What to refine in a computer ?

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lazersteve said:
Mike,
Your photos are too close up. Can you post a photo or two that display the entire part? I'll be glad to identify them for you.
Steve
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Sorry. I got me a new camera. Im still learning. LOL I tired again and heres the new pictur. Thats my leather work glove. I tried to make it bigger. Those lines are thread on the thum. Mike.
 
Mike looks like those parts have been thru some sort of solution already! :lol:

The parts are what I would refer to as inductors. They appear to be balancing/matching transformers or Balun's for short. In the cell phone circuit they are like miniature waveguides.

I've included a snapshot of some that are a little healthier than the ones you photographed:

balun_close.gif


The healthy ones appear to have a silvery coating on them. Most likely the solder or a protective layer of some sort.

I hope this helps.

Steve
 
lazersteve--they sat around in a rusty cofee can. I havent soaked anything yet. Going to do that soon. :wink: Any reason to crush or soak them wave guides? I thougt I read microwave wave guides had platnum in them. You take good picturs Steve. Thanks. Mike.
 
Mike,

I'm not certain that the baluns have any platinum in them. A quick test would be to toss the whole thing in nitric and see what's left when the dust settles.

Steve
 
Is there any gold or other pms in regular cmos IC's. There seem to be a fair amount on the boards.

Also what about the lazers in cdrom drives or is that just a piece of glass.
 
jimmy759 said:
Is there any gold or other pms in regular cmos IC's. There seem to be a fair amount on the boards.

Also what about the lazers in cdrom drives or is that just a piece of glass.
Click to expand...

All ICs will generally have Gold (Au), Silver (Ag), and perhaps Palladium (Pd), very few may contain Platinum (Pt). The best way to recover these would be to use a ball mill to crush them:
http://www.unitednuclear.com/mills.htm

Then you would process the powder like normal...

Just a note, the Gold content may be the only thing worth going after unless you have something special (Mil-spec stuff with Platinum for instance).

Cheers,
Kory
 
I spent some time cutting off the fingers from memory modules over the last few days and was wondering what to do with the chips that were left....

Do I assume that these chips may also have some value if I get enough of them? I have not yet removed them from the PCB but they stack and store fairly neatly for the time being anyway... unlike motherboards etc that seem to take up loads of room...
 
They should have gold in them and I just cracked open a GPU and noticed that it was copper only, no noticeable gold. Luck of the draw I guess...
 
Not all IC's have gold wire in them. Manufacturers are constantly looking for ways of reducing costs. The materials they use are the cheapest material that meet their requirements. This has led to the use of aluminum wire bonds (and sometimes copper in newer chips). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_bond

Those silvery wires you see in pentium chips are not palladium.... :lol: :wink:
 
Attached is an X-ray micrograph of an NEC D8085 microprocessor. It is very old, gold plated everywhere, and very nice looking.

The picture shows the gold pads, gold surface, and silicon chip among other things. It can be noticed that you can't see the wire bonds. This is because they are aluminum, which is too low contrast compared to gold to show up. I know this because i sawed the the thing in half. :twisted:
I'm not sure what the runner wires from the pads to the pins are made of, but I would not bet that it has any gold.

In other chips, the wire bonds do show up in an X-ray micrograph when they are gold. I'm not sure about copper.
 

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The traces running between the ceramic layers used to be molybdenum - manganese thick film. I assume it's still the same. Also, the leads on side braze IC packages are silver soldered to plated moly-manganese pads.
 
lazersteve said:
Chris,

Here's the low down on the resistors according to wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistor#Thick_and_thin_film

I've just been buying the monolithics in large spools of 3000. I haven't taken the time to process any off of boards yet.

Steve
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I have been looking for these on rolls, but can only find loose ones here in OZ....or am I looking in the wrong place???
 
lazersteve said:
Fever,

Here are some of the items in your dish that are monolithics:

monolithic.gif

These are labeled Cx on the board with x as some location number.

monolithic2.gif

These are labeled Cx on the board with x as some location number.

monolithic3.gif

These are labeled Cx on the board with x as some location number.

I hope this info helps. If you have any questions please ask.

Steve
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Wow! So would I be correct when I say there upwards of a hundred of these monolithics on an average motherboard? and if so how is it possible to seperate them from all of the other smd's surrounding them in a timely manner?
 
Steve Any Idea on this SMD's containing PM's? they have the CX next to them but does not look like any of the other Monocaps in this post, outlined with red.

And another one outlined in blue with CX next to it?
 

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C60, C61 and C62 are capacitors but they have a polarity mark, that wide stripe across one end. They could be either tantalum or electrolytic capacitors but not monolithic ceramic capacitors. I leave them on the boards and sell it as electronic scrap to a bigger refinery.
My guess is that the orange ones is tantalum capacitors and the black one is an electrolytic aluminum capacitor.

The monolithic capacitors doesn't have any polarity so they don't need any markings to keep track of it.

I have started to collect them by using a hot air gun and tweezers just picking them off the boards. I just have to be careful with the heat, I've blown up one electrolytic capacitor that was close to some monolithics. :D
 
PRECIOUS METALS said:
hey where in cd roms do you find gold
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I am new to the list and enjoy finding info about doing something with the e-scrap I have been throwing back for 20 years or so....and after getting into this I now know I have trown away a fair amount of PM's over the years.

Anyway...I have come by some 7 year old Dell Computers and have taken the CD-R apart just to see what was inside. the CD-R reader has a small fine chip on the lazer head that has gold wire and what appears to be a gold ground plane under the actual chip...I had to look at it thru my microscope to see how it was made. I will be keeping one for my growing chip collection and reclaiming the gold in the rest....I have about 15 of them. The only PM's appear to be some componets on the circuit board and the gold in the lazer head. This was a CD-R by Data Storage GCR-8481b built in 2002.

Texan
 
I find the gold in most NOT ALL CDR CDRW and DVD & DVDRW players and write and rewriters. Some have 2 of the gold buttons with the gold wires and such. I have been posting about this fo a while. I have also found this button in old cd players and dvd players not just computer drives...

Ray
 

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