Current Project

This is what I've been doing on and off since December. The top of the image is really just to show the make up, structure or architecture. 12 of them were on each board, 2 rows of 6. The money is in the contacts in the green glass tubes. 10 tubes per unit, 2 contacts per tube.

You can see some of the removed tubes, below them are some of the contacts with the glass off and to the right of them the contacts with the gold and platinum off.

The contacts are Nickle and highly magnetic, so we simply crush them and recover the contacts from the glass with a magnet. Nice clean separation. I soak them in 70% HNO3 for 24 hours then remove them with a magnet and drop them into my 2 liter beaker.

Here comes the fun, a gentle mist of H2o with a good stir and in about 5 minutes the gold and platinum is off in foil form but still mixed in with the contacts. Using the magnet I lift some of them out, drop them in H2o to free up the foils, then remove the contacts from the H2o with the magnet. You can guess the rest.

Platinum on the spoon is damp foil, Au in the beaker, 31.2 grams.
(edited for added photo)
Below is a photo of some of the foils


Added photos of Au drop from foils shown above. Powder,,12.75 grams

Nice. Very nice.

What did they come from exactly?

No idea what they came from, the boards were big, about 24 x 12 inches with only the yellow squares and gold fingers. They were stored at a local salvage yard for over 15 years. I started working them in November, removed the gold fingers for over 3 oz Au, nice Christmas check.

Cost for HNO3 less then 10% of the Au value. It takes me about 1 hour to remove about 10 grams of Au. The ratio of Au to Pt is about 4 to 1 respectively. 1 oz Au 1/4 oz Pt and 1 pound of the contacts yields about 1 gram of gold.

My main reasons for posting this were, first to share it with the members and second to show the process which is very important. I did not have to digest the contact to recover the precious metals. This same process may apply to many large gold plated contacts that are magnetic.

Can you imagine how much solution would be required to completely dissolve 90 lbs of base metal (nickle alloy) I can't, it would not be worth the effort.

Those look like capacitors in the glass tube.


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Enterprise Telecoms boards of a particular type have those. I have some with Rhodium in place of Platinum.

Edit- Ericcson System X power systems.

Jon

snoman701 said:

Those look like capacitors in the glass tube.


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Click to expand...

They do respond to a magnetic field. Passing a strong magnet close to them causes them to make and break contact inside the tube. I can hear the clicking and see a gap between them.

The truth is I'm not totally sure it's Pt on the tips. I do get a slight orange reaction with stannous after I dissolve the Au, but It's quickly blotted out by the Au reaction. JSP Pt test does nothing to the remaining silver looking foils. They are impervious to HNO3 and HCL, AR only affects them when it's heated.

Another interesting observation is the ratio of foils to actual recovery for example, if I have 100 ml of foils totally wet and settled in fluid it yields 10 grams, 150 ml, 15 grams and so on. It's almost spot on every time

joekbit said:

I do get a slight orange reaction with stannous after I dissolve the Au, but It's quickly blotted out by the Au reaction.

Click to expand...

Do you have a spot plate and fresh copperas crystals?
Put a drop of the solution to be tested on a fresh green crystal in a spot plate cavity. Then after the gold precipitates out, move the gold barren drop to another cavity and then test with stannous.
-or
You can also use some ammonium chloride, dissolved in water to test it. Here is a quote from Mrs Hoke's testing book on the matter.

Testing Precious Metals;page 59 said:

Dissolve some ammonia chloride in a little water to make a concentrated solution, and add it to the acid solution. Watch for a yellow or orange precipitate. Practice with your platinum samples before attempting to identify unknowns. You will find that this test is not as delicate as some others, for if there is only a little platinum in solution, no precipitate will be visible. Some people add the ammonium chloride as a dry salt; this is not wise, for you may mistake its crystals for the yellow powder you are seeking.
Potassium chloride can be used in this test instead of ammonium chloride.

Click to expand...

Dave has a copy available for download.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=25181&p=267173#p267173
It's a good read.

joekbit said:

snoman701 said:

Those look like capacitors in the glass tube.

They do respond to a magnetic field. Passing a strong magnet close to them causes them to make and break contact inside the tube. I can hear the clicking and see a gap between them.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

They are called "reed switches".
http://www.elektronika.ba/831/how-reed-switches-are-made/

Jim

Topher_osAUrus said:

joekbit said:

I do get a slight orange reaction with stannous after I dissolve the Au, but It's quickly blotted out by the Au reaction.

Click to expand...

Do you have a spot plate and fresh copperas crystals?
Put a drop of the solution to be tested on a fresh green crystal in a spot plate cavity. Then after the gold precipitates out, move the gold barren drop to another cavity and then test with stannous.
-or
You can also use some ammonium chloride, dissolved in water to test it. Here is a quote from Mrs Hoke's testing book on the matter.

Testing Precious Metals;page 59 said:

Dissolve some ammonia chloride in a little water to make a concentrated solution, and add it to the acid solution. Watch for a yellow or orange precipitate. Practice with your platinum samples before attempting to identify unknowns. You will find that this test is not as delicate as some others, for if there is only a little platinum in solution, no precipitate will be visible. Some people add the ammonium chloride as a dry salt; this is not wise, for you may mistake its crystals for the yellow powder you are seeking.
Potassium chloride can be used in this test instead of ammonium chloride.

Click to expand...

Dave has a copy available for download.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=25181&p=267173#p267173
It's a good read.

Click to expand...

I'm going to take a gram of it and try to dissolve it fully in AR in the future. For now I am concentrating on the Au recovery. I don't have any coppers' or ammonium chloride on hand either. As far as Hoke's, I have it already. The process I'm using, I derived from extensive study of nickle in the book. I had to read between the lines as they say.

jimdoc said:

joekbit said:

snoman701 said:

Those look like capacitors in the glass tube.

They do respond to a magnetic field. Passing a strong magnet close to them causes them to make and break contact inside the tube. I can hear the clicking and see a gap between them.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

They are called "reed switches".
http://www.elektronika.ba/831/how-reed-switches-are-made/

Jim

Click to expand...

Thanks snowman. I knew they had to be switches I just had no idea what the technical name was, a (reed switch) is a good name for sure.

anachronism said:

Enterprise Telecoms boards of a particular type have those. I have some with Rhodium in place of Platinum.

Edit- Ericcson System X power systems.

Jon

Click to expand...

I don't know how many you have, but they are worth the effort. My average income from working these is above 60 USD per hour. That to me is worth it.

These are the Rhodium ones. No doubts or guesses at our end as they have been XRFed.

Yours seem quite hefty. Mine are about 4 cm long and about 3mm wide. Just spent about an hour processing some, got about 50 ml of settled foil. So with the numbers the way they have been that should be about 5 grams of Au. Lets just say $30 USD per gram, or about $150 in 1 hour.

As soon as I get a good volume of foils I will post a picture by adding it to my original posting.

8)

I love show and tell here

Ok...these are reed switches as was said....I looked at them and they reminded me of high voltage adjustable glass capacitors. I can't even find an example of one.

Basically, there is a similar product that has a gold rods pieces going in to a piece of glass. One of those gold pieces is a screw.