PCI slots

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Well I can surely say that you guys hre have been a great wealth of information here, well i first started conidering the idea of recovering the gold from scrap electronics, i was lucky to have found this forum rather quickly. i have been gathering old computers for quite awhile, you am one of tho0se guys that never likes to throw anything away, or one that finds treasure in someone else's junk.....anyway i would like to say thank you for the valuable info, unfortunately i do not have anythink valuable to contribute here yet, but when i do, rest assured i will post it....but to the topic, when harvesting the pins from a motherboard, are the contacts inside the pci slots worth removing along with the pin or is it better to leave them and prcess them with the remaing board, i ask this because some of the boards that i ahve been removing pins from really do not seem to have much gold of the pci contacts if any at all......

thanks again
 
Jo,

Welcome to the forum.

The slots do contain traces of gold as you mentioned. The bigger concern is the base metal content of the slot pins. These pins are typically made of one of two types of alloys, beryllium copper or phosphor bronze.

The beryllium types can be very hazardous to your health to work with. Not only is the beryllium dust very bad for you, the liquids are not considered safe either.

If cutting beryllium alloy contacts from the boards be sure to wear a good dust mask. You would be better off either skipping them or sending them off to be refined when you have enough.

Steve
 
Thanks alot Steve, I sure am glad you guys are here to keep newbies like me safe and out of trouble..lol..
 
Hey Steve, Running these in the e-cell is not recommended? I have ran some of these in the cell. The finished pins had a copper tone to them. These would be the ones to steer away from? Thanks, Tim
 
I've never processed any with the cell. The copper color is a good indication that they are beryllium copper alloy. I'll have to do some checking to see if beryllium is soluble in concentrated H2SO4, I would imagine it is.

Steve
 
Thanks for the heads-up Steve! I just finished pulling a bunch of these pins this weekend and they are soaking in AP at the moment. I think I will just stay away from processing PCI slots from here on out but it would be nice to know if there is a convenient way to identify the 2 types. Are there other computer parts that are known to contain beryllium copper? Below are 2 links that might be of interest on the alloy and its hazards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryllium_copper

http://www.osha.gov/dts/hib/hib_data/hib19990902.html

As a newbie I have been reading voraciously about recoveries from different sources when I read this post. Is there a list of particularly hazardous components to be aware of and avoid in electronic scrape on the forum? Did I just miss it? If not it, might be a good topic in your guided tour link or some other way to highlight it to newcomers in particular.

I think this forum is great and wanted to thank you for your websites tutorials and video’s. They are the best I’ve seen on the subject.
 

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