Gold inside chips (black, flatpacks - not CPU)

[jphayesjr]

If your doing legged IC's this would be a problem. Any base metals would also get balled up with the gold. Once that happens the only way to separate them is large amount of acids. BGA style chips (with out the solder balls) maybe okay, but there will still be some copper to deal with.

I've never used one of those crushers so I'm not sure how the tiny hair like bonding wires will react with this method....since I never used one, then I could be wrong.

Thanks, have just been piling those up to
incinerate. I have several kilos of old purple Japanese NEC chips (ceramic?) with heavily gold filled legs and a window with visible gold leads that test at 23.999k. I'd planned to smash those chips in a big cast iron mortar and pestle I have, and classify, pan the grit for fine wires, part the legs, smelt the dried grit, then test and decide about further work. I can get more, perhaps ten more k. These are early to mid-1980s. The only trouble is if you crush chips with copper or tin/ aluminum alloy legs and don't classify them out early in the process, hold to process them separately if GF or GP. If the legs are Beryllium copper alloy, I'll just accumulate to take to a refiner. They never yield as much as we wish, but with care, enough to be worthwhile.

 

[jphayesjr]

And Beryllium alone is very valuable by the pound. Just hazardous to work with.

 

[eaglekeeper]

Thanks, have just been piling those up to
incinerate. I have several kilos of old purple Japanese NEC chips (ceramic?) with heavily gold filled legs and a window with visible gold leads that test at 23.999k. I'd planned to smash those chips in a big cast iron mortar and pestle I have, and classify, pan the grit for fine wires, part the legs, smelt the dried grit, then test and decide about further work. I can get more, perhaps ten more k. These are early to mid-1980s. The only trouble is if you crush chips with copper or tin/ aluminum alloy legs and don't classify them out early in the process, hold to process them separately if GF or GP. If the legs are Beryllium copper alloy, I'll just accumulate to take to a refiner. They never yield as much as we wish, but with care, enough to be worthwhile.

Could you share some pictures of the chips, it's always nice to see good material.

 

[peterross149968]

What does the mighty mill look like. Pictures, links, details, interests me please.
What does a ball grinder look like.
Pictures, links, details, interests me please.

 

[Yggdrasil]

What does the mighty mill look like. Pictures, links, details, interests me please.
What does a ball grinder look like.
Pictures, links, details, interests me please.

Hmm what about searching the net?
There are many youtube videos showing how to build your own ball mills.
The mighty mill might have a specific website since it is a specific product.

 

[kurtak]

I use a cheap Harbor Freight ($150) cement mixer (their small one) with milling balls bought from Legend mining

You want a mix of ball sizes 1 inch - 1&1/4 inch - 1&1/2 inch --- about another $120 (plus shipping)

https://www.lmine.com/index.php?mai...&search_in_description=1&keyword=2+inch+balls
You don/t need the expensive stainless steel balls - the (much) cheaper forged steel balls work just fine

Kurt

 

[peterross149968]

Wow. I will certainly surf the Web. As I'm in the UK I think we mostly get machines from the East. They don't last long. Still, beggars can't be choosers.
The photos are a good visual guide. Thank you.

 

[jphayesjr]

Hmm what about searching the net?
There are many youtube videos showing how to build your own ball mills.
The mighty mill might have a specific website since it is a specific product.

You can easily find The Mighty Mill in YouTube and eBAY. You can also find a variety of mills, including ball mills. Those who have the time, skills, materials, and tools to build their own are encouraged to vette plans from a variety of sources before launching the project. I lack the time, and fairly soon, will need something larger. I'm working on ways to reduce noise. It is best to go with plans from a known source, there's forum members who have them on their websites, too.

 

[peterross149968]

Thanks.

 

[Edlin]

I worked with various sized ball and pebble mills in my early days in the paint industry. They do the best job of grinding by far, but are noisy and slower than other types. And they get louder as they get bigger.

You can run the contents wet to reduce dust, but I suspect that you would need to use stainless balls to prevent rusting between charges.

 

[peterross149968]

Thanks Edlin. I looked at a few Mills on Google. There are so many.

 

[patnor1011]

There is a very old video on youtube I cant find it now but it was basically video of a guy milling IC in a car wheel shaft using electric drill with rod attached with a bit of chain attached. He used rag to stop dust coming out. Then washed powder in a sink. That was one of the first videos which inspired me to make this thread. Not a lot of people knew that time that there is gold in them to my knowledge, at least nobody over here was doing or discussing it. Look how far we got since then

 

[tsfarley]

related to the previous discussion, I am curious if a grinder gets the same result as a ball mill?
I picked up a rrh-a500 grain mill called a communitor ?? for $20 at habitat. It looks heavy duty enough. 2300 Watts.
recommends a 50-300 mesh.
will this work for black chip processing?

 

[Dreamer]

related to the previous discussion, I am curious if a grinder gets the same result as a ball mill?
I picked up a rrh-a500 grain mill called a communitor ?? for $20 at habitat. It looks heavy duty enough. 2300 Watts.
recommends a 50-300 mesh.
will this work for black chip processing?

I use a similar grinder. My yields had been sub average. By the time I got the material concentrated enough to go to acid, the gold is in powder form. When using a ball mill, my yields are more in line with what others report. I'm certain it's been due to my gravity separation technique losing flour gold material in the water column. Using a ball mill better preserves the wire form making the recovery/separation less problematic. The downside is time in the ball mill. For me, the yield is more important than time since it's a hobby and I lack equipment and experience to pull the flour gold out of the ash.

 

[tsfarley]

thank you Dreamer, I was curious what differences would be seen. perfect reply !
tim

 

[orvi]

It isn´t that hard to properly incinerate chips to grey powder. Then they disintegrate right away, no need for any milling. Pull out all of the legs (which are predominantly magnetic) with magnet, reduce ashes to 1/3 by gentle washing and smelt the rest. Filler is practically always silica dust, so some borax will easily flux this. Residues of tin oxide from incineration usually cause no issues as they comprise of just low percentage in overall material. And you will obtain the bead right away, with insignificant losses. Concentration of diluted dvalues is key for efficient recovery step, following by much easier refining.

Legs can be economically processed with molten lead bath with subsequent cupellation. Ammount of gold sticked to legs is not that extreme, and that small ammount cannot justify acid treatment.
If you properly incinerated them, there is no need to worry about tin from legs contamining the lead cupellation, as all of the tin would be burned to tin oxide in this stage. And anyway, chips are usually mechanically separated by amateurs, so there is little tin present on the legs as they were mechanically cut from the boards.

With molten lead (or bismuth) bath, you will get like 80% of that gold back, with no hazardous liquid waste produced. Slag from smelting is not considered toxic waste if the composition don´t allow the heavy metals to easily leach out by elements. Check your local enviromental guidelines and laws, they can vary significantly from place to place.

Anywhere you can, exclude hydrometallurgy from the process if possible. On bigger scale, waste will just overwhelm you, and costs and time to process and dispose it correctly will pile up.
IC chips are nice in a way that gold and rest is nicely physically separated, so take advantage of that

 

[patnor1011]

What Orvi said and I will add that proper incineration is always better. There will be little grinding needed. The less you have to grind the better processing become simply because gold is in tiny wires and very soft. The more you have to pound material the bigger the risk of gold getting stuck/smeared on metal fragments still in the mix.
I actually observed red copper pins become golden also parts of my mortar and pestle contraption I made from pipe and heavy steel rod the longer I pounded concentrate.

Thermal shock can be also employed with proper precautions in place of course. I used to dump red hot IC straight from fire to a bucket of cold water. I did not do it regularly only couple times to see how it works and it seems to work just fine but if IC is properly incinerated you should have hard time to even try to pick it up without IC turning to dust with just a touch.