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PARKER113

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 14, 2018
Messages
60
Location
Calgary AB
Hey guys! I got a new job with a electronic recycling company and it comes with some perks. I've been keeping an eye out for high grade telecom boards and other on stuff that comes through here.

A handful of these components came a few days ago. I cracked something like this open not too long ago and it was pretty much hollowed out aluminum with a few thick gold pins in each end and that's about it.
This one has a silver tarnish around it to assist it in the rf, so I read. I can't take it apart yet as is still at work and they take a few minutes with all of those screws.

Are these worth processing? And if anyone has experience are the pins thickly coated? And the housings of the connectors do seem plated. Albeit probably not much.

Thanks!
 

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I have several of them but have not even looked into what they are made up of. Mine have been sitting for almost a year as I have been busy with other things. I would be curious as to values myself.
 
It's exactly what you see.

Silver plated aluminium waveguides with gold plated connectors. Silver thickness varies between product type and manufacturer so you are on your own with that one I am afraid.

Jon
 
Thanks for the replys guys. I think I will let them slide by as I don't have a silver cell yet. And to get the few gold pins takes to long for so little. I'll attach a pic today of the other unit I disassembled for a reference to other members of what can be expected.
 
Here's the mini one I took apart. Not a lot.
 

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If I recall correctly, I scratch tested mine and the silver seemed fairly thick. I think that is why I kept the ones I have. I should be caught up with some things in the next week or two and might try and see what happens with them. The ones I have a different but made from what appears to be the same materials. If I recall all of the ones I have were from Nortel. I will try and get them out and see what is left for markings.
 
I'd love to hear your findinga Shark. Let me know if the gold plated connector ends are thick too please.
I only have Hcl and have dropped some on the pins and connector casing and they didn't react. Only a bit of bright green after it dried.
I am curious because lots of these connector pieces off different components are only flash plated and a drop of Hcl goes right through.
These seem of a different quality. A deeper yellow throughout.

Regards
 
A quick test was to put some stone test acid on one of the parts. Nothing less than 22K acid would do anything to the gold plating. This leads me to think the gold would be pretty good as even after 10 seconds it still would not dissolve all the way through to the base metals. I will have to wait until I can dig deeper in the scrap pile to find the silver plated boxes.

22K spot test..JPG
 
Virtually all telecoms scrap is worth while as the individual units as new can be tens of thousands of dollars so heavily plating items is no big deal in terms of total cost and they have to work once installed.
 
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