once I get my shop up, I'll send you a barrel to mill in, that way you can just load it up and let it run. Ball mill of sorts.

Are the lids iron, or more of a steel (kovar).

How will you run the microwave stuff? I've got a lot of it.

Click to expand...

Thats mighty kind of you!

Kovar, I believe.

I am going to separate ferrous out and run the non magnetic stuff in nitric, the magnetic bits, I may run in dilute sulfuric, or the sulfuric cell. Haven't decided yet. May even see if dilute nitric will passivate and release foils, like the caps are doing now.

Another update

Started the sim cards in some AR.


The cylindrical pins and the pronged ones have almost all released their foils.




Floating on top of the bucket of traces is a white material, described to me as a fabric, or backing of some sorts? No idea, but, I do know the traces are coming along nicely.

Seems all the material processed so far is breaking up into small foils, and none are thick enough to hold their shape after the substrate dissolution.

I partially thought about just rinsing all the foils free of the base metal and processing the foils the rest of the way. But, I want to be sure to get every particle of gold possible, so I will continue to dissolve them

Got the processors ran in AR and leached another time to make sure all metal was dissolved. Added both together and just precipitated, in the morning I will decant and wash that gold up.


Rinsed clean processor bits.


After denox, before filtering lead sulfate and/or silver chloride off.

Thats all for now.

All questions, comments, and concerns are welcomed. Thank you!

Yeah, my understanding is that the white floating stuff is a fabric type insulating matrix (think fiberglass) that is actually layered between the copper to provide multiple circuits over the same trace.

So it's basically a multilayer circuit board on a tiny scale.


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Basically, yes.

The progress from today so far.

Sim card AR directly after filtering and sulfamic addition.

The powder from the processors.

The foils from the traces, filtering

Foils from the processor caps.

Anyways...back to it..

Looking good! 8) Keep us posted.