I am curious at what point does it become profitable to get gold out of electronic waste? Is it true that no small time guy can really make money out of it because the cost of acids and other chemicals are high in the low quantity range and only when you can buy hn03 and hcl at dollar per gallon and process tons per day can you actually make money. what advice would you give a noob?
breakeven point
- Thread starter noos
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While this is true there are many small refiners here who do just that. It is important to remember that allrefiners have their niche. Small guys have their niche defined by chemical costs so they need to fine tune their collection and have a source to get paid fairly on the material they do not process. So it is a learning process.
noos said:
Study, study, and then study some more. There are many very knowledgeable people here who have made a great many posts helping others, that leaves a great many questions already answered. But if you have a question you can't seem to find an answer to they are willing to get you pointed in the right direction.
As for profitable, it all depends on how much you want to make. For several years my best profit margins were in small lots in which I often only recovered a gram or two. The reason was because my only overhead was in the chemicals. I had zero dollars invested in materials to refine. I used things like poorman's AR which cut the cost of small bottles of nitric acid to zero. I used coffee pots and make shift glassware, much of which I outgrew when I started doing bigger batch's. Then there were all those odd pieces of glass that break way to easy. I was happy with where I was at the time. The down fall came when I processed a large batch that I had gotten for almost nothing and found myself trying to melt a 27 gram button of gold. I had to borrow a torch to do it, and therefore I went out and bought myself a new one. I have had, and still have, health problems that has been directly related to the size of my refining growth. As My health gets better, I have found my refining growing into a larger scale, with better equipment as well the use of better chemicals.
One aspect that many new people tend to over look is that profit can be in the knowledge. I started refining just to know how it was done. I had no thoughts of profit or even making any money. For years I was just as happy recovering half a gram as I was 10 grams. I find many things become profitable mentally, and in money when I can enjoy what I am doing. If money was the only reason I had for doing this, I would have been looking for something a bit easier long ago. This is like a school, and like any good education it costs. What is the education worth?
noos said:
This is sort of one of those questions that if you are asking it, the learning curve is steep...like vertical cliff steep.
Get gold = yes
Make money = yes
Possible with expensive chemicals = yes
Now, is it possible to put all of those things together, and provide yourself an income that sustains, and even enjoys life...yes. Is it likely for the average, or even above average person. No If you don't have a good startup fund, your learning curve just became an acute angle, and you are facing the smaller angle.
I'm a year in. I'm not making enough money to pay my bills without considerable supplementation from other income. I've been very very lucky.
Shark said:
AMEN! I found refining while recovering from cancer treatments in 2007. At first it was interesting. Then it became intriguing. Then i made friends and actually started learning. Boy was i naive !!!!! I started with a mason jar, a whole bunch of scrap i was lucky enough to get for free, 3 cats, and hotplate. I've never spent a penny of my own money it's all came from hard earned profit. The value of my company comes not from the manual labor, but from the valuable knowledge and great friends i have made here over the last 11 years!
WOW 11 years! That just hit me!
rickbb
Well-known member
Even as a hobbyist/home recover/refiner you can make a profit.
BUT, you really need to do the homework first.
Where do you get the raw material, what to do with the parts you can't or don't want to recover. What to do with the waste and so on.
My first year the learning curve was steep, spent way more than I should have or needed to, but since then I've gotten all that back and turning small profit. And I'm a part time hobbyist.
BUT, you really need to do the homework first.
Where do you get the raw material, what to do with the parts you can't or don't want to recover. What to do with the waste and so on.
My first year the learning curve was steep, spent way more than I should have or needed to, but since then I've gotten all that back and turning small profit. And I'm a part time hobbyist.
Sharding757
Active member
What burns me up is that nitric acid can be sold to educational facilities cheap. but noooo not to anyone else off "campus". The rest of us are stuck paying maybe 75.00 for 32 oz. Don't get me wrong, plenty of bad things can be made with nitric. However those twisted people wanting to do bad things in big ways don't have a cash limit so its pointless to raise prices just because of that. And here the rest of us suffer just trying to figure out if this is our niche or to move on to other things...
Sharding757
Active member
From what I have seen, you may be better buying gold jewelry at auctions for good deals than the E-scrap. It's all about if a collector shows up or not or someone such as yourself that determines how much you pay for such things. E-scrap makes a good learning tool but unless you are recovering pounds and pounds of processors, memory and onboard chips you will find yourself adrift in the sea of "processes". Each one of those requires processes of it's own. Some require tools to be constructed such as special housings for pyrolysis or ball mills to grind up chips. If you dont know metal working, welding, gas and/or motors that task will prove to be very difficult to achieve on limited funds. might I suggest that you buy a few gold rings here and there at auctions. Stock up what you purchase. Keep the ones stamped with any "K" value such as 14k etc. buy a gold kit to test them. sort them out over time buying them then use the inquarting process (read about it, requires silver) to turn all those rings and whatnot into a nice 24k bar of 999.99 Gold. Next get your silver back and start over. To me that would be wayyyy better than rummaging through countless boards to find the PMs necessary to either pay the bills, pay for the chems or just make you happy. E-scrap contains many metals and many processes. Gold jewelry scrap, one or two base metals to get rid of and the rest is yours! be aware that you need to study about plated gold, that requires a process different than solid stamped gold (like 14k or 18k). also Gold filled (a thicker amount of gold around a base metal) requires a separate process then finally your stamped karat gold which requires a different process yet. There is much to learn. been here a while and still learning.
