Fiber CPU's - That's how i do them

[maynman1751]

Sorry for my possibly dumbness, but i'm new to this...

but when you say:

4- Place a cork of fit a condensation setup to keep evaporation to a minimum.

i need to put something to filtrate the gases being exausted right?

like a filter in the up side (in the cover)...

or am i a way too wrong?

A watch glass or saucer that seals relatively well will suffice, but you DO NOT want to build pressure!

 

[xALmoN]

As this is about fiber CPUs, how do i actually get that piece of copper off the cpu? They're stuck on pretty hard, would a heat gun work? Though after getting the pins off and the whole CPU is pretty hot, the copper still does not separate. Anyone has any hints on getting the heatsink off?

 

[patnor1011]

Chisel works fine. Only small percentage of them heat sinks are with what look like small area of gold plating.

 

[philddreamer]

Try boiling them in water:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=16006&p=161278&hilit=boiling+cpu%27s#p161278

The lids that have the gold plating inside you still need to pry off, or :
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=14045&hilit=removing+cpu+heat+sink#p141025

Take care and be safe!
Phil

 

[xALmoN]

I could give the boiling a try. Thanks a lot for the pointers in the right direction, but at this point, it really doesn't seem like there's much point in prying them off for minimal gain. Copper isn't even worth that much.

 

[philddreamer]

but at this point, it really doesn't seem like there's much point in prying them off for minimal gain.

xAL, maybe at this point in time there's no profit, but later on you could find yourself with many pounds of them. So, it would be good for you know how to recover ALL the values from them, including the copper. I just came across my first 100 pounds of them and I'm glad a remembered the post on boiling them!
Thank you superten67!

Take care!
Phil

 

[aok]

Sam,

I do not understand what you meant when you wrote that removing the pins prom the processor using acid might result in the loss of gold. Can you please elaborate? Isn't this what you do with the pins on ceramic processors? Why would it work with ceramic and not with fiber CPUs.

I also want to know if these CPU pins that were removed can be processed in a sulfuric acid electrolysis cell like some people do with other types of gold plated pins.

Thanks.

 

[Mikemurphy]

With respect to the discussion regarding the recovery of 100 percent of gold from the inital bath due to filtration falability im am wondering whether or not it is possible to employ electrolosis whilst the gold is still in the acid bath. I can appreciate it may be 20 percent copper but having ollected presumably 100 percent of the available gold the rest could the sepperated using the less wastful AR filtration/purification process.

Regards Mike.

(noob)

Ive just finished bathing 100 home computers worth of golden fingers I have accesd to around 600cpu's a year and thought best to start with 100 as a test sample to try to average out the potential yeild
So far ive removed 90 percent of the gold from the fingers in HCL and hydrogen peroxide, and the solution is settling hence my keen interest in not employing a paper filter due to loss of gold.

 

[patnor1011]

What loss of gold you mean? In filtering? Try what we call charmin plug. Take big funnel pack tightly some toilet paper on bottom. I can guarantee that if you pack it tight you are not going to lose any of gold.

 

[VanMarco]

Hi!
I've been trying to dissolve pins are samuel described, the first time I did those I did some errors and It took along time to do it.
Ok fine, I thought that's my error, (putting too little acid) ok.
Next time, I've put 12ML of acid per gram and boiled it in a double boiler with a condensation setup in place (dimroth condenser)
after the said three hours, some pins started to detach from the bottom all right, but the majority of them where still on the bottom.
It appears that the pins are now "lighter" as they move easily in the bottom of the flask, but still I didn't get complete dissolution.
Now Either i'm doing something wrong, Using something wrong, or three hours are too little. tomorrow I'll keep heating for another
couple of hours and we'll see. Also an idea crossed my mind, maybe I'm wrong you tell me.
As I've noticed that the reaction between HCl and the metals in the pins take place anyway even if there is no heat applied,
I thought, why Don't I get a large beaker, I put the pins in it, add 6 Ml of acid per gram and leave it stay for couple of days, a week,
or wel, until it looks good, and then, get some of those pins put them in the flask and add the remaining 6ml of acid per gram
and only then, boil. to me it would help, what's your thoughts?

Thank you very much!

 

[AUH-R]

Samuel, thanks for a great guide this got me started as it filled in the blanks in Hoke's guide.

My journey so far has been fun and on this batch of 225grams of pins I have learned a great deal, as Hoke would say practical experience replaces a 1000 words.

My first batch of 50grams I added 600ml of HCL and boiled for 3hrs, I observed the clear liquid change from clear to light blue then dark blue almost black. I assumed it was done as I saw gold flakes floating around as per your guide. I then filtered out the flakes and washed the residue with tap water and tipped this wash down the sink, thankfully I kept the brown pins :idea: . First mistake - as I did not realise there was still gold mixed in the solution.


The picture above shows the first lot of pins I treated on the left with fresh acid added and a fresh untreated batch ready on the right. These were both clear when I first added the HCL. I left these overnight ready for their boils in the morning. Notice how the pretreated and H2o washed pins (Left) have turned the HCL light green. The HCL on the right remained unchanged until the boil.


Solution starts of light green coloured.

After an hour or so changes to the usual light blue.


After 3hrs + you will see the dark blue solution with foils floating.


Foils were put to one side, I had about 7 of these after various boils.

I could not understand why I kept having waste after my 3 hour boils, I have since learned that it could take days to get rid of all the base metals.

Part 2. The rest of the journey so far and some questions coming tomorrow..................
Good night,
Edit added part 2.

Next step was to boil my last lot in HCL - picture below of the filtered waste acid - not quite there as still coloured

I then washed all my filter papers off into a 1000ml beaker, see pictures below. I retained the papers for the incineration at the end of this stage.


I then boiled these pins until almost all liquid was evaporated, see picture below:


So this is the stage I am currently at, all my separate lots have been treated multiple times in HCL, washed, boiled and are now all united in one vessel. This weekend I will boil again in HCL until no trace of base metals is left, I will then evaporate down. I will then place all material in my corning ware dish, along with the filter papers and incinerate. I may loose some gold at this point as I will be doing this out side without a hood, but this is a practice run so I will just have to accept this.

When this is done I will add a bit of water and test with blue litmus to make sure I have expelled all acid.

SUMMARY: I really went about this a long winded way and also used 4 litres of HCL for 225 grams of pins not cost effective. I used about £10 worth of electricity as well with all the boiling on the hotplate. However, it was worth it as I believe I learned plenty.

WHAT WILL I DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME:
If I was doing this size lot again I would nominate one vessel where all materiel enters and stays until the evaporation stage.
I would boil all 225grams in HCL for 4hours to remove solder.
I would then evaporate down and keep adding water and evaporating down until I had no reaction on blue litmus paper.
I would then incinerate following Harold's guide on the forum.
I would then follow Hoke's guide and use Nitric acid to remove base metals.

I believe following the steps above will save me considerable time in filtering, washing and acids.

Part 3 will be posted after the weekend weather permitting. Incineration of material and filter papers.

 

[AUH-R]

Ok, just about managed to get my next step done as it has been raining for a few weekends. I ended up fixing an umbrella over the top of my stove, which allowed me to get this step done.

I did my last HCL boil which was clear. I then poured away most of the acid and filtered.

I then put all my filter papers into my corningware dish and set them on fire. I then washed my foils into the Corningware and added the last wet filter. I then boiled away remaining acid + H20. I kept adding H20 and boiling away until I was sure there was no more acid present. (I did this at least 6 times)

Lastly I boiled down and left it on full heat for 10 minutes as a crust. This was the nearest thing I could do to an incineration.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

My gold ready for AR treatment.

Regards,

 

[AUH-R]

Some nice weather today so managed to get set up in the corner of the garden to proceed with my AR stage: Firstly I added water to my corning ware dish that contains my flakes and brown residue, see previous post. Boiled this down again. Learnt another lesson, left it attended and it splattered when the last of the water was boiled off so lost a bit of gold. Next I covered with HCL and added about 2 ml of HN03, evaporated down to a syrup, added a few more drops of HCL, evaporated down to a syrup - added a few drops of HCL - evaporated down to a syrup - added hot water, see picture below:




I then tested the liquid for gold with my Stannous solution, success my first Au in solution!:




I then transfered this into a clear vessel, which I will leave overnight. Not sure what the brown powder is at the bottom according to Hoke it is silver chloride or lead, not sure it can be silver as I was not aware fibre cpu's contained any:




Sam, thanks again for the great guide!

Will post results of SMB drop tomorrow.

Best wishes & be safe,
AuH-r

 

[AUH-R]

I weighed out 4 grams of SMB. I then put some ice cubes into my beaker, I then added some of the SMB and stirred. At this point nothing seemed to have happened apart from the solution turning blue, I then added the remainder of the SMB. Apart from a slight brown residue forming at the top of the beaker and on the glass rod, nothing like the reaction I was expecting to see from what I have read and seen on youtube happened. I tested the solution with Stannous and got a positive, see picture below. I then cleaned my glass rod with the filter paper and I could see metallic gold on the paper and also purple stains. As a result of this I added more SMB as I thought I had not used enough, again no change. I then left the solution to stand for 3-4 hours, while I did some work. On my return I could see metallic gold floating on the top and also brown power at the bottom of the vessel. However, there seems to be a thin layer of white material at the bottom underneath the brown power, which I suspect is Cu-Cl. This tells me I have used too much SMB.

Tomorrow morning shall I just decant the solution into a holding vessel, recover the floating Au with a syringe. Then put the Au from the syringe back with the residue in the beaker and dissolve again in AR, this time not adding far too much H20 after the evaporation stage? I say this because I think one of my problems is everything was far too diluted.

Once I have done the above shall I drop again in SMB using a small amount and give it a few hours before deciding if I have used enough.


Reaction after a few minutes.

My Stannous test and also where I cleaned my glass rod.

What is this residue likely to be?

After 4 hours.

4-6 hours.

4-6 hours.

4-6 hours.

Thanks for any guidance!

Best wishes,
AuH-R

 

[butcher]

AUH-R,

I read the last few posts you made and tried to get an understanding of what you were doing, I did not completely understand it because I was unsure of the process you were following when you mentioned Sam's guide.

But it sounded to me like you may have been removing the copper and base metals from pins using HCl and peroxide, and then moved onto aqua regia with your remaining material.

First let me say a few concerns I have, you mentioned pouring off your acid with some fine gold down the sink, this should never be done, not only could this destroy the plumbing in your house, but it could get you put in jail for endangering the lives of others when they trace the copper and hazardous waste back up the pipe to your house, what you flush others will have to drink, and you will drink what others flush, either way these toxic metal acidic solutions are way too dangerous to all of our health to be poured down a sink, learn to use a stock pot, and learn to treat your waste, this should be done before you even think about dissolving metals in acids.

You talk of expelling the acid and testing with litmus paper to decide when you have done so, if you are talking about getting rid of free nitric acid in this discussion, you would still have a very acidic solution, you are not trying to change pH with this procedure, you do not need to or would you want to remove the acid completely, the metal salts would be acidic and it is desirable to have free acid in solution, you are just trying to remove the oxidizer (nitric) not HCl, although in the evaporation process to remove the nitric we will normally lose some of the HCl in the process, the litmus paper would do you no good here, and if you evaporated down so far as to change PH you would have a dried powder of cooked gold or base metal oxides (with much of your gold lost as fumes.

Another thing that I seen, you said you wiped off your stir rod after adding the SMB you said you seen brown powder and a violet color of gold left on the paper, the brown reduced gold could be normal, but the violet color makes me think you have tin in solution, and so you could very possibly have a solution of colloidal gold that will not settle.

You talked of a brown precipitant that you think is silver or lead chloride, these chlorides are white not brown, copper I chloride is also normally white, gold will look black to brown or even light tan as a precipitant depending on how much other base metal is involved.

You talked about boiling it down and leaving it to settle as a crust, you should not boil any solution with gold involved, and you should not evaporate it down to a crust.

you also say you think you are having trouble because solution is too dilute, you say this after you have added your SMB, dilution at this stage is no problem, your problem are an accumulation of problems all the way through your process.

What I see is you do not yet have an understanding, of the processes, what you should be doing when and why, and what you should be expecting to see and understand what it is you are seeing.

My suggestion to fix this problem is something you may not wish to hear, but you are the one who asked for help, I say at this point get a large piece of clean copper buss bar and sit it in the solution you have now, check on it and stir it for three days, while doing this go to the safety section and study dealing with waste, brush off the copper into solution let the powders settle, decant the liquid and treat it for waste, rinse the powders and add rinse to your waste to be treated.
save these powders until you have read Hokes again (I know you said you read it 10 times, but you still need to understand it), practice the getting acquainted experiments, these will be a big help in understanding the reactions, and with these you get hands on practice to where you can see the reactions, and get hands on experience of what to expect, study more on the forum, now that you have seen some things, when you do you will have a better Idea of what we are talking about.

Before you try to dissolve gold again I think you need a better understanding of the processes you use, spend the time needed to study and understand them.

You have worked on a hard material here for a beginner with little understanding, and you chose some processes to begin with that would not be easy (at least until you gain a little more hands on experience), I suggest after you do study some more (do not skip the study, as the more you study the less problems you will have and the better your understanding to deal with them when they do rise), after you study try a more simpler process like memory fingers, to get a better understanding of how to process, without the problems of some of the more complicated methods, or materials.

I do hope this helps, I would also like to be able to give advice to help you out of this present mess, but at this point I do not think any other answer would help you to understand what you need to, to be able to recover and refine.

 

[Claudie]

I couldn't help but notice the background in some of the photos. I hope you are not working with this on a kitchen table. That is definitely something that you don't want to do. :|

 

[AUH-R]

AUH-R,

I read the last few posts you made and tried to get an understanding of what you were doing, I did not completely understand it because I was unsure of the process you were following when you mentioned Sam's guide.

But it sounded to me like you may have been removing the copper and base metals from pins using HCl and peroxide, and then moved onto aqua regia with your remaining material.

Firstly, let me say thank you for the detailed response. I used HCL only.

First let me say a few concerns I have, you mentioned pouring off your acid with some fine gold down the sink, this should never be done, not only could this destroy the plumbing in your house, but it could get you put in jail for endangering the lives of others when they trace the copper and hazardous waste back up the pipe to your house, what you flush others will have to drink, and you will drink what others flush, either way these toxic metal acidic solutions are way too dangerous to all of our health to be poured down a sink, learn to use a stock pot, and learn to treat your waste, this should be done before you even think about dissolving metals in acids.

I just reread what I wrote and can understand where the ambiguity comes from. Please let me clarify. I filtered all my acid off into my waste drum and washed the residue left 4-5 times. This was then filtered into my waste store. When I was looking at the rust coloured pins left in the bottom of my coffee pot indoors I decided to rinse again a few times with H20 and this is what was poured down the sink. I take safety very serious, when I joined the forum I followed Steve's guide and read all the recommended threads. Here is a picture of my waste so far about 4.5 litres of purple/black used HCL mixed with about 2-3 litres of washes.




You talk of expelling the acid and testing with litmus paper to decide when you have done so, if you are talking about getting rid of free nitric acid in this discussion, you would still have a very acidic solution, you are not trying to change pH with this procedure, you do not need to or would you want to remove the acid completely, the metal salts would be acidic and it is desirable to have free acid in solution, you are just trying to remove the oxidizer (nitric) not HCl, although in the evaporation process to remove the nitric we will normally lose some of the HCl in the process, the litmus paper would do you no good here, and if you evaporated down so far as to change PH you would have a dried powder of cooked gold or base metal oxides (with much of your gold lost as fumes.

I think you're referring to the section where I said what I would differently next time. Having read the forum I would use a cell next time as the acid consumption was ridiculous for such a small amount of potential Au. However, I was trying to follow Hoke's guide specifically Chapters 7 & 5. Now Hoke advised in Chapter 7 to boil in HCL to rid the material of solder, she gives no mention of amounts to use and simply says scrap it off. This is when I found Sam's guide with much more detail on this part of the process. So what I was trying to say is next time I did this procedure rather than spend days boiling in HCL, I would do one long boil say 6 hours filter solution to waste, then keep rinsing with H20 and filtering until I was confident that there was no remaining HCL left. My thinking was then I could follow chapter 5 and use HN03 to get rid of the base metals, now most of the tin and lead was gone. Using the litmus paper I thought was the only sure way I would know if the HCL was absent.

Another thing that I seen, you said you wiped off your stir rod after adding the SMB you said you seen brown powder and a violet color of gold left on the paper, the brown reduced gold could be normal, but the violet color makes me think you have tin in solution, and so you could very possibly have a solution of colloidal gold that will not settle.

As soon as I added the SMB I had the brown powder on my stirring rod. I then tested my solution with Stannous to check if there was Au in the solution. I cleaned my rod on this same filter paper to see what would happen.

You talked of a brown precipitant that you think is silver or lead chloride, these chlorides are white not brown, copper I chloride is also normally white, gold will look black to brown or even light tan as a precipitant depending on how much other base metal is involved.

I have brown powder in the beaker with the SMB and also a small layer of copper I chloride. The brown/tan coloured residue left in the filter paper, what could that be?

You talked about boiling it down and leaving it to settle as a crust, you should not boil any solution with gold involved, and you should not evaporate it down to a crust.

I was trying to clean my flakes up at that point, the Au was not in solution, and I now conclude from your helpful post that the brown residue in the picture surrounding my flakes is some sort of copper/metal oxidize.

you also say you think you are having trouble because solution is too dilute, you say this after you have added your SMB, dilution at this stage is no problem, your problem are an accumulation of problems all the way through your process.

Thank you, I only thought that because when I evaporated the AR and added the HCL drops I was left with a tiny amount of syrup, say 10 ml and with all the additions of H20 I ended up with over 700 ml.

What I see is you do not yet have an understanding, of the processes, what you should be doing when and why, and what you should be expecting to see and understand what it is you are seeing.

Just having this chat with you has helped me a tremendous amount. I read Hoke almost daily and also C.W Ammen, I read this forum and various posts everyday. However, it does not matter how much I read, it was the same at university, It will not stick unless I do it myself. Also for me having a teacher/tutor is also very important for reassurance that I'm on the right track , if we could just do it from reading books there would be no need for lecturers, teachers etc...

My suggestion to fix this problem is something you may not wish to hear, but you are the one who asked for help, I say at this point get a large piece of clean copper buss bar and sit it in the solution you have now, check on it and stir it for three days, while doing this go to the safety section and study dealing with waste, brush off the copper into solution let the powders settle, decant the liquid and treat it for waste, rinse the powders and add rinse to your waste to be treated.
save these powders until you have read Hokes again (I know you said you read it 10 times, but you still need to understand it), practice the getting acquainted experiments, these will be a big help in understanding the reactions, and with these you get hands on practice to where you can see the reactions, and get hands on experience of what to expect, study more on the forum, now that you have seen some things, when you do you will have a better Idea of what we are talking about.

Thank you again, I did this, this morning:




Before you try to dissolve gold again I think you need a better understanding of the processes you use, spend the time needed to study and understand them.

Could not agree more! I learnt a lot through this experience, so even though I have no button to show this time it was a worthwhile journey and I feel valuable.

In summary; I never removed all the base metals especially copper as I had the tell tell signs of green all the way through the process I followed. I would never use HCL to remove the bulk of base metals. I would only use it for solder, then I would switch to HN03. When using SMB calculate the amount you suspect you need, if you don't see a dark cloud straight away, wait at least 2-3 hours, do stannous test before adding more SMB if you are sure you need too.

You have worked on a hard material here for a beginner with little understanding, and you chose some processes to begin with that would not be easy (at least until you gain a little more hands on experience), I suggest after you do study some more (do not skip the study, as the more you study the less problems you will have and the better your understanding to deal with them when they do rise), after you study try a more simpler process like memory fingers, to get a better understanding of how to process, without the problems of some of the more complicated methods, or materials.

I do hope this helps, I would also like to be able to give advice to help you out of this present mess, but at this point I do not think any other answer would help you to understand what you need to, to be able to recover and refine.

It helps very much and thanks for taking the time to respond.

A couple of questions if I may:

If you boiled in HCL to remove solder, washed your residue several times in H20, how would you know it was safe to use HN03 to get rid of the rest of the metals so you did not make some AR by mistake, using litmus paper?
When I evaporated the AR down to a syrup, am I losing Au during this evaporation process?

All the best,
AuH-R

 

[AUH-R]

I couldn't help but notice the background in some of the photos. I hope you are not working with this on a kitchen table. That is definitely something that you don't want to do. :|

Thank you for your concern. I do all my work outside when dealing with acids and any fuming substances. I just bring in the solutions I feel are safe for photographs.

Best wishes,
AUH-R

 

[Geo]

AUH-R, acidic solutions are fuming whether you can see it or not and sometimes you cant even smell it. keep acids out of your living space.

 

[AUH-R]

AUH-R, acidic solutions are fuming whether you can see it or not and sometimes you cant even smell it. keep acids out of your living space.

I thought 2ml of pregnant HN03 diluted in 700 ml of H20 to be safe, obviously not, thanks for the advice. I won't do it again.

All the best,