Quick Question Regarding Fiber CPUs

I have around 150 fiber CPUs that I am processing..pins and monolithic capacitors have been removed..I am soaking the fiber portions in HCL as we speak to dissolve the solder..My question is this, would it be harmful in any way to soak them in HCL overnight..The solder has for the most part dissolved into solution..but because of time constraints namely homework I am wondering if I could leave them over night without any ill effects?..I intend to crush them and process in AR tomorrow. -Thanks for any advice I appreciate you all. -Regards John

leaving them longer would not change anything after any base metal that will react with HCl alone has finished reacting.

Thank you for the reply..This is indeed what I found out by trial..the chips are fine..the only thing that might have changed is that once they are dry they might be easier to crush..so no harm and no worries. Regards -John

I would be interested to know your results when finished. I believe it has been posted on the forum that the FCPGA (Flip Chip) type processors don't have anything much of value in them besides the pins.

I have saved a few pounds of them "just in case" but haven't made the time to process them.

Meh1,

What concentration of HCl did you use to dissolve the Lead?

Cheers,

Mike

The HCL is the original store bought concentration 38.5 I think. As for the results i'm moving pretty slowly on the whole process. The chips themselves i crushed up quite a bit and then put them in AR. From there I filtered till clean. Ended up with quite a bit of dilute material. But when I dropped the SMB there was indeed gold present. I have yet to dry the powder that resulted. But there is quite a bit. Ill try to come up with some data yield wise when I have it. Regards -John

Meh1,

Many thanks for that information!

I wasn't sure whether the HCl should be diluted or should be run at full strength, and you've cleared
that up.

And, yes, I would definitely be interested to read about your yields from this, whenever you
have them ready.

Cheers,

Mike

From 150 chips I was able to recover nearly 2 grams of 24k. The pins I am not sure of yet, I ran into some problems handling the foils and I will have to re-refine them again. I originally paid about $30 per set of 50. And I will make a little something for my time and chemicals from the gold. This does not include palladium and platinum from the monolithic capacitors recovered from the chips as I have yet to dabble in that side of things. Not exactly specific data but I hope that it helps. Regards -John

John, thanks for the quick reply----------yes, that information is very helpful.

I have some of the same chips, but I need to accumulate more of them to make it
worthwhile processing them.

What method or implements did you use to crush your chips?

Cheers,

Mike

I just made a large mortar and pestle out of a piece of steel and a large aluminum cylinder..some of the chips I had to split a few times with a pair of pliers..soaking them overnight in the HCL seemed to help..Basically what you want is for the AR to be able to reach the hair fine wires of gold inside the fiber portion of the chip..I wouldn't recommend doing it unless you have a bunch to process..It was a pain to do and the expense on the chemicals was barely offset..I did it because I needed every penny from that batch to make it worth my time. -John :shock:

hi john,

are we talking about a specific type of fiber cpu here or is it a mixture?

thanks,
alan

100 pentium 4's, 50 pentium 3's..I grabbed them because I was hoping to make a bit off them..If i were to have paid $60 for the whole lot I would feel much better than I do having paid $90..Still came out on top by some though. :| Regards -John

great! thanks john.

edited for spelling...

Meh1,

Did you buy those chips off of ebay? Just curious.

Did you run the pins through a Sulphuric cell?

Again, just curious about your approach, because I haven't done anything yet except liberate some
foils from ram stick edges, so I'm asking lots of questions and looking at the various strategies.

Cheers,

Mike