# green fiber cpu pin troubles



## glondor (Feb 27, 2011)

Hey all. I am having some trouble with what I perceived as a pretty straight forward process. I wonder if I could ask for some expert help.

Background--I removed pins from fiber cpu's with HCL. The little rectangular caps also removed at this time. I did not clearly understand they should be removed separably so they are in this mix as well as i could not find a way to sieve them out.

Heated pins (7lbs) in hot hcl in crock pot changing acid 3 times. 4th time acid boiled away as I was not able to get home in time to shut off pot. 

This left me with a solid mass in the crock. It had layers of different materials. All solids. I broke the solids apart and transferred them to a coffee pot for another hot hcl bath that I could monitor more closely. Heated well for a few hours and shut off for the night. 

We had a strong cold snap and the pot froze and cracked leaking the acid into the corning ware catch dish. 

I now have a heavy solid crystalline mass that is kind of purplish. 

The mass is still close to 7 pounds. seems like the kovar is not being dissolved. I have used 1.5 gallons of acid on these pins and seem to be getting nowhere.

Here is what I have...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v697/23224/cool%20chips/DSCN1778.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v697/23224/cool%20chips/DSCN1777.jpg

I do not know what to do here. Continue with HCL?


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 27, 2011)

Put the chunks back in HCL and continue your process. 

There must have been water mixed with the HCL or the pot should not have frozen and cracked?


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## glondor (Feb 27, 2011)

Hey 007. No, no water. Surprise me as well that the pot cracked. It did get down around minus 21 celcius. 

Thanks for the reply. It is good to know I am not going off the rails here. Is there an estimate on how much HCL to do these buggers?


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## patnor1011 (Feb 27, 2011)

That will be a lot of HCl, amount in litres. Also heating will speed things but not much. When I do them I dont bother with crockpot or heat. Too much electricity. I just leave them in bucket for about 2-3 weeks. I change acid once in a while with foils liberated.


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## glondor (Feb 27, 2011)

Thanks for your reply Patnor. These have been soaking with heat and without heat now for over a month. I knew these would be tough, but not this tough. Now with the latest development the foils are all bound up in the solid matrix of the crystalline block. I may just have to put this project aside until I find a better option for them. I suppose I could put them in a 5 gallon pail with a gallon of acid and let them do their thing until spring.

I could see doing these on a quarterly basis rather than an ongoing procedure.

I have so much other stuff I need to learn to process I have to move on. :| 



These have taken a large amount of time and I wonder if I would have been better off using a stripping cell while they were still on the fiber board. I don't know. Next time I set up the cell I will try 50 and see how it goes.

Thanks everyone for your help with these. I will revisit these later.


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## patnor1011 (Feb 27, 2011)

I never did more than 20 at one time and you have pounds of them so I think that months are pretty good guess. I did not used HCl only I have added H2O2 everytime so I presume that helped a bit. Also I did them alongside with fingers so I had more copper in solution.

I was thinking and I will try that next time when I will have 20-30 of them to use HCl/Cl in smaller bucket or bottle with cover to give them quick wash, just to see if I will be able to get gold out before it will start cement out back on pins. Also to see if pins will be dissolving fast. I know that this may put a lot of base metals in solution, I will see how hard it will be wash and filter precipitate. Just something to play with.


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## FrugalEE (Feb 27, 2011)

I got curious about that freezing HCl and brought up Wiki on Muriatic. It seems that HCL has a rather peculiar behaviour when it come to freezing Vs dilution. They listed the following melt points:

10% HCl melts at -18 Deg. C.
20% HCl melts at -59 Deg. C.
30% Hcl melts at -26 Deg. C.

It appears that higer concentrations actually freeze easier than a 20% solution. Am I interpreting this right? Why do they talk in terms of melt point and not freeze point?


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## dtectr (Feb 27, 2011)

glondor said:


> Thanks for your reply Patnor. These have been soaking with heat and without heat now for over a month. I knew these would be tough, but not this tough. Now with the latest development the foils are all bound up in the solid matrix of the crystalline block. I may just have to put this project aside until I find a better option for them. I suppose I could put them in a 5 gallon pail with a gallon of acid and let them do their thing until spring.
> 
> I could see doing these on a quarterly basis rather than an ongoing procedure.
> 
> ...


Do you have a fish tank bubbler running through your acid? if not, the process can take a very long time to "ripen" &to work. Have you read the Cupric Chloride document on lazersteve's website that explains why this process works? It really helped me understand what was taking place in the bucket out in the garage.

7lbs sounds like a lot to try to run in one crockpot at one time - the acid would become saturated in no time. Try Poor Man's AR - the addition of the nitrate speeds things up considerably. But i still believe you'll need a larger container & more acid per batch.

Just my dos centavos.


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## glondor (Feb 28, 2011)

I did have a fish tank bubbler working when I removed the pins from the CPU's. I did add a pint of 3% hydrogen peroxide as well as a gallon of copper chloride while doing the pin removal as well. Seemed to work very well to remove the pins. I stopped this when I went to hot HCL.

As for the freezing FrugalEE. I am using 35% hcl which may just fall into the minus 21 range. Their may have been an ounce or two of rinse water in the pot as well. Interesting the info refers to the melting point of frozen hcl. I wonder why as well. My large crock also froze that night and cracked as well. It contained acid as well. It was resting in a plastic safety tub so nothing was lost there either.


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## etack (Mar 10, 2011)

there is a post where a member used a stripping cell on these and had good luck. I recall that some pins didn't get stripped but the majority did. I cant seem to find the post.

Eric


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## Barren Realms 007 (Mar 10, 2011)

etack said:


> there is a post where a member used a stripping cell on these and had good luck. I recall that some pins didn't get stripped but the majority did. I cant seem to find the post.
> 
> Eric



It's too time consuming to do them this way.


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## glondor (Mar 10, 2011)

Well I put some time in on the pins today. I broke up the mass and started washing the gold out from the pins. It is very fine and is taking a lot of washing but I am making progress. 
I am just washing the pins with a gallon of water, then I filter the water and wash the pins again. Once I wash the pins the water is yellow and there is lots of very fine (tiny)foils floating in it. 

I guess I should mention that there is no gold on any pins, however almost none of the pins dissolved. They are all intact. 

Is there an easy way to drop gold from water?? lol


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## Barren Realms 007 (Mar 10, 2011)

You will still have gold on your pins you just will not recognize it. Once you wash the pins in water let the water sit for a couple of days and then siphon off the water to get to your gold in the bottom. Finish running your pins in your solution till all the base metals are dissolved.


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