# Gold inside chips (black, flatpacks - not CPU)



## patnor1011

I had some time and was interested to find how to get that gold out. There was few processes mentioned here already so I just combine few of them and here is what I did.

We all know that there is gold inside.  I do not have ball mill build yet so I decided to try another way. Incineration, or poor man`s pyrolysis. I used bucket of coal and made it red glowing hot. I then placed iron vessel in the middle where I dug small hole. Chips in vessel did not even burn with flame, they just turned yellow/red from temperature and when I took them out they were whitish/grey and practically powdered. There was no visible smoke and hardly any smell. 
I did not took any pictures up until this moment maybe I will do it later and upload here.

Incinerated chips were powder like so I put them in my pan. Some of powder floated on surface so I used drop/two of washing up liquid. Then came hard - long part of panning all that material. When I panned all or say 99% of non metallic material I have used magnet from hdd to pick up all iron/nickel pins. Then I panned out most of copper pins. All panned pins went to my stock pot - lets say I throw them to my spent AP solution I will wait till all dissolve. What was left was small amount of fine gold wires and dust. All this was put to nitric to get rid of any small metallic pieces. Last two pictures show end product at this stage which is like 90% gold and 10% of some small pieces of ceramics.


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## patnor1011

pictures again


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## patnor1011

and again. Sorry they are mixed.


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## philddreamer

Very nice Pat! 8) 
Are these from ram black chips memory only, or mixed?

Thanks!

Phil


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## Anonymous

Very nice Pat.I am proud of you trying something new!Can you post some pics of some of the same chips,and the hole with the charcoal?


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## eeTHr

That's the slickest method I've seen, or heard, of yet.


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## niteliteone

Thank You for this wonderful tutorial.
I have been looking for a good and economical way to process the flatpacks and memory chips. 
I know you said this was black flatpacks but I think it might work with the ram chips also. I'll try it as soon as I finish removing the chips from the ram I currently have.

thanks again 8) 
Tom C.


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## kuma

Hi all how are tricks ?
I hope all is well!
Patnor , I've heard and read of this , but I've not seen any real results , until now!  
Nice work chief!!
Well , I'm off to bed soon , long day tommorow , gotta burn some chips and dig the pans out , lol's :lol: 
Once again , nice work!
All the best and kind regards ,
Chris :[email protected])

(Edited because I made an obvious error in my post , I've got to *burn* [pyrolise?] some chips , not crush , I really should go to bed now , rofl :lol: )


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## Claudie

It would be interesting to know a yield from these packages. How grams/ounces did you start with? How much Gold will you get when finished? A picture of the packages would be nice but That's impossible now, although you could post pictures of similar packages. I tried a similar technique awhile back but was side tracked and never got much past the incineration point. :|


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## TXWolfie

That was an awesome idea Patnor. just one question before I attempt this how many chips did you have in the pot.


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## patnor1011

Ill try to reply all question in this post...

Phil, Claudie I can post picture of chips but they are pretty much broad mix of all you can find on mobos, video, network, sound cards, top - black parts from these ( http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB:Sis_755_northbridge.JPG )
also chips from ram sticks. I was trying to get some numbers together but then I decided not to post any numbers here as results are not perfect. AAAh my english - its hard to explain. Point is that I have started two batches, one of 420g of mixed chips from which I incinerated, panned and nitric leached 270g - 150g still waiting. Second batch was 200g of black chips from ram sticks. Surprisingly I found more gold when panning mixed batch and I was convinced that ram stick will yield more. 
I cant provide exact numbers for many reasons. Few chips ended up in fire, there was quite few pins which were gold plated - they ended up in HCl with all metallic parts from crushed chips, some gold got dissolved when I put bit of peroxide to HCl - solution turned bit yellow. Some gold got lost as my panning technique is not great and some gold was plated on silicone center square piece which was crushed so I had zillions of light glassy like gold plated pieces swirling in pan - unfortunately lost when I was panning. Gold wires are heavier and it is actually not that hard to work them in pan as they are always on bottom of pan.

So if I can say I processed about 470g of mixed chips (regular various chips as I mentioned) and I have on that picture 1.7g of mostly gold. I would say that ceramics and garbage will be less than 10% of weight. Powder was leached in nitric so I dont think there are other metals present.

Mic, it is perhaps my english :lol: 
It is hard to name procedure properly as pyrolysis of done when combusting material without oxygene present. I did incineration or poor mans pyrolysis. I have fireplace outside. I loaded that with coal - not charcoal but normal regular coal for use in stove. When I had coal burning / glowing red hot I just make small hole in middle of that burning coal bed and placed small iron vessel inside so it was resting on hot coal and top part of vessel was on same level as coal. Well picture is better than thousand words, my holidays start next week and I have about 15 pounds of chips to play with. I will make more pictures and I will find out with mods about how many I can upload here. 

Niteliteone, I had RAM chips there included but pretty much any chip from motherboard and peripheral cards too. On a side note, I had plenty of time when I was removing them, I was not time pressed and I take all this as hobby so I removed them all with knife. I figured that by cutting exposed leads on every side I eliminate most of tin and unnecessary metals and save on acid. Well as I said I had plenty of time but if you have a lot of material to process simply heat board, tap and collect chips from ground. There is possibility to put them whole to HCl or Nitric to get rid of exposed legs and go to incineration after. WEveryone can do whatever will suit him better.

EEThr, Thanks :mrgreen: 

Kuma, all this (incineration) was done only because I did not had access to ball mill and incineration was much faster than crushing chips by hand with mortar and pestle. Also when you incinerate whole chips I do believe that there is much less or pretty much no loss of valuables comparing to incinerating crushed material (which is little bit faster). I crushed chips after incineration and it was easy as crushing dry cookies. :lol: 
I would like to advise to use as strong fire or heat as possible to practically burn smoke too or try to incinerate material that it will not catch fire it will just ashes from heat not flame. As I mentioned my coal fire produced so intensive heat that there was no smoke coming out and hardly any smell. Believe me smell of burning plastic is last thing you want to experience.

All metallic parts (pins, leads, square middle sections) are saved for later as I do believe I can find some Ag and Pd on them. I placed them to HCl / H2O2 solution and I will test with DMG as soon as they will dissolve.


I will try to snap some pictures of material I started with but actual incinerating will have to wait till next week.


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## patnor1011

TXWolfie said:


> That was an awesome idea Patnor. just one question before I attempt this how many chips did you have in the pot.



My vessel was smaller one and I did not wanted to put everything in fire at once as it may start actually burning with flame so I did handful at a time. It took about 5 min and they turned white/gray and were so fragile after that "heat treatment" that you could "powder" them in hand (when removed from fire and cooled).


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## philddreamer

I also thought of going that route, but not finding more detailed information, plus the smell & the smoke... I was afraid of the neighbors around me calling the cops, there're are two, father & son that're retired police officers! :shock: So, I thought, maybe it wouldn't work. I had over a pound of black chips from ram that I started processing a couple of weeks ago, I only finished about half after boiling twice in HCL; then AR. Recovered about 1g so far. I'll be heading to the woods hunting & plan to take the crushed chips & incinerate up there. Then I'll give it a shot panning. I've picked more ram cards, so I have more chips for processing. 

I'll be taking pic's, too & adding the yield & so on, to the information already available. 

Thanks Pat! Well, we have some homework now! 8) 

Phil


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## Claudie

Excellent post Patnor! Thank you for taking the time to answer all of our questions.


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## Anonymous

Thank you Pat.I was approached by a member last night concerning this.I will direct him here,and I told GSP I am going to run some hopefully next week.I have probably 20lbs of the bga's,about 40lbs of ceramic 'proms,and about 100 pounds of various other chips.I have not removed any chips from ram yet,and I am not sure if I want to start.I have a good buyer for ram right now.


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## patnor1011

I need to find out way or place where I can upload original size of pictures. When I took these they were over 5MB each. I did not wanted to waste forum quota so I resized them to 25% but they lost much of detail which you can see. This fine gold wire is so small it is hardly visible with naked eye. Only when concentrated like I had it in pan. I left one bit bigger than the rest it is picture DSCF0947.JPG my second post third picture from top but that one is resized to less than 50% of original size. 
20 pictures of over 5MB is 100MB of space and I dont want to increase costs of running this forum even that I donated small amount every year since I joined here. 
I am not so sure but I would say that BGA (- I incinerated only top black part) is probably the best. I will do few more batches of different types and will try to get more accurate numbers next week.


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## Anonymous

patnor1011 said:


> I dont want to increase costs of running this forum even that I donated small amount every year since I joined here.


That is very thoughful of you,and you know Nic appreciates it.
You can upload your pics to photobucket,and post a link to the pics.


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## samuel-a

Mic



mic said:


> about 40lbs of ceramic 'proms



I'm afraid the ceramics will not be affected to a desirable degree (crumbling cookie), the heat will only form defects in entire structure such as cracks...
But it still be as hard as it was....


Pat

What a great post, thank you.
Ever since "NoIdea" posted his poor man's pyrolysis post iv'e been flirting with the idea and even went to buy today some fire brickes to build a small kiln for that purpose:




Pat, you can email me some of your pictures and will host them for you on my server and post them here.
[email protected]

Edit: I have practically unlimited disk space for storage, so this suggestion is open to all members.


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## Smack

Note: Always pan in a larger catch pan with water so you never lose your material. Never do over a drain.


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## Anonymous

samuel-a said:


> I'm afraid the ceramics will not be affected to a desirable degree (crumbling cookie), the heat will only form defects in entire structure such as cracks...
> But it still be as hard as it was....


I am sorry,I should have specified that the ceramics,get ran in the ball mill,before being leached.


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## patnor1011

Few more pictures as promised of material I started with.


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## patnor1011

And picture of that 1,7g in small 10ml glass vial.


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## patnor1011

I have these but they may require bit different approach - they were marked on box as Au/Pd plating - this is probably plating on pins inside chip. I can get about 3-4 pounds of them.


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## patnor1011

And I have some of these, I did separate them from the rest as I am not sure if there is anything inside. I guess they will be my next experiment.


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## samuel-a

Great pictures Pat.

So.. iv'e setup my mini coal fired kiln for some trial and error.
took a little video to: (better mute your speakers)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuh4HpmR2DM[/youtube]

The fan is rated 12V but for the trial is working on 5V. With the 12V connected, this buster blows all the ash out... haven't figured if it's a good thing or not... :mrgreen: 

Iv'e punched some holes at the bottom of a SS jug so the smoke will exhaust stright into the heat, which i rekon is about 800-900C, enough to bearly smell any burning plastic.




The kiln works as i expected it to, i think i need to make some minor size enhancements to perfect it.
I did notice however, that as the ash build up, it's getting harder to maintain high temp'....

p.s. - Pat, on your last picture, i would expect a very low Au/Pd/Ag yield out of them processors...


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## philddreamer

Very ingenious Samuel! I like it. 8)


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## Anonymous

philddreamer said:


> Very ingenious Samuel! I like it.


I agree.I like the idea of making the vent holes above the bottom,so you don't lose any material.


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## dtectr

samuel-a said:


> Great pictures Pat.
> 
> So.. iv'e setup my mini coal fired kiln for some trial and error.
> took a little video to: (better mute your speakers)
> [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuh4HpmR2DM[/youtube]
> 
> The fan is rated 12V but for the trial is working on 5V. With the 12V connected, this buster blows all the ash out... haven't figured if it's a good thing or not... :mrgreen:
> 
> Iv'e punched some holes at the bottom of a SS jug so the smoke will exhaust stright into the heat, which i rekon is about 800-900C, enough to bearly smell any burning plastic.
> 
> 
> 
> The kiln works as i expected it to, i think i need to make some minor size enhancements to perfect it.
> I did notice however, that as the ash build up, it's getting harder to maintain high temp'....
> 
> p.s. - Pat, on your last picture, i would expect a very low Au/Pd/Ag yield out of them processors...



Based on my own less-than-successful experiments in the past, I believe your combustion process needs oxygen with the IC's, not just with the charcoal.

The charcoal you are using as a fuel source is _created _by burning carbonaceous material (wood, from various and mysterious sources :shock: ) in a reducing (oxygen-free) atmosphere, leaving unburned carbon to use as a more efficient fuel.

if you "burn", "incinerate", "roast", "fricasee'",  8) or "whatever", carbon-based materials (i.e. "plastics", from petroleum products) in a _reducing _atmosphere, you will still wind up with an abundance of carbon, which you actually want to _eliminate_, as it acts as a precipitant, in some cases, and a general pain in the a** in most others.

If you could inject the oxygen/air _into the combustion chamber_, an effect that, I imagine (without proof  ), was created by convection in Pat's hearth/forge/kiln, the results _could _be even better.

just my redneck, uneducated dos centavos.

dtectr


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## samuel-a

dtectr said:


> just my redneck, uneducated dos centavos.



uneducated? :mrgreen: You know what you are talking about Sir 8) 
Everything you said is correct exept that carbon being a reducing agent, in it's elemental state it absorb metals ions, but not reducing them. As far as i know.
Of course there are organic reducing agents (like oxalic acid... ascorbic acid etc'...).

Tough, just to clarify, i did not claim my setup will incinerate(combust) the material, by the contrary, it pyrolyse the material.


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## Geo

after you bake the oils and resins from the plastic the metals are free to be reacted upon by whatever method of your choice to separate the base metal from the gold.the reason you cant just toss the plastic IC packages into a mill is it will gum up after the friction causes heat to rise to the point of melting plastic.once the resins have been baked out you can simply dry shake them in a bucket and the fiberglass will fall apart,after that just put a garden hose in the bucket and allow it to overflow (gently) stir with a suitable utensil (wooden board) and the lighter material like fibers will wash over the top leaving metal in the bottom.


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## rusty

Geo said:


> after you bake the oils and resins from the plastic the metals are free to be reacted upon by whatever method of your choice to separate the base metal from the gold.the reason you cant just toss the plastic IC packages into a mill is it will gum up after the friction causes heat to rise to the point of melting plastic.once the resins have been baked out you can simply dry shake them in a bucket and the fiberglass will fall apart,after that just put a garden hose in the bucket and allow it to overflow (gently) stir with a suitable utensil (wooden board) and the lighter material like fibers will wash over the top leaving metal in the bottom.



Geo you'll find that finely divided metals will float so don't forget to add the soap.


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## patnor1011

yes, you have to first make all material wet - to sink it in bottom. It is good to stir properly as it tend to form balls where dry powder is in middle. When everything is wet then you can start to get rid of junk.
I just prepared 1200g of chips from RAM sticks to try to get some numbers for you guys. Then about 1000g of bigger square chips and about 3 kilos of different types. 
I do not use charcoal, regular hard black coal, well I will do some pictures. I plan to use bottom from floppy drive - it is flat with sides and metal is not thick so it will get red hot quicker.


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## samuel-a

Yes, iv'e been using charcoal, not coal, sorry for the confusion.


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## patnor1011

I hope I will finish all my material this week but I do have some numbers. I did 1 kilogram of chips from RAM sticks only and I have managed to pan out lets say concentrate. It was then put in HNO3 and resulting weight is 1.1g. It is mostly gold but I can see small amount of dark powder there too - very fine crushed ceramic powder. My subjective estimate is that this represent less than 10% of total weight but I will know for sure when I purify and process that in AR. 
Right now I am somehow convinced that yield from all sort of black square flatpacks or chips (all which have more than 16legs) will be in region of 1g for kilogram and slightly more in top black part of green BGA chips with gold corner called south and north bridge. I am trying to put together some kind of handbook with plenty of pictures for download for members as I have a lot of pictures and don't want to increase costs of running this forum by uploading them all here.


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## philddreamer

Thanks for the update Pat!

Phil


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## Claudie

Are you just measuring what you were able to pan out? Wouldn't there still be some Gold left in the ground powder from the packages that you would miss?


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## Geo

one question? if my understanding is right there is gold inside the ceramic substrate itself.doesnt the entire piece have to be turned into fine powder to get all the gold out?


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## Palladium

Could you not just use an ap process, then hcl/clorox, and filter out the ceramic. I do this with smd's. Sure would save all that panning.


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## Barren Realms 007

Geo said:


> one question? if my understanding is right there is gold inside the ceramic substrate itself.doesnt the entire piece have to be turned into fine powder to get all the gold out?



Yes it does.


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## samuel-a

Claudie said:


> Are you just measuring what you were able to pan out? Wouldn't there still be some Gold left in the ground powder from the packages that you would miss?



I was thinking the same thing.

Though, about 1 gram of 1 Kg of chips sounds about right, maybe bit on the lower end of possible yields. but that's a guestimate...
I ran some black IC chips (not RAM) before that produced 0.001% (by mass).


Pat, did you try leacing the panned left over material of the RAM batch with dilute nitric?
I suspect that you will find silver and palladium as well...
Maybe later you could leach with dilute AR to recover when ever gold that slipped the panning.


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## patnor1011

Well, all plastic/ceramic was reduced to powder. Like Rusty said baby powder like. That was pretty much washed away. All what I did - panning was basically separating small gold wires from bigger non magnetic pins. 
When I crushed material and washed that with water all fine plastic/ceramic powder was washed away. Bigger pieces were dried out, crushed and washed again. I repeated this process about 5-6 times to get rid of all plastic, ceramics and glass. Magnetic pins were taken out with magnet, non magnetic separated from gold in pan. I have over kilogram of pins and inside metallic parts. A lot of them are gold plated say about 30% and some appears to be silver plated. Some chips were the same where I had written on box that they (contacts) are Au/Pd plated. I would say that there will be some bits of gold in form of tiny wires still trapped or soldered on ends of pins. 
All this material will be processed later. 
It is questionable which process is more or less time or resources consuming. Washing all that powdered material in acids or getting rid of junk first. I am well aware that some of gold maybe lost while washing but lets say I was very careful when doing so and actually wash-dry-crush material several times. I was taking care to wash it so no gold will be lost. 
Right now I have all gold wires I was able to take out in nitric - there was some amount of broken tiny copper pins mixed with gold and small bit of ceramics/glass. 
Day or two and I will have some numbers for you. I did processed 7 kg of mixed chips. I will decide later for the best process of how to try to extract Au/Ag/Pd from metallic parts from inside of chips.
First two pictures on this page represent sample of what I processed, note that all or lets say 99% of chips were cut from boards therefore without outside pins/legs, not just desoldered and weight was 7 kilograms.


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## patnor1011

I have created some handbook or my story but as I am not really skilled in using word processors I have little problems to scale size of that thing down. In .doc it has well over 100MB and when converted to .pdf it has 41MB - still bit too much. I put a lot of pictures inside but 41MB for 10pages is bit too much. I guess I will have to resize pictures prior to inserting them in document and scaling them down.

*edited
got 2.36MB from 41


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## patnor1011

Feel free to tell me about any mistakes as english is not my first language. 
Hope it is not that bad. I have intention to give all this info free to all forum members and I will put that document on ebay for some small amount to generate some money from which (if I manage to sell some) I will donate to this great forum, and I may get some prize to some contest on forum in future.

*edited spelling and uploaded again

Fellow members, I decided to discontinue free download of my guide upon learning that one forum member stole content and start selling my guide on ebay claiming it is his work. This makes me sick and sad that he is stealing money which were mostly destined to end up as donation for running this forum and to various cases which were brought here by some other members.

*edited again.
Thief will be thief and one day will pay for his deeds. I am not going to take away knowledge which I shared with all of you so here is my guide back where it belong on this forum. Thank you for patience with me today. 6th of August 2012

*edited 10/04/2013
I do have second eBook. This one will not be offered for free, as I try to get as much funds as possible to help Noxx cover cost associated with running this forum. Price is very small, and I think it is worth to pay. Many thousand people benefited from what I gave to community for free already, and I feel great for doing that. It was my way of giving back what I got from here. 
Link to more details about how to get my second eBook here:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=17967


*DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT SELLING MY eBOOKS FOR PROFIT. I DO HAVE THEM COPYRIGHTED AND WILL PURSUE EVERY LEGAL OPTION AVAILABLE IF I WILL FIND SOMEBODY TRY TO GET RICH QUICK SELLING SOMETHING HE DO NOT CREATED OR OWN. I WILL ALSO PURSUE ANY DERIVATIVE WORK IF THIS WILL CONTAIN A SINGLE IMAGE OF MY OWN OR THE SAME LAYOUT. THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING.*


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## philddreamer

Thanks Pat!

Very nice button; how much does it weigh?

Phil


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## rusty

Job well done, grand prize 10.2 gr gold button.


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## jpdriver1

thank you Patnor --- I've downloaded your guide and will memorize it --- 8)


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## Claudie

Very nice PDF! Thank you for taking the time to put this together. I have not read it all yet, but so far it looks great!


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## Palladium

That is very nice Pat.


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## butcher

Great Job patnor1011, 

Very understandable, I have no problem reading your English.
I just seen a few misspelled words, maybe one of our members good with computers can help with that.
Beautiful gold.
8)


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## micronationcreation

Thankyou Patnor, I'm currently processing 1kg of RAM chips and this helps alot


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## hfywc

excellent! thanks for sharing... alan.

the only thing that i would like to suggest(if i may), is to seperate the the gold legged ics from the start so that we don't have to sort it out later on. other than that-- everything is perfect!


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## kuma

Hi all , how are tricks today ?
I hope all is well!
Patnor , I just wanted to say that I have downloaded and read through your PDF and it's spot on!
It's very well written , clear , consise , and straight to the point , thank you! :mrgreen: 
All the best and kind regards ,
Chris


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## glondor

Very nice job Patnor. your PDF is excellent and your button looks great!


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## recycleordie

patnor1011 said:


> Well, all plastic/ceramic was reduced to powder. Like Rusty said baby powder like. That was pretty much washed away. All what I did - panning was basically separating small gold wires from bigger non magnetic pins.
> When I crushed material and washed that with water all fine plastic/ceramic powder was washed away. Bigger pieces were dried out, crushed and washed again. I repeated this process about 5-6 times to get rid of all plastic, ceramics and glass. Magnetic pins were taken out with magnet, non magnetic separated from gold in pan. I have over kilogram of pins and inside metallic parts. A lot of them are gold plated say about 30% and some appears to be silver plated. Some chips were the same where I had written on box that they (contacts) are Au/Pd plated. I would say that there will be some bits of gold in form of tiny wires still trapped or soldered on ends of pins.
> All this material will be processed later.
> It is questionable which process is more or less time or resources consuming. Washing all that powdered material in acids or getting rid of junk first. I am well aware that some of gold maybe lost while washing but lets say I was very careful when doing so and actually wash-dry-crush material several times. I was taking care to wash it so no gold will be lost.
> Right now I have all gold wires I was able to take out in nitric - there was some amount of broken tiny copper pins mixed with gold and small bit of ceramics/glass.
> Day or two and I will have some numbers for you. I did processed 7 kg of mixed chips. I will decide later for the best process of how to try to extract Au/Ag/Pd from metallic parts from inside of chips.
> First two pictures on this page represent sample of what I processed, note that all or lets say 99% of chips were cut from boards therefore without outside pins/legs, not just desoldered and weight was 7 kilograms.


Hi patnor, that was great reading your process, I have seen it done in a similar way, i quite fancy pulverising the flat packs myself, i think you still have more gold to find, i would love to no exactly how much gold you eventually recovered? i think the guy who recycled ussr computers is talking about me with the 250kg ram, i have actually got more than this and i am receiving around 200kg per month, my point is it doesnt really matter what you get out , it is what it is, hope you agree. :lol: ]


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## patnor1011

Yes, there must be more than I got still there. I mean - my button was made only from wires which become lose after pulverizing chips. There must be still enough small pieces attached to metallic parts from inside like pieces of that wire, plating.... Well I did not finished them yet.


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## recycleordie

patnor1011 said:


> Yes, there must be more than I got still there. I mean - my button was made only from wires which become lose after pulverizing chips. There must be still enough small pieces attached to metallic parts from inside like pieces of that wire, plating.... Well I did not finished them yet.



I would like to see you smelt your left overs and make a small dior bar, just to keep things all tidy for now.

I plan on milling my complete ram sticks.


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## bobinpasask

Hey guys. Just wanted to add my two cents to all the praise for the extra effort guys like patnor and Steve go to in providing ideas and tutorials so the rest of us can learn. Well done Pat on the information provided.

I noticed that you were doing the flat packs by hand and wanted to just say it out loud about the small machine that I use for removing flatpacks. It may not interest some but there are others who may not have the time to do it all by hand and would like to see an idea.. I use an electric tool called a "multi-purpose ocillating tool. It has a flat blade about 1 1/2" wide and runs at 21,000 oscillations per minute (opm).
By using the tool I can do a ram card (where there are NO legs on the flatpacks) in about 2 seconds and the flatpacks with legs on a ram card takes between 3-4 seconds. After about 20 flatpacks, you can see the build-up of legs on the table, so it is accomplishing some of what Pat was wanting in getting rid of the legs during this process but I would have to agree that it doesn't get rid of ALL the legs. Still, it is lopping off probably 50% of them in the process of cutting the flatpack away from the card. 

If you could get a 1" or 1 1/4" blade (sightly narrower than my current 1and 1/2" blade) it might work better. It seems when I slip a bit when getting started on each card, I sometimes slip over the gold foils and trim a bit off by mistake. Just need to get steadier in my use of the tool.

Please be careful to wear gloves as always and understand that this tool can cut your finger inside the glove without actually cutting the leather glove. Also wear safety goggles with any automatic machine because some of the "stuff" flys off the board a bit and you will want to still have your sight for the next batch tomorrow.

Hope this is helpful to some of you out there.


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## khaosodensland

hey where can i find the pdf, is this a process for refining gold from old scrap electronics?


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## jimdoc

khaosodensland said:


> hey where can i find the pdf, is this a process for refining gold from old scrap electronics?



This one?;
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827&start=40#p118511

Jim


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## khaosodensland

patnor, excellent process! can you make a video, step by step procedure, it woukld really help us who have never experimented wit this suff and would like to mess around. that would be awesome!


----------



## philddreamer

Pat, I finally got a chance yesterday to give incenarating a chance. I read the information that you've shared & also Samuel's & Kuma's. 

I'll be posting the steps & also some pic's, thus sharing what I experienced thru the process.
I used of the B-B-Q's we don't use, (we have 2 more), fired up the charcoal & also a propane torch. After close to an hour they were ready for the mortar.

The pic is from 1.4# of ram chips.

Thank you & take care!

Phil


----------



## khaosodensland

thanks jim, i had to become a member to see it i guess...appreciate it very much!


----------



## khaosodensland

can nayone reccomend a detailed step by step video tutorial with everything i would need to know and take into account. im new at this and am trying to do research beofre i try anything, safety precautions etc... thank you!


----------



## jimdoc

khaosodensland said:


> can nayone reccomend a detailed step by step video tutorial with everything i would need to know and take into account. im new at this and am trying to do research beofre i try anything, safety precautions etc... thank you!



Lazer Steve has videos on his site, and DVD's for sale;
http://goldrecovery.us/pricing.asp

Samuel has videos on his site;
http://www.goldnscrap.com/

Jim


----------



## patnor1011

Well I am not skilled enough to make videos, that is why I just put pictures there. Well to be fair I have to say that I did this but some credit should go to Rusty and NoIdea gents who pretty much started it and I discussed on how to do it with Sucho. So I take it as collective effort. Anyone who will use this can contribute with his observations and we will perfect it in no time.


----------



## Geo

philddreamer said:


> Pat, I finally got a chance yesterday to give incenarating a chance. I read the information that you've shared & also Samuel's & Kuma's.
> 
> I'll be posting the steps & also some pic's, thus sharing what I experienced thru the process.
> I used of the B-B-Q's we don't use, (we have 2 more), fired up the charcoal & also a propane torch. After close to an hour they were ready for the mortar.
> 
> The pic is from 1.4# of ram chips.
> 
> Thank you & take care!
> 
> Phil



hey phil,

did you get a yield on those chips in the picture?even roughly.


----------



## philddreamer

Geo, I'm in the process of decanting the second boil of that material. Reaction stopped, so I'll be rinsing & then running it thru AR next. 
I have another process going, 13 gold plated cards in AP.

Got back a while ago, it was our 43rd wedding anniversary; so I'm heading outback, need to catch up with the processes.

When I finish the incenarated batch, I'll post the results & more pic's.

Thanks for the interest.

Phil


----------



## Geo

im not sure whether it will help, but I've had an idea (boy did it give me a headache) :lol: . since hcl and nitrate is relatively inexpensive, i was considering using poor mans AR to remove the legs from the IC's before incineration.this would quickly remove alot of unwanted metal before the process even begins and because your incinerating anyway there's no problem moving to AP to remove more unwanted metal after incineration.just trying to nail down a process that can be the quickest and least troublesome.


----------



## Smack

43rd? Whole smokes man, congrats on the marathon hehe. Thought it was cool making it to 20th. I worship you Phil, your my idol.


----------



## philddreamer

Geo, I think that would add more time to the process & create for me more chemical waste... & there's a lot more unwanted metal inside. 

Thank you Smack!
Well. when I got married, I knew it was "life without parole", but thought I could get "out" after 25 years, for good behaviour. Well, so much for that...
so, she threw away the key!!! :roll: :mrgreen: 
Seriously, we've had good times & bad times, (because of my 18 years of heavy drinking & drugs  ), but she stuck in there! I've been clean since 2000 & with NO cravings! She's the champ!!! 8)


----------



## cnbarr

philddreamer said:


> Seriously, we've had good times & bad times, (because of my 18 years of heavy drinking & drugs  ), but she stuck in there! I've been clean since 2000 & with NO cravings!



I have more in common with you than I thought Phil, I too have been drug free since 2000, and had a tough lady that stuck with me through it all! Although I still enjoy a cocktail, but drinking has never been a vise for me.

A tip of the hat to you sir, I admire your strength and perseverance!


----------



## Smack

Ha, you guys look 43.....did ya'll get married at birth?


----------



## Palladium

Congratulations Phil !!!!!!
On all of it.


----------



## Claudie

Congratulations Phil !

I haven't said much on this thread but I too am interested in the final yields. Just because we're silent, doesn't mean we're not watching.... :|


----------



## Geo

Phil,

i have to hand it to you buddy.you don't look anywhere close to sixty years old,i can only hope to look as fit as you do in another 10 years.

congrats on the anniversary, my wife and i are coming up on our 28th anniversary.

theres nothing like knowing that theres another person in this world that no matter what happens will never turn their back on you and i hope that it last for you and your wife forever and ever.


----------



## glondor

Cmon Phil, Is that pic 20 years old?  Congrats on the recovery. All of it. You and your wife look great. Cheers to 12 years Phil. Hats off to you. And your sidekick. Cheers Mike........Now about those results......  Post when you can.


----------



## kuma

Hello all!
How are tricks today? I hope all is well!
Phil , I just wanted to also congratulate you on your 43rd wedding anniversary!
Nice work on the chips too! 8) 
All the very best and kind regards for now ,
Chris :mrgreen:


----------



## butcher

philddreamer, 

I too have much interest in your posts, but try not to clutter the thread.

Congratulations on surviving 43 year's, you are truly lucky to find a good woman, take good care of her, and remember she put up with you through hard time's now it may be your turn, I am wishing you both another 43 years of happiness together.

I have only been married 36 years, so I cannot really give you any advice, but from my experience we cannot get off on good behavior, as we have not had enough years of (Good) behavior yet. :twisted:


----------



## kadriver

I know what chips are, but what is a flatpack?


----------



## kadriver

Sorry, I found what it is after doing a search:

flatpack - technical definition

A plastic, square surface mount chip package that contains leads (pins) on all four sides that extend straight outward. The leads are bent and cut for the specific application.

kadriver


----------



## jimdoc

Bye Spammer.

Quite right!
Thanks, Jim.

Harold


----------



## Geo

interesting link in your signature line. there is a Kitco ticker showing spot prices at the bottom of the page. is that a news channel in pakistan?


----------



## Geo

im not sure its spam.


----------



## jimdoc

Geo said:


> im not sure its spam.



I bet that it is. 

If it isn't its his day job, and he forgot to stop posting like a spammer when he got here.
Generic statement along with hot link within 10 minutes of joining is usually a bad sign.

Jim


----------



## Claudie

philddreamer said:


> Pat, I finally got a chance yesterday to give incenarating a chance. I read the information that you've shared & also Samuel's & Kuma's.
> 
> I'll be posting the steps & also some pic's, thus sharing what I experienced thru the process.
> I used of the B-B-Q's we don't use, (we have 2 more), fired up the charcoal & also a propane torch. After close to an hour they were ready for the mortar.
> 
> The pic is from 1.4# of ram chips.
> 
> Thank you & take care!
> 
> Phil




Is that a stainless steel wash basin that you are using to hold the IC packages?


----------



## philddreamer

Hi Claudie!



> Is that a stainless steel wash basin that you are using to hold the IC packages?



No, it's a porcelain coated pan. After putting the chips in my S.S. I noticed the chips were stacked up in it, so I decide to use something with more flat area. It worked good. I tried the other day the S.S. bowl, & I was right, the chips take longer to incinerate. I like to spread them out on a flat surface with more area. 

Phil


----------



## Claudie

Thank you for clarifying that for me. Sometimes it's hard to know for sure what something is by looking at the pictures.
The weather is warming up here so maybe I can get out and try some of this on my own.


----------



## gmiller

"Geo"said: "since hcl and nitrate is relatively inexpensive, i was considering using poor mans AR to remove the legs from the IC's before incineration.this would quickly remove alot of unwanted metal before the process even begins and because your incinerating anyway there's no problem moving to AP to remove more unwanted metal after incineration.just trying to nail down a process that can be the quickest and least troublesome."

Why bother with AR to remove your unwanted metals, when HCL alone will do the same thing with less expense? You can stll move on to Ap straight from HCL since HCL is a componant of AP. 

Just my thoughts on the process.

BTW a great post, thanks

Gary


----------



## patnor1011

Time-wise AR is faster than HCl. Since I am pedant and have all the time in a world for my hobby I cut them by stainless blade - the one used for carpets. It is quick and remove unwanted metal too. :lol:


----------



## Geo

gmiller said:


> "Geo"said: "since hcl and nitrate is relatively inexpensive, i was considering using poor mans AR to remove the legs from the IC's before incineration.this would quickly remove alot of unwanted metal before the process even begins and because your incinerating anyway there's no problem moving to AP to remove more unwanted metal after incineration.just trying to nail down a process that can be the quickest and least troublesome."
> 
> Why bother with AR to remove your unwanted metals, when HCL alone will do the same thing with less expense? You can stll move on to Ap straight from HCL since HCL is a componant of AP.
> 
> Just my thoughts on the process.
> 
> BTW a great post, thanks
> 
> Gary


 
when im dealing with many pounds of material, i like to remove as much base metal as quickly as possible. the legs on the IC chips is a large percentage of the base metal weight. by using a small amount of hcl and sodium nitrate, i can remove almost half of my base metal weight in a matter of a couple of hours. then when i incinerate the chips it removes all traces of the nitrates and leaves me with just the metal inside the chip to deal with. about 90% of the chips i have may have tin plated legs but have gold plating inside the plastic body excluding bonding wires and pad. everyone has their own style and preferences with which process works for them and for me, well, this keeps my solution nice and clean with alot less copper and tin to deal with.


----------



## Anonymous

bobinpasask said:


> I use an electric tool called a "multi-purpose ocillating tool. It has a flat blade about 1 1/2" wide and runs at 21,000 oscillations per minute (opm).
> By using the tool I can do a ram card (where there are NO legs on the flatpacks) in about 2 seconds and the flatpacks with legs on a ram card takes between 3-4 seconds. After about 20 flatpacks, you can see the build-up of legs on the table, so it is accomplishing some of what Pat was wanting in getting rid of the legs during this process but I would have to agree that it doesn't get rid of ALL the legs. Still, it is lopping off probably 50% of them in the process of cutting the flatpack away from the card.
> 
> If you could get a 1" or 1 1/4" blade (sightly narrower than my current 1and 1/2" blade) it might work better. It seems when I slip a bit when getting started on each card, I sometimes slip over the gold foils and trim a bit off by mistake. Just need to get steadier in my use of the tool.
> 
> Please be careful to wear gloves as always and understand that this tool can cut your finger inside the glove without actually cutting the leather glove. Also wear safety goggles with any automatic machine because some of the "stuff" flys off the board a bit and you will want to still have your sight for the next batch tomorrow.
> 
> Hope this is helpful to some of you out there.



Is the tool here what could be used:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Genesis-GMT15A-Multi-Purpose-Oscillating-Tool-/140596646500?pt=Small_Kitchen_Appliances_US&hash=item20bc369264


Thanks


----------



## patnor1011

testerman said:


> bobinpasask said:
> 
> 
> 
> I use an electric tool called a "multi-purpose ocillating tool. It has a flat blade about 1 1/2" wide and runs at 21,000 oscillations per minute (opm).
> By using the tool I can do a ram card (where there are NO legs on the flatpacks) in about 2 seconds and the flatpacks with legs on a ram card takes between 3-4 seconds. After about 20 flatpacks, you can see the build-up of legs on the table, so it is accomplishing some of what Pat was wanting in getting rid of the legs during this process but I would have to agree that it doesn't get rid of ALL the legs. Still, it is lopping off probably 50% of them in the process of cutting the flatpack away from the card.
> 
> If you could get a 1" or 1 1/4" blade (sightly narrower than my current 1and 1/2" blade) it might work better. It seems when I slip a bit when getting started on each card, I sometimes slip over the gold foils and trim a bit off by mistake. Just need to get steadier in my use of the tool.
> 
> Please be careful to wear gloves as always and understand that this tool can cut your finger inside the glove without actually cutting the leather glove. Also wear safety goggles with any automatic machine because some of the "stuff" flys off the board a bit and you will want to still have your sight for the next batch tomorrow.
> 
> Hope this is helpful to some of you out there.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Is the tool here what could be used:
> 
> http://www.ebay.com/itm/Genesis-GMT15A-Multi-Purpose-Oscillating-Tool-/140596646500?pt=Small_Kitchen_Appliances_US&hash=item20bc369264
> 
> 
> Thanks
Click to expand...


We are looking for method which will make process faster and eliminate some hazards. I do have a lot of time so some of my methods are suitable for smaller lots. I did say few times that I cut chips off board with blade which reduce unwanted metal to some extent but it is time consuming. Not applicable for older chips with less legs which are thicker unless you are some kind of bodybuilder 
I was thinking that maybe heatgun for desoldering them and then they can be placed to some type of SSN leach to cut on chemicals cost - salt is not that expensive. Maybe saturated salt solution with HNO3 ratio 10:1 and legs will be dissolved with values inside chip untouched. Then rinse and pyrolysis-incineration. I will do some tests with different SSN leach ratios next week.


----------



## Claudie

I have one of these: http://www.harborfreight.com/plastic-welding-kit-with-adjustable-temperature-96464.html

I have never used it to depopulate boards before but I saw it on the work bench the other day and thought "Hey, that would work to melt the solder and remove surface mount devices!". I don't have electricity in the shop yet so I will have to wait until it dries up and warms up here a little to try it. :|


----------



## acpeacemaker

I was going to post this a while back and didn't get the chance. It's somewhat crude but does work. Made from concrete with a couple of 3 gallon buckets. The outer wall sits on shims to allow the coal to breathe. Then the pot sits directly on the coals leaving a little over a half inch gap around the rim to breathe. Coals are put in the pot as well. I haven't ever really had any problems with plastic smells and I live 3 houses down from a fire chief. Anyways, I just wanted to say thank you to the people like Pat and Sam, and many others that have inspired me. -Andrew


----------



## Acid_Bath76

Yesterday I ashed out a very very small amount of IC's. I've been collecting IC's for a while now, and just throw them all in a large bucket as I strip material. I picked seven or eight different looking IC's for some variety, and fired up the BBQ pit. The BBQ pit has been promoted to the designated IC burnout pit. The IC's weighed in at a meager 34.2g after incineration, and the mass includes the ash. I do not have yield data yet.


----------



## Geo

thats a dirty solution. did you reprocess?


----------



## patnor1011

Acid_Bath76 said:


> Yesterday I ashed out a very very small amount of IC's. I've been collecting IC's for a while now, and just throw them all in a large bucket as I strip material. I picked seven or eight different looking IC's for some variety, and fired up the BBQ pit. The BBQ pit has been promoted to the designated IC burnout pit. The IC's weighed in at a meager 34.2g after incineration, and the mass includes the ash. I do not have yield data yet, but the attached picture is really exciting. I was not expecting this. *Patnor recovered around 10g from 14kg*, so I was expecting a little dust if anything. Something tells me I didn't do something right. The only thing I did differently was avoid moving the material as much as possible. Because the wires and garnish are so tiny, I gave the cooked IC's a good shake and ran a magnet through the material. Filled the beaker with cold water, gave it a good stir to expose as much as possible, let the goods settle, and then carefully poured off as much fluid as I could without potentially losing any material. I processed the material in poor man's AR, and the pic was taken after de-noxing, and precipitation. I forgot to mention, I tested with stannous, and it tested positive for Au. I'm curious what you think. I'm still scratching my head.



It was actually 10,2g from 7 kilograms chips and that 10,2g comes from lose bonding wire only. All metallic parts and pins from inside with gold plating, some Ag and Pd are still being processed unfortunately I chose slow method - they sit in plastic jar in small bit of water slowly rusting out


----------



## Acid_Bath76

Woops. Sorry Patnor. My numbers were off. As for the solution. Yes, it is pretty dirty, but I can work with that. Once the precipitant has settled, I'll clean the powders and see what I'm left with. Since that last picture was taken, a lot more has settled. After cleaning the powders, the yield is still somewhat inflated. I'm going to check this out a little more before I post anything else.


----------



## Dude4ever

Hi patnor, just a little question to your guide, I've read this post and your PDF guide, but I could not find if you just pour out the water from the washes or doing something else, leaving the heavier gold at the bottom? I mean, it is a pretty grey/dark solution, so how is it you control that you don't pour out gold with the washes?  Sorry if it's adressed here somewhere, I could have missed it, but nice if you could explain the washes a little more


----------



## patnor1011

Most of gold in there is in form of bonding wires. Say over 90%. Rest is as plating on pins and plating on silicone chip. I think that there may be some super fine flakes or powder from crushed silicone chip and they may float or take too long to settle but that may be so tiny amount not worth chasing so yes, I do pour that water away as it is just what it is - dirty stained water. If you adjust flow correctly then you can be sure that you pour off water and dirt only and wires and small flakes stays at bottom. That is like first cleaning, second is bit harder, your panning technique must be pretty good as single pieces of wire are barely visible, only when accumulated and you want to separate them from metallic pins.


----------



## Dude4ever

Cool, thanks 
So I should wait a couple of minutes for the gold to settle between washes? What if you use a second container that you pour the washes into, and let that stand over night, and then siphon off much of the excess water and wash it like before, maybe you can find some more gold without too much effort?


----------



## patnor1011

I dont know, purpose of washing is to get rid of ashes so if you leave it stand all night it just settle down and you did not washed anything. I am thinking about using blue bowl for washing. Particles of gold chipped away from silicone waffer are minuscule to be worth chasing for. I am happy with gold from bonding wires and plating on pins from inside.


----------



## Scraprat

Great information, can't wait to try my hand at incinerating some chips.

Will this method work on connectors i.e. ram slots, ribbon cable on mother boards?


----------



## qst42know

Chips are low in polymers and high in fillers. Other plastic composites such as mother boards and connectors will not burn so tamely. If you start a board on fire it will get ugly fast. Loads of soot and toxins.


----------



## Scraprat

Thanks Gst42, I was just looking for an easier way.


----------



## butcher

Scraprat, 
We all have looked for an easier way, people for thousands of years have searched and experimented, many spent lifetimes not finding a way that would work, but found a lifetime of things that would not work, , that is how the processes have come about, through much trial and errors, some of these processes have developed over century's of trials and errors, so studying how to perform the processes that are proven to work you can save yourself many errors others have learned how not to do it, and how to do it in ways that do work, unless you have many years to spend trying to find out what does not work, I feel a person is much better of learning what does work.

A scientist would learn first the how the reaction works, before he experimented with the unknown, or tried to tweak the procedure, this way when he got different results from a small change he made to the experiment he would have an understanding of why his results did not work when he made minor changes, he would also notice if his changes were improvement to the reaction or not.

If this scientist knew nothing about the reaction, or how the experiment was performed, and just tried things he did not understand first (before he learned how to do the process), he would have no idea of what he was seeing in the reaction if it was an improvement or a failure.

If a person wants to learn how to build an airplane and learn to fly it, he would do best from learning from the mistakes of others that have tried for centuries to learn how build planes and to fly, and learn from these people who tried this before him, and can show him what works and what does not work, before he jumped of the cliff in the airplane he thought would be easier to build and to fly.


----------



## evL

Hello Folks, 

Well what a read! Great Thread! I have to thank Geo for pointing this thread out to me. 
I got a lot of information indeed. Great job Patnor1011, thanks for this information and 
by the way your .pdf is very well done and handy. 



patnor1011 said:


> I need to find out way or place where I can upload original size of pictures. When I took these they were over 5MB each.



I wanted to mention to you Patnor1011, I have PILES of server space so if you ever run 
into the situation of needing to up load large files to share with others let me know. Be 
it pictures, video, or whatever. Free of course... 

evL 

[][][]


----------



## joered

Im just getting started in the learning process of scraping electronics. Ive been watching everyones posts and am highly impressed at how u guys get along. I live in the middle of the US and don't know anyone out here that is into this. So I am trying to learn on my own. If anyone has any advice on what or where Should start it would be highly valued. Thank u


----------



## Palladium

Welcome to the forum!


----------



## philddreamer

Welcome!

Here is one good place:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=796

Take care!

Phil


----------



## crow king

I just weighed 8oz of gold cornered flatpacks and put them into a HCL wash to remove some of the solder on the bottom. I noticed no reaction and intend to now incinerate. Is the solder on there something to be wary of? 

I also had a handfull of gold cornered flatpacks that had monolithics attached to them, as well as a metal heat sink or such attached, do you know what metal this is? Do you process all these together or separate? Is there any contaminating metals that frequent these parts that I should watch for?


----------



## maynman1751

crow king said:


> I just weighed 8oz of gold cornered flatpacks and put them into a HCL wash to remove some of the solder on the bottom. I noticed no reaction and intend to now incinerate. Is the solder on there something to be wary of?
> 
> I also had a handfull of gold cornered flatpacks that had monolithics attached to them, as well as a metal heat sink or such attached, do you know what metal this is? Do you process all these together or separate? Is there any contaminating metals that frequent these parts that I should watch for?



Heat your solution some. It will dissolve the solder right off!
Flatpacks with monolithics and heatsinks ????? Are you sure they are not CPU's? Post a pic.


----------



## patnor1011

He is right, I found quite few of them it is aluminium round piece inside that black plastic part. I have no problem with them as it is easy to separate that after chip is incinerated/pyrolyse`d.

The ones with square heatsink attached - well you can detach that with some heat applied or use chisel or knife.

*edited - pictures attached


----------



## maynman1751

Patnor! Do you consider the one with the square heatsink a flatpack? I was under the impression that real flatpacks were like n/s bridge chips. Isn't the square heatsink one some sort of processor? But then again, I suppose the n/s bridge are processors of a sort too!
I haven't yet run across one like that ATI.


----------



## Geo

north and south bridge chips are processors. flatpacks are normally SMD that are square or rectangle. though the terminology has changed and been corrupted through word of mouth, today flatpacks can be any package that has more than ten legs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northbridge_(computing)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpack_(electronics)


----------



## patnor1011

I reacted to Crowking - I posted pictures about what I think he is dealing with. 
I generally consider every black square chip with more than 8 legs as flatpack and I separate them in 2 categories. Well that is just my method. All thin ones with thin legs like the ones on RAM sticks are in one, thick ones with thick legs are in second category. Black parts from noth and south bridges (ball grid array) chips are cream for me as they do not contain metallic parts inside only some of them like that ATI pictured do have that heat sink type of metal attached. They are easier to process. Lately I started to remove Si wafer from inside as it is harder to grind and when it is in small pieces grinding become harder. It is easier to remove that right after pyrolysis before I start to grind burned chip housing.

Chips pictured with square heatsink well they are BGA type chips they usually do have some monolythics attached and I do not process them yet. I just toss them in a box and I will decide later what to do with them, they maybe end up on ebay - I do not see much value inside but I may be wrong.


----------



## patnor1011

Tomorrow I will try to make some pictures of concentrates (material after initial pyrolysis and grinding and washing with water).
1. will be just black top parts from n/s bridges
2. will be from all other flatpacks 
3. same as No2 but with Si wafers removed prior grinding

I always do it like this: burn / grind / water wash / dry / grind again / water wash / hot Nitric wash / AR
I remove all magnetic pins after first grind and most of non magnetic too by using sieve. Whatever non magnetic is left is usually dissolved in hot Nitric wash later.

*edited pictures added


----------



## EPhantom

Hello, I'm new to the forums and to refining/recycling of electrical components. I am currently just starting to collect parts and probably won't get into refining for a year or two. One thing that confuses me about this topic is the definition of "Flatpack". It appears that everyone is being selective of which IC's they include in this category for gold recovery (primarily computer IC's in specific locations), but at the same time nobody has actually said that not all IC's have gold. So... is a "Flatpack" a specific type of Integrated Circuit, or do all IC's have gold in them and I am just misunderstanding?

I mean, could I take an op-amp from a speaker system, or a 555 timer from some random circuits and expect there to be gold in it?


----------



## patnor1011

Maybe and maybe not. That is why I collect any chip with more than 8 legs. I have found gold in chips with pins on two sides too, generally consensus here is that we call (or at least me in this thread) flatpack all black chips with more than 8 pins. 
I separate them in 3 cat similar like Geo is doing:
1. low yield - rectangular chips with legs/pins on two sides, eprom like plastic/resin type (less than 1g/kg)
2. middle yield - all square and rectangular with pins on all 4 sides and 2 sides pin chips from ram (1-4g/kg)
3. high yield - black top parts from south and north bridge BGA type chips from motherboards and video cards (5+g/kg)

I have just processed about everything I had but I might find some and I will try to take few pictures.


----------



## notchormama

If my calculations are correct after reading this Very informative post , at today's Gold Price of 1666.50 per troy ounce , 1Lb of Chips = roughly $35.00 USD . This is based on the 10.3 Grams Gold from 7Kg / 15.4 Lbs of chips . I wonder how many gold bearing chips like those discussed here , were attached to "mid-grade green board" or even some "low grade brown board" that I have sold for 30 and 10 cents a pound at the local scrap yard ?? 
The same concern applies to the other PMs found on "30 cent green board" such as the Palladium in the Monolithic capacitors , and who knows what else ? Just thought I would share my little "Ah-Ha Moment " .


----------



## Palladium

Welcome to the forum!


----------



## patnor1011

Good point.
One start thinking. Another thing is that that was not all gold what was in there. I still do have all legs from inside of those IC chips and I can say that there is some nice amount in there too. So I would not say that 35$/lb but a bit more. 35 can be a rough estimate, it all depend on what is in your mix. Some chips do have more bonding wires some less.
I will try upload another pictures, it was pain to take them. I was thinking about that very small IC chips I was lazy to take out until recently when I took few of them, incinerated and whoa - they had gold bonding wires too. I am talking about very small cca 2mmx3mm with 3 legs on both sides. :lol:


----------



## notchormama

Just a little info , I just posted some figures ( read "fuzzy math" lol ) , regarding the value of a 3com PCI NIC card . Included is the flatpack weighing 5 grams , and based on the $35.00 a lb figure , that's 38.63 cents for one measly chip !

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=15361&p=155473#p155473


----------



## Random

interesting


----------



## patnor1011

Small IC Chips, 6 legs - three on each side. I thought a waste of time to collect from boards or floor, well gold is where you find it...


----------



## notchormama

That is an eye opener . I guess I have lost alot of money selling green board for 30 cents a pound to the local scrapyard . These types of chips are on many of those "mid-grade" boards . The Monolithic Capacitors and the palladium within are on many of those as well . Of course , the money takes a little "elbow grease" to get it out , but with your method , I have big plans :mrgreen: .


----------



## ericrm

0,30$ lbs ??? you should look on the forum to see who is around you, you might find a better paying person...


----------



## patnor1011

I do "recycle" even power supply boards. Aluminum, copper and 2+ grams of monolythics and resistors. Also some of them do have IC chip in there. Same with small boards from back of lcd screens. Fingers are poor but they are there and many capacitors, resistors and some IC chips too. I tend to start thinking that most of PM value on board is hidden from plain view.


----------



## patnor1011

Now I only need to find economical and fast method - how to separate aluminum from the rest from wet capacitors. :mrgreen: :arrow: :idea: :|


----------



## Palladium

Not sure what you mean Pat, but NaOh will eat Al quiet quickly.


----------



## patnor1011

I was joking. When I finish up with board the only thing which will remain on it are capacitors - the round ones, I believe they are called wet capacitors or electrolytic capacitors. They are aluminum tubes covered with plastic and inside there is some paper/cotton something with some electrolyte. 
I hate to throw away aluminum, no matter how small at the end of the day it all add up.


----------



## joem

patnor1011 said:


> Maybe and maybe not. That is why I collect any chip with more than 8 legs. I have found gold in chips with pins on two sides too, generally consensus here is that we call (or at least me in this thread) flatpack all black chips with more than 8 pins.
> I separate them in 3 cat similar like Geo is doing:
> 1. low yield - rectangular chips with legs/pins on two sides, eprom like plastic/resin type (less than 1g/kg)
> 2. middle yield - all square and rectangular with pins on all 4 sides and 2 sides pin chips from ram (1-4g/kg)
> 3. high yield - black top parts from south and north bridge BGA type chips from motherboards and video cards (5+g/kg)
> 
> I have just processed about everything I had but I might find some and I will try to take few pictures.



Hey Patrik
Did you get some pictures of your low, middle, and high grade?


----------



## patnor1011

No Joe, but I can do some in next 2-3 days. Little bit busy in work and on my last project. I recently processed nice lot of southbridge BGA IC chipsets (flatpacks) for one member. It was 1336 g precisely (2.94lb)
I did that like I wrote in by eBook but slightly changed my method and at the end I produced nice healthy 7,1 g little beauty, which was sent to owner. 
Enjoy pictures.

hmmm we really need to come to some conclusion on how to call different type of IC chips :|


----------



## oldgeek

Pat,
I have been following your work on this for a long time , and I have to give you credit, you are a MAJOR contributor to this forum. Thanks for all of the information, and hard work.

I have a question on yields. In your last post, you processed 1336g of (mostly) southbridge type BGA's for a recovery of 7.1g
Did that include both parts of that type of chip? I know you process the tops, and the bottoms separately. Is that correct? Do you have any yield figures for recovery of the tops only?

Oh yeah, Are you gonna tell us how you tweaked you process? :wink: 

Thanks,
Scotty


----------



## patnor1011

Well thanks 
If major contributor then perhaps in this thread and this particular process - that is what I can agree with. :lol: 
My number of posts show that many times I talked when I should be quiet but I am trying to stay cool and do not react to everything. 
Yes, yield is 7.1g from 1336g of whole IC chips, top and bottom part. From my observation I can say that bottom part with visible plating will not be more than 5% of all gold recovered. I mean it is so little that perhaps it will be wiser to list it on eBay than actually try to recover that gold. I was trying to recover gold as foils to have final weight from this bottom part but I must admit that I resigned trying to leach it out as foil when it was in Nitric for 5 days and about 30% of foils still attached. At that point I just put all that in AR.

I do have about pound of s/n bridges so I may do some additional math where I will try to find out what % of that 1336g was top and bottom part so in that way you can get answer about yield from top part only.


----------



## butcher

patnor1011, 
I also feel you have been a major contributor to the success of this forum, I have liked reading what you have had to say, (although I do not always join into the conversation to say so) and I like that picture of the gold button above it shows you know what you are talking about.


----------



## oldgeek

patnor1011 said:


> Well thanks
> If major contributor then perhaps in this thread and this particular process - that is what I can agree with. :lol:
> My number of posts show that many times I talked when I should be quiet but I am trying to stay cool and do not react to everything.
> Yes, yield is 7.1g from 1336g of whole IC chips, top and bottom part. From my observation I can say that bottom part with visible plating will not be more than 5% of all gold recovered. I mean it is so little that perhaps it will be wiser to list it on eBay than actually try to recover that gold. I was trying to recover gold as foils to have final weight from this bottom part but I must admit that I resigned trying to leach it out as foil when it was in Nitric for 5 days and about 30% of foils still attached. At that point I just put all that in AR.
> 
> I do have about pound of s/n bridges so I may do some additional math where I will try to find out what % of that 1336g was top and bottom part so in that way you can get answer about yield from top part only.



I have been collecting this type of chip quite a while now, I separate them as I get them. The tops go in one bag, and the bottoms go in another bag. So far I have 260g of tops, and 330g of bottoms, which equals 590g total. I am sure the results of weights of the tops verses bottoms could vary GREATLY depending on the way the chips are removed from the boards, and how much solder came along with the chip. I remove mine mechanically, and a lot of solder usually comes off with them. I also noticed that most of the top layer of fiber sticks to the top part when the chips are separated.
I will just keep on collecting them until i am ready to try your process out. 8) 

I have also been thinking about processing the resulting ashes with a flux/collector in a smelting setup and pouring the lot in a cone mold. (I don't have a furnace though)

(edit for typo)


----------



## Geo

the gold foils on the green base will come off and stay stuck to the top if you just rip them off leaving the green bottom virtually worthless. the best way to separate the top and bottom is to heat the top (not the green base) until the top pops loose. you will see it when it happens. until i started using a heat gun, i just layed them with the top down on my single electric burner until the green base popped up.


----------



## xALmoN

So how are the chips removed from the PCBs?

Heatgun? Geo's sandbath method? The heatgun method sounds painfully slow and tedious though.


----------



## Geo

after the gun heats up (well, mine at least) the end is almost glowing. it only takes a few seconds for any components to come loose. keep in mind that a heat gun works good if you have a few pounds of material to work.the sandbath is only cost effective if you have enough material to keep you busy for a couple of hours. it takes time for the sand to heat. i wouldnt start the sandbath for only a few pounds of material.


----------



## xALmoN

Yeah i understand. but does the heat gun cause the chips to deform in anyway?

and about the N/S bridge chips, do you just pry them off when hot? i can't seem to figure out a way without them flying all over the place or the silicon glass like thing chipping off and flying all over.


----------



## patnor1011

They do not deform. You have to use heatgun say 10 seconds, only enough to solder start being soft, melt.


----------



## xALmoN

Not a problem. 

I will try to do that when i start processing the minuscule amount of ram and pci cards i've collected

EDIT: So, I've tried pointing the heat gun directly on the chips and in a few seconds, they just slide off. Amazing! Even the flat packs that were quite stubbornly stuck on the board would come off without complaint. And now i've got around 200g of mixed chips, flatpacks and black I/Cs in a box from my motherboards. When I cut off the fingers on the ram I've collected so far, i'll also heatgun those chips. Was surprisingly efficient. Though I'm not sure how expensive my electricity bill for this month will be.


----------



## acpeacemaker

Cheers  
-Andrew


----------



## patnor1011

xALmoN said:


> Not a problem.
> 
> I will try to do that when i start processing the minuscule amount of ram and pci cards i've collected
> 
> EDIT: So, I've tried pointing the heat gun directly on the chips and in a few seconds, they just slide off. Amazing! Even the flat packs that were quite stubbornly stuck on the board would come off without complaint. And now i've got around 200g of mixed chips, flatpacks and black I/Cs in a box from my motherboards. When I cut off the fingers on the ram I've collected so far, i'll also heatgun those chips. Was surprisingly efficient. Though I'm not sure how expensive my electricity bill for this month will be.



I try not to mix them, or separate to 4 types at least. 
This is just my sorting from my experience:
1. low yield black rectangular eprom like type with thick legs on two sides /usually older boards/
2. middle yield - all other square or rectangular type with legs on 2 or 4 sides
3. middle to good - ram stick chips /older thick or new thin with legs on 2 sides/
4. holy grail - s/n bridge BGA IC chips /only those with black plastic square part on top of green fibre part, NOT whole green type with small silicon chip nad capacitors on top/


----------



## Laitinen Marco

Hello! Im new and from Sweden.
Thanks all for a great forum!
And thanks Patnor for this tread, very inspiring.

How do you take away the last non magnetic parts in goldpan? Do you pan it out?

I did burn the chips then crush them then washed with water then used magnet, then i tried to pan...
Have never pan before and the thing i use is not realy a gold pan, so now iam stuck with a small pile
With small copper parts and hopefully some gold in but not shore How to get concentrate like in your 
pictures whitout losing my gold.

Thanks again / Marco.L

Sorry for my bad inglish


----------



## xALmoN

patnor1011 said:


> xALmoN said:
> 
> 
> 
> Not a problem.
> 
> I will try to do that when i start processing the minuscule amount of ram and pci cards i've collected
> 
> EDIT: So, I've tried pointing the heat gun directly on the chips and in a few seconds, they just slide off. Amazing! Even the flat packs that were quite stubbornly stuck on the board would come off without complaint. And now i've got around 200g of mixed chips, flatpacks and black I/Cs in a box from my motherboards. When I cut off the fingers on the ram I've collected so far, i'll also heatgun those chips. Was surprisingly efficient. Though I'm not sure how expensive my electricity bill for this month will be.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I try not to mix them, or separate to 4 types at least.
> This is just my sorting from my experience:
> 1. low yield black rectangular eprom like type with thick legs on two sides /usually older boards/
> 2. middle yield - all other square or rectangular type with legs on 2 or 4 sides
> 3. middle to good - ram stick chips /older thick or new thin with legs on 2 sides/
> 4. holy grail - s/n bridge BGA IC chips /only those with black plastic square part on top of green fibre part, NOT whole green type with small silicon chip nad capacitors on top/
Click to expand...



So where do those with the small silicon chip go? I'll do a quick sorting when i pull off more chips tomorrow. I havent depopulated any ram so far, so ram chips should go in another corner too?


----------



## patnor1011

Laitinen Marco said:


> Hello! Im new and from Sweden.
> Thanks all for a great forum!
> And thanks Patnor for this tread, very inspiring.
> 
> How do you take away the last non magnetic parts in goldpan? Do you pan it out?
> 
> I did burn the chips then crush them then washed with water then used magnet, then i tried to pan...
> Have never pan before and the thing i use is not realy a gold pan, so now iam stuck with a small pile
> With small copper parts and hopefully some gold in but not shore How to get concentrate like in your
> pictures whitout losing my gold.
> 
> Thanks again / Marco.L
> 
> Sorry for my bad inglish



Marco, 
Nitric acid will sort them out in no time. When panning be very careful fome wires are very very small and can be carried away with mud. I use Acid when I do have say about 5% of concentrate still in pan. That will dissolve small non magnetic pins and then panning is again easier. If you do have a lot of broken silicone dies (centre pieces) in your concentrate - they look like broken glass this is again hard to pan out without losing values just proceed to AR (after you did dissolve pins in Nitric).


----------



## patnor1011

xALmoN said:


> So where do those with the small silicon chip go? I'll do a quick sorting when i pull off more chips tomorrow. I havent depopulated any ram so far, so ram chips should go in another corner too?



To the skip they go... :lol: 
No, really I was joking. I do not think they do contain much of value apart of some dots of gold plating on top and something in capacitors. I do not know about anyone who processed sizeable load in some way and report any values in them. I do have about a pound of them which I may try to process or I am willing to donate to some skilled member to try to perform some recovery in order to know if there is anything inside. I will see if I will have time to try to do something with them but at this moment I just put them aside.


----------



## Laitinen Marco

patnor1011 said:


> Laitinen Marco said:
> 
> 
> 
> Hello! Im new and from Sweden.
> Thanks all for a great forum!
> And thanks Patnor for this tread, very inspiring.
> 
> How do you take away the last non magnetic parts in goldpan? Do you pan it out?
> 
> I did burn the chips then crush them then washed with water then used magnet, then i tried to pan...
> Have never pan before and the thing i use is not realy a gold pan, so now iam stuck with a small pile
> With small copper parts and hopefully some gold in but not shore How to get concentrate like in your
> pictures whitout losing my gold.
> 
> Thanks again / Marco.L
> 
> Sorry for my bad inglish
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Marco,
> Nitric acid will sort them out in no time. When panning be very careful fome wires are very very small and can be carried away with mud. I use Acid when I do have say about 5% of concentrate still in pan. That will dissolve small non magnetic pins and then panning is again easier. If you do have a lot of broken silicone dies (centre pieces) in your concentrate - they look like broken glass this is again hard to pan out without losing values just proceed to AR (after you did dissolve pins in Nitric).
Click to expand...



Ok,i will use nitric, i found the broken silicone dies a little bit easier to pan becourse they was not as heavy as the rest
of the material, but i probably lost some gold, i should have used nitric a bit earlier i think, the gold wires is much 
smaller then one can belive, hard for me to see what is gold and what is not due to the lack of experience, 

Thank you very much Patnor / Marco


----------



## xALmoN

patnor1011 said:


> xALmoN said:
> 
> 
> 
> So where do those with the small silicon chip go? I'll do a quick sorting when i pull off more chips tomorrow. I havent depopulated any ram so far, so ram chips should go in another corner too?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> To the skip they go... :lol:
> No, really I was joking. I do not think they do contain much of value apart of some dots of gold plating on top and something in capacitors. I do not know about anyone who processed sizeable load in some way and report any values in them. I do have about a pound of them which I may try to process or I am willing to donate to some skilled member to try to perform some recovery in order to know if there is anything inside. I will see if I will have time to try to do something with them but at this moment I just put them aside.
Click to expand...


Would probably need to figure a way to shred it along with the silicon chip and see how things go from there.


----------



## acpeacemaker

I use a very durable plastic container. Putting the silicon chips in a handful at a time. Then cover with water. Then I use the butt end of a 12 steel punch or "all" as mortar and pestle. The water keeps all the pieces from going everywhere. Then pan the remaining wires that were still attached to the chips. From the rest of the remains I have found ag and pd.


----------



## patnor1011

I agree, plenty of Ag and Pd in chips. I once got them packed where it was written on package Ag/Pd plating.


----------



## xALmoN

But by silicon chips, did you mean just that square piece, or the whole chip itself along with the fibre part?


----------



## acpeacemaker

Silicon chips, as in the wafer inside the actual chip, flatpack etc.


----------



## patnor1011

Correct. It is just that small part which looks like mirror on one side. Like broken glass when crushed.


----------



## xALmoN

patnor1011 said:


> Correct. It is just that small part which looks like mirror on one side. Like broken glass when crushed.



And fiber base thrown away? Does it separate easily from the fibre base?


----------



## patnor1011

That green bottom base do have some plating so that goes to AP. 
We talk about BGA IC chip package which is green bottom ans slightly smaller black plastic top. Bulk of gold, well over 95% is in black plastic top part.
The whole green BGA IC chip package which has very small silicone square top part comparing to bottom part and some monolythic capacitors - there I do not have any data on this one yet and never heard about anybody who processed them, I keep them but I do not expect anything from them so far. 
I will try to do some experiments with them, I must have over pound by now.


----------



## srlaulis

I wonder if we could take the green wafer, after it is separated from the black top, and soak in ap or acid with a bubble stone, to remove excess metals. Then could we just soak the batch in hcl/clorox? I'm sorry if my posts seems novice. I have been silently reading on this forum for months now, and this is my first post, lol. I am sure I am missing something with my proposed idea. I was just thinking that if you can dip gold plated dishware into hcl/clorox to remove gold plate, why couldn't we do the same with the green wafers once the junk metal is removed? Please be easy on me. :|


----------



## Geo

srlaulis said:


> I wonder if we could take the green wafer, after it is separated from the black top, and soak in ap or acid with a bubble stone, to remove excess metals. Then could we just soak the batch in hcl/clorox? I'm sorry if my posts seems novice. I have been silently reading on this forum for months now, and this is my first post, lol. I am sure I am missing something with my proposed idea. I was just thinking that if you can dip gold plated dishware into hcl/clorox to remove gold plate, why couldn't we do the same with the green wafers once the junk metal is removed? Please be easy on me. :|



thats exactly what you do with the green bases from north-south bridge chips.AP and then hcl/Cl for the loose gold foils.


----------



## srlaulis

Do you think it is possible to just put the entire green wafer, after the ap bath, into the hcl/cl in order to dissolve any gold that doesn't detach from the wafer?


----------



## Geo

unless you had a bucket full, you wouldnt get enough gold to to make a difference anyway. its best to collect the foils and process them. to try and do the entire base, you would wind up with more solution than you can deal with.


----------



## srlaulis

Thanks Geo!


----------



## g_axelsson

There is a danger with putting multi-layer PCB:s (which the green bases are) into a gold solution.
It is very hard to remove all base metal inside the PCB:s, if you put it into a gold solution, gold will start to deposit inside the PCB when the solution comes into contact with the copper. Then you will probably lose more gold than what you get from the few foils on the surface. Only way to prevent losing more than you get is to start with a totally barren solution and remove the PCB:s before too much cements inside them.

I have done that error once when I ran two fiber CPU:s together with some ceramic CPU:s. I will provide pictures and a write up of it soon. The fiber bases is going to incineration and processing to get anything from the inside. I will not do that mistake again.

Better to take a sharp knife and just scrape off the foils on the surface and then wash it in a beaker with some water and a toothbrush. Collect the gold foils with solder masks and other dirt from the bottom and process them as usual.

Btw, incinerated black plastics is easily pulverized in ultrasound, and poured off as a cloudy fluid. The 
bond wires, copper metal and silicon die is left very clean in the bottom of the beaker.

/Göran


----------



## srlaulis

Thanks for the advice, Goran!


----------



## patnor1011

Göran what device do you use for that ultrasound treatment?


----------



## g_axelsson

Hi Partnor, I'm just using a small cheap bench system for cleaning jewelry. I'm normally use it to clean mineral specimens from clay.
I don't know how it scales, I only tested one flatpack, incinerated with a small pocket-torch, but it was quite fast and the filler that remains after the incineration turned into suspended clay and could be poured off, I never needed to pan any gold threads.
Just add a drop of detergent before sonication to stop the gold to be carried away by the suface tension.

/Göran


----------



## oldgeek

g_axelsson said:


> Btw, incinerated black plastics is easily pulverized in ultrasound, and poured off as a cloudy fluid. The
> bond wires, copper metal and silicon die is left very clean in the bottom of the beaker.
> 
> /Göran



Very interesting, good work!


----------



## g_axelsson

Some pictures from my microscope...

Just as a proof of concept I took half a chip (I've already broken it in half to look for bond wires) and incinerated it. Then I put it in a beaker with water and a drop of detergent into a small ultrasonic cleaner (effect 70W). There was an instant cloud and I left it on for circa 20 seconds. Then I gently poured off the silty water and found that I hadn't incinerated long enough, there were half of the black plastic still left.




Another turn under the mini-torch and then back into the beaker and sonication.
The second time I managed to burn off almost all carbon. The end result was a tangle of wires, some copper wires from traces from the base PCB that stuck to the black top when I ripped it off and the rest golden bond wires. (picture 3) With it was some small white sand-like particles that I suspect is melted glass fibers and some small pieces of charcoal from the incineration. To the right you could see a small piece of the plastics with some bond wires still attached.



Now I only have to invent the pocket incinerator and my fortune is made... small time! :lol: 

/Göran


----------



## Smack

Check the auction sites for ultrasonic welder. I'm not talking about ebay or the like either, I mean local auction companies, I see them quite often and go between 2 and 5 hundred dollars. That's if you want a larger one.


----------



## nickvc

I love the innovation that occurs on this forum.
May I also say that removing as much of the powders and plastics before trying to recover and refine the values is really important, I have rarely treated e scrap but have done large quantities of jewellers sweeps and to ensure a decent recovery they usually need treating twice at least due to the amount of powder that shields the values from the acids and the amount of pregnant solution also trapped in the powders which is also difficult to fully remove even using large vacuum filter beds and many rinses.
Metals only been dissolved makes loses less likely as you can see if any metals or values remain.


----------



## NoIdea

patnor1011 said:


> Now I only need to find economical and fast method - how to separate aluminum from the rest from wet capacitors. :mrgreen: :arrow: :idea: :|



Evening All - try the good old trusted pyrolysis, all you end up with is aluminium, pretty much uneffected, and carbon.

For the larger ones, you can take the aluminium foil coil out of the can and unroll it to give wafe thin carbon and aluminium sheets.

I'll see if i can take a picture of a batch i did some time ago.

I was looking at utilizing the hydrogen produced then adding sodium hydroxide solution to the smaller ground up capacitors, another project festering. :roll: 
Cheers

Deano


----------



## patnor1011

Thanks Deano will try that.

On another note, I got few email from people and we all got bit confused as what is what so here I put few pictures to show you what I mean and how I call different types of chips when we talk about them.


----------



## patnor1011

I have no data on this type and I do not consider them as good source of precious metals but I collect them and will do few experiments.


----------



## samuel-a

g_axelsson said:


> Just as a proof of concept I took half a chip (I've already broken it in half to look for bond wires) and incinerated it. Then I put it in a beaker with water and a drop of detergent into a small ultrasonic cleaner (effect 70W). There was an instant cloud and I left it on for circa 20 seconds. Then I gently poured off the silty water and found that I hadn't incinerated long enough, there were half of the black plastic still left.



g_axelsson

Can you share more info on exactly how you did it?
I have tried that before with no success - http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=15133&p=157421&hilit=+ultrasonic#p157421


----------



## Geo

patnor1011 said:


> I have no data on this type and I do not consider them as good source of precious metals but I collect them and will do few experiments.



Pat, that is called a "flip chip". if i understand right, the only gold content is in the legs if its a plug in type. i dont know about any other PM inside. i incinerated 5 pounds of flip chip bases and never could recover any amount of gold from them.


----------



## g_axelsson

samuel-a said:


> g_axelsson
> 
> Can you share more info on exactly how you did it?
> I have tried that before with no success - http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=15133&p=157421&hilit=+ultrasonic#p157421



Maybe the difference was in the plastic of the IC or the way I incinerated it. I think I described it quite detailed but if there are any details you feel I left out just ask.

I did the incineration at a quite high temperature, some of the exposed bond wires melted at the end as I used a small hand held torch (based on a cigarette lighter) when I heated the chip. I heated it until the ashed chip was glowing cherry red for a while to be sure to get all carbon out of it. As the first picture shows I didn't incinerated long enough at first, but after a prolonged heating I got nearly all carbon out of the chip and then it easily turned into suspended clay during sonication.

In the thread you linked to you talk about both pyrolyzed and incinerated chips. Was there any difference in how they reacted on the sonication? After sonication of the incinerated chips what colour did they have? If your chips came up black you didn't incinerate them long enough.

If I get some time I'll try to do some more tests, but as the first snow came yesterday this season of refining is almost at an end for me.

/Göran


----------



## patnor1011

Geo said:


> patnor1011 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I have no data on this type and I do not consider them as good source of precious metals but I collect them and will do few experiments.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Pat, that is called a "flip chip". if i understand right, the only gold content is in the legs if its a plug in type. i dont know about any other PM inside. i incinerated 5 pounds of flip chip bases and never could recover any amount of gold from them.
Click to expand...


The ones I do have are BGA type, I save them but I am in the dark if somebody ask me if they do have something inside. Rather not but I will try to experiment with couple to be sure.


----------



## samuel-a

Thanks g_axelsson

I kinda figured there won't be much difference in what we did to the chips.
I\ve tryied that with fully incinirated and with only pyrolyzed RAM memory chips... suspended them in the bath with plastic mesh...
And nothing happend with both....

I suppose it has everything to do with the frequency... and i suspect when i tried that, it was too high.
Problem is, i don't have an ultrasonic to play with whenever i want to...


----------



## NoIdea

samuel-a said:


> Problem is, i don't have an ultrasonic to play with whenever i want to...



Don't You??? I thought everyone had one. :mrgreen: 

Ok, back to what im here for, pyrolyzed electrolytic caps.

The carbon foil in this lot did not stay intack like in previous runs but you can see what i mean by looking at the photo. The remaining aluminium pot weighted 7g and is 50mm long by 30mm in diameter for reference. The foil to the right is the aluminium foil that came out of it.

Next thing to do is put it through my smasher/basher/thrasher and see what sort of mess i end up with. 8) 

Deano

Ooops, forgot the pic :roll:


----------



## Geo

samuel-a said:


> i don't have an ultrasonic to play with whenever i want to...



buy one of those cheap marital aids (a massager) that you plug into the wall and mount a small bowl on to it.


----------



## Smack

NoIdea said:


> samuel-a said:
> 
> 
> 
> Problem is, i don't have an ultrasonic to play with whenever i want to...
Click to expand...


Don't You??? I thought everyone had one. :mrgreen: 

Ok, back to what im here for, pyrolyzed electrolytic caps.

The carbon foil in this lot did not stay intack like in previous runs but you can see what i mean by looking at the photo. The remaining aluminium pot weighted 7g and is 50mm long by 30mm in diameter for reference. The foil to the right is the aluminium foil that came out of it.

Next thing to do is put it through my smasher/basher/thrasher and see what sort of mess i end up with. 8) 


Deano,
Only the exterior is aluminum, so don't put the guts in with the cans. I have processed may pounds of these type caps., what I found best to do is after you have burnt everything off in low heat like you have. I melt everything in a big dutch oven that has a sst screen that sits inside of it that all the burnt caps. go in. Then when I pull the dutch oven out of the furnace I lift the sst screen out with my furnace gloves on and dump the screen into a steel bucket, then reinsert the screen into the dutch oven and refill with more caps. This process continues untill there is enough aluminum in the oven to justify a pour. I'm not sure what metal the coils are made of, I've just been throwing them in with scrap steel. By the way, you won't like the mess you end up with if you thrash it all together. I run the furnace at about 1400 degrees, the melting aluminum just runs down to the bottom of the dutch oven.

Regards


----------



## samuel-a

NoIdea said:


> Don't You??? I thought everyone had one.



lol

Next try would be at 25kHz and i'll report then.


----------



## NoIdea

Geo said:


> buy one of those cheap marital aids (a massager) that you plug into the wall and mount a small bowl on to it.



Ok, i'll say it, i know you are all thinking it......."I'm sure everyone has one of those!" :mrgreen: 

Deano


----------



## Marcel

@Deano: Why do you incinerate those aluminum capacitors? Do you hope to find any PMs in there? I strongly doubt it. They consist of aluminum and an acid (I think sulphuric acid ). Those capcitors are completly worthless. What you can do, if they are in a good condition and do have a rating like 50V,60V,100V and above: sell them on ebay. 10000 yF and 400V will sell at 10 € over here, Those are really large. It really would surprise me to have any PMs in there. Ok, who knows? Just check Wikipedia or so, you also put your health in danger. I liked your other smart projects better. Hope you dont get this wrong...
Coils consist of a ferrit core and a painted copper wire.. What is intersting about coils is the fact that IF they meet certain criteria (HF or high frequency coils, they contain RARE EARTH. It is the only component known to me that does really often contain rare earth. To know that, you must only read their color code. They are coded in certain colors depending on their content of Fe, Al and the famous rare earth (check wikipedia). So dont burn them - sorry incinerate-pyrolize-terminate them. You need to read the colors and go from there on. Most BMs are iron and aluminum. So with simple HCl you should be able to remove at least the iron, the rest could/should be the rare earth metals How much that is , is unknown to me. All I know is that since China controlled these elements for the last decade or so, they were able to get the rare earth metals reallly cheap from their own mines. Just to give you an example: In 2000 I had to pay 10€ for a HF coil that could withstand 20Amps in Germany. I researched and found one in china which costed me 0,10€/piece. So what that told me was, that the costs for the western countries to produce rare earth coils was much higher, because China sold them in small doses to "us" for enormous prices whereby their own chineese companies got supplied with this material at dumping levels (That is why so many mines had closed in the last years). Each and every CPU need HF coils to build a onboard voltage regulator, so they needed cheap HF coils to produce cheap motherboards.
Long story, but at the end of the day, I know nothing about rare earth how they can be detected, recovered and refined and what´s more, I never heard of any company actually buying rare earth metals. So this is an interesting niche, but probably fruitless...

Btw. those copperwires around the coils are covered with a transparent film, just in case you try to use them for precipitating and wonder why nothing is happening...

Marcel


----------



## NoIdea

Evening All.

Marcel - I dont incinerate the electrolytic capacitors, i pyrolyze them, then put them in my smasher/basher/thrasher, it rattles out the carbon, knocks off the electrodes and leaves the foils intack inside the aluminium pot.

Smack - Check out wiki on composition of electrolytic capacitors.

Cheers

Deano


----------



## Marcel

NoIdea said:


> Evening All.
> 
> 
> Smack - Check out wiki on composition of electrolytic capacitors.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Deano




OK, I did: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolytic_capacitor

Cite:
_Electrolytes may be toxic or corrosive. Working with the electrolyte requires safe working practice and appropriate protective equipment such as gloves and safety glasses. Some very old tantalum electrolytics, often called "Wet-slug", contain corrosive sulfuric acid; however, most of these are no longer in service due to corrosion._

(..)

_
There are a number of non-aqueous electrolytes, which use only a small amount of water. The electrolytes are generally composed of a weak acid, a salt of weak acid, and a solvent, and optional thickening agent and other additives. The electrolyte is usually soaked into an electrode separator. The weak acids are usually organic acid (glacial acetic acid, lactic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, crotonic acid, acrylic acid, phenol, cresol, etc.) or boric acid. The salts employed are often ammonium or metal salts of organic acids (ammonium acetate, ammonium citrate, aluminium acetate, calcium lactate, ammonium oxalate, etc.) or weak inorganic acids (sodium perborate, trisodium phosphate, etc.). Solvent-based electrolytes may be based on alkanolamines (monoethanolamine, diethanolamine, triethanolamine,...) or polyols (diethylene glycol, glycerol, etc.).[9]_


As far as I can see, I was right about the sulfuric acid acid. I still dont get what you expect from them. I see no values there. Aluminum is very cheap and the amount is rather small.
I am really just trying to understand what values you are going after in here. The pyrolizing puts your health in danger - for what? Just a tryout? Am I just missing here something ? :roll:

PS: Please do not forget that electrolytic capacitors tend to explode when exposed to heat, which will evaporate toxic fumes and spread the acid out. 
Also be aware that large capacitors - even if not in a circuitry - can still contain a large amount of energy, so if you touch them at the electrodes this current may unload and (this is no exaggeration) may cause *very* severe burns or can even cause death, exsp. if you carry a heartdevice or have a cardiac insufficency.
Capacitors which are not shortened will gather energy from the surrounding air and load themselfs over the time, even without beeing connected to an electrical source!


----------



## NoIdea

Hi Marcel – I appreciate your concerns.

Hmmm, how to get it from my head to paper???

Ok, Pyrolysis if done correctly, it will NOT release toxic fumes; it involves the distilling of organic compounds from an organic material placed in a vessel with only one escape route, which is usually fed into a burner, where it becomes the fuel to keep the pyrolysis process going, destroying anything toxic.

The value of the capacitors, hmmm, well I could put them in our land fill, at a cost to me and the environment, or I can recover the aluminium. I have chosen the later.

Greed is recycling’s worst enemy, if it can’t make a profit then it’s not recycled. Ba-Humbug, I would rather spend some of my profit (if their were such a thing) into recycling the non-profitable items than spend my profit paying disposal fees. Just Me.


----------



## Palladium

:mrgreen: 



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBlRbrB_Gnc[/youtube]


----------



## NoIdea

Palladium said:


> :mrgreen:
> 
> [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBlRbrB_Gnc[/youtube]



:lol: It was on our news, down under, last nite, how they made it etc. The inside of the plane was a prop because non of the real one's were available. 

Deano


----------



## mjgraham

I was wondering how long it takes to get them completely incinerated? I have been working with a bunch of RAM chips there in a furnace burning charcoal with a blower, I can get them to a nice orange color for about 20-30 min then after it starts tapering off I pull the pan and they hit the water. What I notice is a lot of them are not incinerated much at all. I know if there stacked up that can cause a problem and it acts to me like once the white layer has formed it is an effective insulation but I am wondering if there needs to be more oxygen in there. I did a batch tonight single layer was in there almost and hour they look like chalk they hit the water there is still a chip there, most of the time it blows the die out but still a lot of the package is left. I am fairly sure heat should be good enough. I know I might have to repeat the process a time more but at this rate I am going to spend more money in charcoal than I get back. Just thinking about it, I don't think I have just let them cool down on their own from a glowing state, just read about putting them in water about the same time I was cranking up the furnace.. humm


----------



## Geo

try letting the charcoal burn completely out and keep the air on until the chips cool. the carbon is still converting to carbon dioxide and when you quench them, it stops the process. crush the black ones and run them through in a thin steel pan or a large food can.


----------



## mjgraham

Geo you were right, did much better. I measured the tempeture for fun, for 3min it was over 1800F, stayed over 1000F for 30 min the dropped pretty good, I pulled the lid of at around 500 and let to cool down, still had a few that didn't get all the way done but far less. First thing that comes to my mind is a can with the parts and some kind of slow turning (1 RPM) mixer but that makes things a little more complicated. Anyway that helped a lot and thanks.


----------



## xALmoN

What do you use as a blower to supply the fuel with O2?

Would a computer fan mounted to a pipe provide enough flow to the charcoal to keep it hot enough?


----------



## mjgraham

I would say any would help, what I found I have a good blower, has a 2" outlet supplied tons of air, but I had to basically restrict it back to nearly nothing, I guess there can be too much air flow, sure the fire burns hot but you blow all the heat out the top. I think from what I saw in a video of Geo's he had a hair dryer adapted to a pipe, if you could get some of those high RPM server blowers that go in a 1U or something rack mount case, but I'd say just give it a try with what ever you got. After some tinkering I would say staying at temp for a longer time would be better than a really high temp for a short time but that may not be true.


----------



## mjgraham

OK I got all 5 pounds of memory chips incinerated, I just have a few questions, I have read the wonderful documentation by patnor1011, I am still curious about a few things. First I have separated the big from the medium and the dust in different buckets. In the dust bucket I removed all the magnetic pieces and tried to pan like in the documentation, first off I have no idea what I am doing plus I would imagine I would see something that looked like gold but not really. I decided to try to put a spoonful in a beaker and make some AR for it, put on HCl and dripped nitric until there is little reaction, filtered it off and tested and it was positive for gold. I guess my question, is this still what everyone is doing is panning the powder? Next what is a plan for dealing with the legs, other pieces I would imagine it is going to take a lot of acid to deal with pounds of material but I am young at this and advice would be helpful.
Thanks,


----------



## patnor1011

Well.
What I do is this. It will take a lot of time but this is just my way. It saves me couple of problems later. When I incinerate I do not crush with too much force. If properly incinerated water and fingers (use rubber gloves) is sufficient enough to break chips down. They are just like wet cookies and I try to remove as much of centre wafers as possible. They are like glass and when broken it is herd to pan them out without loosing some of your gold. When you do more chips like 5 pounds all you will see in bucket is black muddy water it is hard to spot gold initially. Not to mention that gold will sink to bottom - just like in river, you need to get to bedrock which is bottom of your bucket in this case. Lets say that you have one third of bucket full of ashes and non magnetic pins. Just fill bucket with water and use something to stir content. Wait 10-20 seconds and carefully pour off black water. Do this several times until you see that poured water is less and less black. In this way you will get rid of finest ash. What will remain in bucket will be more coarse pieces of incinerated ash and pins and gold. Fill with some water again and use spoon to mash this coarse powder a little bit. Fill with water, stir, pour off... After while you will see that probably half of content is gone and you can start using pan. I do have several pans so I just take say 2-3 hand full from bucket and start panning. Pins will tend to group together so you can take them out pinch by pinch and place to another pan, you will easier separate pins from gold.
Main thing is to do everything slow to prevent gold escaping. Most of gold or a lot of it are very fine specks and you will see them only when some if it accumulate on some spot in pan.
I would start using nitric when I get to about 5-10% (5 is better) of initial incinerated mass and even before that I try to remove as much of pins as possible. 
I do save all pins in extra container, they will go to stock pot (there is small very small amount of gold plating on tip where bonding wire was attached and some of them may be silver or AgPd plated)

Main thing is to do it very slow and very carefully. I did lost some gold when I started doing this year ago - I was in a hurry to see gold.


----------



## mjgraham

OK, sounds like a new plan, I do agree I was most likely eager to see anything, I will go back and try the water method of cleaning the pieces and try to remove as much wafer as I can. I'll let you know how it goes.
Thanks again.


----------



## Geo

i processed alot of memory chips a short time ago and thought i washed the ash pretty good. i ran quite a bit of the ash mixture through boiling AR. i retrieved alot less gold than was expected. after reading through pats post on it many times trying to figure out where i went wrong.i took the ash that i saved from the AR and put it in a large cast iron pot. i placed that on my turkey fryer and covered it with a 5 gallon metal bucket with the bottom cut out to funnel the heat.the ash was black, after firing it for about thirty minutes on the propane burner, it was all white. i ran it through a blender with a little water. i ran it through AR again like it was without washing it afraid i would wash out the gold. after letting it settle for a few days in a tall slender glass container, the solution was deep yellow and heavy with gold.

the epoxy has to be incinerated completely. any black material will trap the tiny gold wires.


----------



## mjgraham

It seems I have a lot of work yet to do, I have been using charcoal, need to try the turkey fryer.


----------



## patnor1011

Geo said:


> the epoxy has to be incinerated completely. any black material will trap the tiny gold wires.



and that is the key to success. If properly incinerated it will go off with water, well most of it. Here is picture with how my concentrate looks like, in pan and in pyrex dish. Mostly fine gold wires and particles and rest is mostly remains from crushed center piece - that glass like silicone wafer.


----------



## goldbug66

Hi All,

This is my first attemptto ask a question onthis site. What do you do with the metal from inside the chips? What is the later process you talked about?
Can anyone fill me in?

Thank you

Goldbug66


----------



## Buzz

Pat,

I know you mentioned earlier in the thread about maybe using a "Blue Bowl" for panning out the debris.

Did you get round to trying one?
Can anyone see any problems using one?

Those not familiar with Blue Bowls, there are lots of videos on youtube showing them in action.

Regards


----------



## Geo

this is my opinion. i find its not necessary to remove all the ash to recover the gold. if you try to clean all the ash, im afraid you will lose some gold. if you remove at least half the ash and process as you would sweeps, you should get the gold. it may take more time to complete the whole process but at least you will get all the gold.


----------



## patnor1011

goldbug66 said:


> Hi All,
> 
> This is my first attemptto ask a question onthis site. What do you do with the metal from inside the chips? What is the later process you talked about?
> Can anyone fill me in?
> 
> Thank you
> 
> Goldbug66



I do separate them to magnetic and non magnetic. You can choose process which suit you for processing low grade plated pins. There will be significant amount of Ag and nice amount of Pd too. Choose process which will suit you the best to recover all three of them - Au, Ag, Pd.


----------



## patnor1011

Buzz said:


> Pat,
> 
> I know you mentioned earlier in the thread about maybe using a "Blue Bowl" for panning out the debris.
> 
> Did you get round to trying one?
> Can anyone see any problems using one?
> 
> Those not familiar with Blue Bowls, there are lots of videos on youtube showing them in action.
> 
> Regards



Yeah, I still want to try that one but I may as well leave that to some of US members to try to do it. It is fairly expensive to try to import one to Ireland, government is after every package from outside EU to squeeze you for VAT and import tax. :mrgreen:


----------



## Marcel

patnor1011 said:


> Buzz said:
> 
> 
> 
> Pat,
> 
> I know you mentioned earlier in the thread about maybe using a "Blue Bowl" for panning out the debris.
> 
> Did you get round to trying one?
> Can anyone see any problems using one?
> 
> Those not familiar with Blue Bowls, there are lots of videos on youtube showing them in action.
> 
> Regards
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I still want to try that one but I may as well leave that to some of US members to try to do it. It is fairly expensive to try to import one to Ireland, government is after every package from outside EU to squeeze you for VAT and import tax. :mrgreen:
Click to expand...


You can build your own, it is very easy. I did one myself. Bought a plastic bowl (2€) + a plastic funnel (1€) + a DC water pump(12€), drilled a hole in the middle of the bowl with a holedriller, cut the funnel off at half and glued it to the center just above that hole in the bowl. Then you start the pump and you aare ready to go! DC pump is nice because you cna control the water stream directly with a potentiometer, but you can even use your gardenhose and take the water from there to create a stream.

Marcel


----------



## patnor1011

Perfect. 
Now I need to get blue plastic bowl - because if it will be yellow then it has to be yellow bowl then. :mrgreen:


----------



## butcher

I built a green bowl out of metal. but it works anyway.


----------



## NoIdea

patnor1011 said:


> Perfect.
> Now I need to get blue plastic bowl - because if it will be yellow then it has to be yellow bowl then. :mrgreen:



Are you sure yellow will work, im sure they call it the blue bowl for a reason. 8) 

Deano


----------



## Drowningbodacius

thanks fr the guide Patnor101 ive got a few pound of these chips


----------



## patnor1011

Happy hunting. :mrgreen: 
I am always feeling like child on Christmas - opening presents and wondering what is inside. 
I just love when I remove most of black soot and gold is accumulated on bottom and more and more visible.


----------



## nickvc

I don't know if this will help with catching those fine wires but if you take a cheap plastic sieve and put it into boiling water it causes the mesh to contract, my thoughts are that if you poured the wash water carefully through it it should catch the majority of the wires so long as the material is finely ground.


----------



## butcher

What about trying static electricity separation, it was used to help separate ore, on belts and a plate that held a static charge, maybe you could use an old printer drum for the static charge they have a drum that collects toner, I wonder what it would do with this ash?

Could try it with a balloon rub it on your hair, and see if it collects ash from the fine wires.


----------



## Auful

Marcel said:


> patnor1011 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Buzz said:
> 
> 
> 
> Pat,
> 
> I know you mentioned earlier in the thread about maybe using a "Blue Bowl" for panning out the debris.
> 
> Did you get round to trying one?
> Can anyone see any problems using one?
> 
> Those not familiar with Blue Bowls, there are lots of videos on youtube showing them in action.
> 
> Regards
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I still want to try that one but I may as well leave that to some of US members to try to do it. It is fairly expensive to try to import one to Ireland, government is after every package from outside EU to squeeze you for VAT and import tax. :mrgreen:
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> You can build your own, it is very easy. I did one myself. Bought a plastic bowl (2€) + a plastic funnel (1€) + a DC water pump(12€), drilled a hole in the middle of the bowl with a holedriller, cut the funnel off at half and glued it to the center just above that hole in the bowl. Then you start the pump and you aare ready to go! DC pump is nice because you cna control the water stream directly with a potentiometer, but you can even use your gardenhose and take the water from there to create a stream.
> 
> Marcel
Click to expand...


This little concentrator works really well as an alternative to the Blue Bowl. I set it up with a recirculating pump in a concrete mixing tub for my dredge and sluicing concentrates. I suppose it might also work to concentrate the pyrolized chips as well. I have just acquired some chips and after pyrolysis will try this concentrator to see how it does.


----------



## Vargas

Marcel said:


> ....
> Long story, but at the end of the day, I know nothing about rare earth how they can be detected, recovered and refined and what´s more, I never heard of any company actually buying rare earth metals. So this is an interesting niche, but probably fruitless...
> 
> Marcel



I know of 2 companies in Germany and Switzerland that buy rare earth elements - prices range from $ 50 - $ 2500 per kilo (and also broken Si-Wafers, Indium etc..)
However, there still is the problem of detecting and refining them...
I am still in the reading, learning and collecting phase, but I am set to really get everything out of those PCs. 
Ta I know already will be impossible with backyard means, but there are buyers for the caps at least.
PMs, Copper and Aluminium I will manage eventually, but those rare earth elements really interest me to and I take this as a challenge - whether this will be possible or costeffective is another story.
This is a great thread indeed btw!

@Marcel btw. I am in your forum too and will e-mail you shortly about your books


----------



## patnor1011

Do you know how much they do pay for Si wafers?


----------



## Vargas

from what I've found on their websites, anything between $1 - $12 per kg depending on batchsize, degree of purity etc.

please note, that I am still in the phase of research and collecting data.
Sooner or later I shall cotact those buyers and find out the details of how and what.

here are 3 links:
http://www.metallankauf.org/51-silizium.html
http://goldankauf-sondermetallhandel.de/81.html
http://www.gramet.de/rohstoffe-einkauf/rohstoffe-produkt.php?erepaid=10

PS: you're a genius
PPS: why anybody would pay more than $1 is beyond me, cause that is about the world market price for Si


----------



## Smack

Molycorp, Inc. provides Rare Earths and Molybdenum products to companies. The Company's rare earth products comprise of bastnasite, cerium, europium, lanthanum, neodymium, praseodymium, yttrium, and other lanthanides. You may be able to contact them and find out who refines rare earth material. They are the only American based company mining rare earths that I know of.


----------



## patnor1011

With Si wafers from IC there may be some catch, I mean all that small transistors and wiring inside die may contain precious metals. I do have about 200-300g again, I will try to find out what is inside. I will put them in hot AR first to remove any traces from where bonding wires were attached and then I will try to grind them to dust and leach in AR again to find out if there is anything valuable inside.


----------



## Vargas

patnor1011 said:


> With Si wafers from IC there may be some catch, I mean all that small transistors and wiring inside die may contain precious metals. I do have about 200-300g again, I will try to find out what is inside. I will put them in hot AR first to remove any traces from where bonding wires were attached and then I will try to grind them to dust and leach in AR again to find out if there is anything valuable inside.



I am quite sure, that a silicon chip contains nothing but Si, but _maybe_, they pay higher prizes for wafers from solartechnology, from broken solar cells -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_cell


----------



## Geo

the silica chip itself contains precious metals, but it would take a long time to collect enough to process. the chip is a tiny circuit board in itself with layers of metal and silica. the circuits are imprinted into the metal like taking a picture.the metal is so thin that photons is all thats needed to vaporize it.each layer is printed like a stack of photo copies.


----------



## patnor1011

Maybe I used wrong term. I meant silicone die, center piece in any IC chip. It is not wafer like solar cell but Si piece loaded with tiny micro components.


----------



## Vargas

I understood you. It was me, that was wrong. Didn't know, that there is still stuff in those silicone wafers.


----------



## zzz

Hi everyone. I want to ask this:
i'm the only that think that crushing could give some losses (about 20/30%) from the totally yield?
Thank you.


----------



## Geo

breaking the chips would yield no more than processing them whole. they would have to be milled extremely fine to recover what was inside.


----------



## g_axelsson

patnor1011 said:


> Maybe I used wrong term. I meant silicone die, center piece in any IC chip. It is not wafer like solar cell but Si piece loaded with tiny micro components.


I don't think you will find any large amounts of precious metals in the silicon dies. The usual material for connecting the components is aluminum. Some more fancy processes uses tungsten via plugs and copper interconnections, but I'm quite sure that gold is only used for plating of the connection points for the bonding wire if they use gold.
Before doing too much job, take one or a few dies that have already been leached in AR and crush, treat with AR and test with stannous. Then you know if it's worth doing a bigger batch or not.

Göran


----------



## patnor1011

That exactly is the plan for next week. :idea:


----------



## patnor1011

Picture of small pin from inside of IC with gold bonding wire still attached, not very clear I need better camera and another one of pins being removed with magnets - some of them with gold bonding wire still attached.


----------



## skippy

I looked into this stuff a little bit now, and it seems that they have very little need for gold in these "flip chips". There's some plating that is used to make the contact between the silicon and the copper traces on the wafer's underlying board. The solder which connects them are called bumps, and the solder composition is a bit of a mystery. It can be several things; lead-tin, tin silver tin-gold (5%), and pure gold in some cases, but in any case looking underneath a silicon wafer just now whatever it is made of, it's not going to be much. Hopefully these rotten chips fall out of favour.  




Geo said:


> patnor1011 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I have no data on this type and I do not consider them as good source of precious metals but I collect them and will do few experiments.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Pat, that is called a "flip chip". if i understand right, the only gold content is in the legs if its a plug in type. i dont know about any other PM inside. i incinerated 5 pounds of flip chip bases and never could recover any amount of gold from them.
Click to expand...


----------



## patnor1011

Time to ebay my pile then. To let somebody else to figure out what to do with them. :mrgreen:


----------



## skippy

Yeah, Patnor, I have a bunch of motherboards with pga flip chip processors and two bga flip chips, and looking at them a few days ago these boards looked good and nicely populated to me, but now I know better. 

Anyway, I've sort of skimmed over a lot of escrap related stuff here before, and just recently started giving some of this stuff a more thorough read, and I must give my commendations to you Partnor, to Sam and to Geo, for your work on board components processing, yields etc. Sorry if I missed anyone who's made contributions in this area. It's amazing to think of how far the forum's knowledge has come since the start!


----------



## patnor1011

I got mail from member asking me something so I replied but I think it will be good to post it here too as it may help some other members too.

Email:

Hi. I downloaded & read your incineration PDF. I was wondering how much coal you used to consume the 7kg you started with? I can get some coal, which I believe will burn hotter & last longer than charcoal, but I've never personally burned coal so I don't know how much to use.

My reply:

It is really hard to say. It probably depend on where you going to do it. Some people do have heating systems based on some stove or burner using coal, here I guess it will take shorter time and less fuel but it will need to be done in some closed steel container with few small holes to allow gas to escape.
I did it in regular size open fire place like people do have in living rooms. I am guessing right now but say it had space like cube 50 cm x 50 cm and is deep probably like 50 cm as-well.
In there I put probably about 1-2 kilograms of coal - well it can be seen on my pictures that will show you how much I used. 
If you want to know total amount it depend on many things. I now do them only few pieces at a time. I mean that if there is few pieces on tray and in fire they burn properly and faster on the contrary of putting there full bowl or too much of them on tray like one on another. I now prefer single layer of them. That will make them to burn properly, they become white and very soft-crumbling that enable me to separate center Si piece and sieve out powder with wires and separate pins. 
If you put them in fire in container where they are stacked one on another then those in middle will not burn properly and will require additional crushing. 
I will estimate that I spent about one bag of coal which is 40 kilograms in here.

I will suggest that if you cut them off boards with knife then proceed to incinerating but if yopu just desoldered them and they do have legs still on them then if you have source of cheap HCl then soak them in warm HCl to dissolve as much of legs as possible. They do not contain any values, most if not all PM are locked in center of IC so dissolving legs will work for you to speed up later recovery from incinerated material. (less base metals with values to deal with).
Regards Pat.


----------



## wadocgold

My version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig7TcAJSvo0&feature=youtu.be


----------



## patnor1011

Good. Few thoughts. While it is wise to open mixer outside as that fine powder is very bad to breathe I do recommend to do sieving outside too. For the very same reasons.
I used similar device but blades become dull very fast and you will have to sharpen them often. Also some IC contain large piece of metal as heatsink which may jam and burn engine of mixer or break actual body of mixer. I abandoned this method long time ago. Now, as I explained in previous post I use extra time when incinerating so all of IC are white when cooled and crumble in fingers. Like sand so I do not need to employ additional measures for crushing.
Be sure that you check your sieve very closely. Some, mainly longer bonding wires like to stuck in there and need to be removed.


----------



## patnor1011

My latest babies, they were born last week, labor was quite painful and involved a lot of washing and crushing and cursing... :mrgreen:
Source: 3800g of s/n bridges, 2000g of RAM chips. 
Yield: 22,5g (4 buttons pictured are 5g each, I still have 2,5g of powder)


----------



## rewalston

Look beautiful Pat, so S/N bridge and RAM chips are the only real ones worth going after on the boards? None of the other flatpacks?

Rusty


----------



## Geo

Rusty, they are not worth the time. you can send them to me and ill happily pay the shipping. :mrgreen: seriously, all quads or flatpaks should have precious metals. almost all will have gold bonding wires. when the weather finally breaks here, i intend on doing a start to finish video on flatpak chips.


----------



## rewalston

Geo said:


> Rusty, they are not worth the time. you can send them to me and ill happily pay the shipping. :mrgreen: seriously, all quads or flatpaks should have precious metals. almost all will have gold bonding wires. when the weather finally breaks here, i intend on doing a start to finish video on flatpak chips.



:lol: Right now the only RAM chips I have are from RAM that has gold plating. The others I cut the fingers and toss in a box. I've been pulling all flatpacks and tossing them in a box as well. I have a cat litter bucket (roughly 15 lbs) with boards and what not that appear to have gold plating that I'm going to run through an HCl bath to remove solder and then strip the mask followed by AP. Just need someplace to work on it. 

Rusty


----------



## patnor1011

I do save and process all of them with exception of eprom like IC. They are saved too but I do not have intention to process them, I may try to eBay them later on.
I did only RAM chips this time as I am trying to find out approximate yields of different types. I am so far convinced (all my test batches proved) that s/n bridge type run at least 5 g of Au from kilogram. 
I am now close to have number for RAM IC (thin & thick).
The rest of IC I like to separate to thin and thick type and those two then to small and big size.


----------



## patnor1011

Here is what you can and should expect in pan from 100 grams of s/n bridge BGA chips. Longer wires accumulated to nice ball, small bits of wires all around pan.


----------



## wadocgold

patnor1011 said:


> Here is what you can and should expect in pan from 100 grams of s/n bridge BGA chips. Longer wires accumulated to nice ball, small bits of wires all around pan.


What method was used to crush chips?


----------



## patnor1011

Incineration of chips and then I just crumbled them with fingers. You see, when they are incinerated properly they crumble to powder without much effort. Then I just washed most of ash with water. What remained were just bonding wires and some small pieces of plastic. I just used spoon to mash rest of burned plastic and wash away with water. At the end just gold remained in pan.


----------



## wadocgold

how much gold is there?


----------



## patnor1011

Where?


----------



## wadocgold

patnor1011 said:


> Here is what you can and should expect in pan from 100 grams of s/n bridge BGA chips. Longer wires accumulated to nice ball, small bits of wires all around pan.


There


----------



## patnor1011

All you can see there on that picture. :mrgreen: 

If you want a number then it is here, few posts back. I already reported that from this type of chips - minimum you can expect is 5g from kilogram.


----------



## samuel-a

Here's the way i do it...

Though panning isn't my choice for small batchs... I do feel that some sort of flotation seperation should be done on a largers scale, say 5 lb and upward.
I have plans on building a bit larger inciniration unit wich includes an after burner to keep toxic emissions to bare minimum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZganYmR0-w

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZganYmR0-w[/youtube]


----------



## solar_plasma

Just found a kind of "iron cross" from one or another incenerated chip.....what the hell?! I am sure, there was no northbrigde made in germany and not made before 1945! :roll: :lol: :!: :?:

If I only knew what producer it was, that would make a fantastic conspiracy theory! :lol:

Btw done my first gold washing.....  THAT IS JUST NOT ME! in a dirty pot from the beginning there was more gold than after one hour in my last wash! Next time I use chemistry instead!!! That's something I can handle! :lol:


----------



## Marcel

Another nice vid done by Sam. Thumps up!


----------



## gold4mike

Great video, Sam. Thanks!!


----------



## nmlfreitas

Hi Sam congratulations on the video once again a good help.
I just have one doubt it might sound stupid. On the video, almost in the end, you say that you process the ash without the magnetic pins into AR.
Don't you have copper based material on that ash? Should we run it through 50:50 Nitric like Pantor does it? Or that is just for the metallic pins???
Or is it because Pantor is processing N/S bridges at the same time?

Sorry for my doubts i hope you can help me.


----------



## Geo

most quads and dips have iron based legs. after incineration and milling, the magnetic material needs to be removed before processing.


----------



## nmlfreitas

Geo said:


> most quads and dips have iron based legs. after incineration and milling, the magnetic material needs to be removed before processing.


Hi Geo
Thanks for the info. i knew about that i'm just trying to find out why Pantor on his Guide washes those wires with dilute nitric.
We only come across those wires with flatpacks right? With IC's we have only powder right?
And if the same process is applied for the baby powered. I guess when we have powder we can go strait to AR.


----------



## Geo

all the IC packages will have iron legs (except the north/south bridge chips). after removing the iron, nitric wash is to remove the few copper legs and the small amount of silver/palladium in the glass chips. also, after the nitric bath, you may see some white material that would not dissolve in the nitric. this will most likely be bits of melted aluminum.aluminum is used under the packages substrate as a heat spreader.after the nitric bath, incinerate the powder to remove the nitrates. now place the powder into a hcl bath to remove the aluminum.after this wash, rinse with water and process with your choice of chemicals.


----------



## patnor1011

nmlfreitas said:


> Geo said:
> 
> 
> 
> most quads and dips have iron based legs. after incineration and milling, the magnetic material needs to be removed before processing.
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Geo
> Thanks for the info. i knew about that i'm just trying to find out why Pantor on his Guide washes those wires with dilute nitric.
> We only come across those wires with flatpacks right? With IC's we have only powder right?
> And if the same process is applied for the baby powered. I guess when we have powder we can go strait to AR.
Click to expand...


Yes, no pins inside s/n bridge but occasionally you may end up with copper too, when you split top and bottom part some copper leads might get stuck (and believe me they will) on top part so I wash concentrate from that in Nitric too.

Other IC will have some amount of copper based pins you will not be able to remove all with magnet so I wash concentrate in Nitric too.

AR is final step for me. I like to wash concentrate in nitric, that will get out any silver present and that will add up to our pm pile.


----------



## nmlfreitas

Pantor and Geo thank's a lot.
Now i'm sure how i will performe my experience.
I have about 800gr of IC and 100gr flatpacks. i guess i will treat them separatly and then join then on AR.
Do you think that EEproms should be mixed with ICs or EEproms don't have any PM on them.?


----------



## patnor1011

I don't mix them. Plastic common ones don't have much in them.


----------



## solar_plasma

I am a little confused. I have still my ashes from 1,3 kg incenerated flatpacks and s/n-bridges. Should I start to wash them with HCl (dissolving basemetals and especially tin, but Ag will form some passivating AgCl at its surface) or with HNO3 (dissolving basemetals and Ag/Pd, but Sn will form unsoluable hydroxides)? I think I read both.

I know, I have to incenerate after HCl, when using first HCl, then HNO3, or the other way round.


----------



## Marcel

The process Patrick presented and discusses uses no chemicals except H20 for the recovery.


----------



## nmlfreitas

Geo said:


> ..... nitric wash is to remove the few copper legs and the small amount of silver/palladium in the glass chips. also, after the nitric bath, you may see some white material that would not dissolve in the nitric. this will most likely be bits of melted aluminum.aluminum is used under the packages substrate as a heat spreader.after the nitric bath, incinerate the powder to remove the nitrates. now place the powder into a hcl bath to remove the aluminum.after this wash, rinse with water and process with your choice of chemicals.



I think this will answer your question. First Nitric bath, you can read it in Pantor's guide, and after hcl bath...


----------



## solar_plasma

Thank you!! Now I see.


----------



## patnor1011

Marcel said:


> The process Patrick presented and discusses uses no chemicals except H20 for the recovery.



Yeah, I use chemicals on final concentrate obtained by washing ashes away with just water. Water and magnet will reduce incinerated material to about 10% of what you started with. Water is essential on keeping cost of recovery under control. No point to soak all incinerated ashes in acids. Do it on concentrate only.


----------



## solar_plasma

> No point to soak all incinerated ashes in acids. Do it on concentrate only.



incinerating - washing/magnet - HCL - neutralizing - incinerating - HNO3 (Ag, Pd) - AR (Au, PGM)

I was just confused if first HCl and then HNO3 or first HNO3 and then HCl. Does the HNO3 dissolve AgCl or will Ag cement back on the copper,so it will be dissolvable in HNO3? I was just afraid of leaving any silver back in the mud. But now I have started with HCl.

*EDIT: oops I did not realize that we are in the thread "Tutorials", I know there is not allowed to ask questions. Sorry.*


----------



## Geo

ive always used the nitric bath first. this removes and silver before any other process. after this, any insoluble oxides should be taken care of with the following incineration and hcl bath. im not sure which way is better but i havent had any problems with insoluble salts. my problem is the finite dust that makes it through all the filterings. it has to settle until the liquid is clear every time the fine silt is disturbed.i truly am in need of a better filtering system.


----------



## solar_plasma

When I have finished, I will try to put some copper filings into the left over mud and see if there is some Ag cementing, which I dissolve in HNO3 and test by Cl-


----------



## g_axelsson

solar_plasma said:


> incinerating - washing/magnet - HCL - neutralizing - incinerating - HNO3 (Ag, Pd) - AR (Au, PGM)
> 
> I was just confused if first HCl and then HNO3 or first HNO3 and then HCl. Does the HNO3 dissolve AgCl or will Ag cement back on the copper,so it will be dissolvable in HNO3? I was just afraid of leaving any silver back in the mud. But now I have started with HCl.


If you are concerned with creating silver chloride and losing it, I would suggest a modification.

incinerating - washing/magnet - HCL - wash with NaOH solution - wash with water - incinerating - HNO3 (Ag, Pd) - AR (Au, PGM)

- I removed the neutralizing step between HCL and incineration, the incineration will evaporate off any acid residues.
- Added a NaOH wash step folllowed by water wash.

The NaOH will convert any AgCl into Ag2O, then the incineration will decompose the Ag2O into metallic silver and oxygen above 280 degrees C. No AgCl that can go up into smoke at the incineration step and all silver will be soluble in nitric after incineration.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Göran


----------



## solar_plasma

Göran


> wash with NaOH solution



Thanks! That's an ingenious advice!  One problem solved.

You will probably have seen it, I have just done the opposite of what I was told and what I wanted, I ask HCl first or HNO3 first...everyone says: HNO3 first!....I say: Aaah, I see! First HCl.... :roll: :lol:
Well, well, ...but it sounds as if both will work. Next time I do as adviced.


----------



## resabed01

I am new to this and still learning but I'm of the opinion of HCL first before HNO3 just for the simple reason of getting rid of base metals first, especially tin which will cause you heartburn later. I know HCL can be painfully slow and HNO3 works much faster which is why, i think, some people prefer to use it first.


----------



## Geo

resabed01 said:


> I am new to this and still learning but I'm of the opinion of HCL first before HNO3 just for the simple reason of getting rid of base metals first, especially tin which will cause you heartburn later. I know HCL can be painfully slow and HNO3 works much faster which is why, i think, some people prefer to use it first.



processing chips is a process in and of itself different from processing other scrap.by removing the magnetic material first, you are removing the solder.any remaining tin would be negligible.you can remove all the base metal at once except any aluminum. the aluminum is the reason for the hcl bath.


----------



## rickbb

Interesting, too bad I didn't find this a few months ago. I've been cutting the fingers off and trashing the rest of the cards/boards. Leason learned.


----------



## solar_plasma

butcher said:


> If a person wants to learn how to build an airplane and learn to fly it, he would do best from learning from the mistakes of others that have tried for centuries to learn how build planes and to fly, and learn from these people who tried this before him, and can show him what works and what does not work, before he jumped of the cliff in the airplane he thought would be easier to build and to fly.



 good example, since it was Leonardo da Vinci, who invented flying machines, when everyone else would have thought it to be a sacrilege. Now,he has never build them in real, but I saw a video, where they have build those machines exactly, like Leonardo invented them: they could fly! Science is not only a top-down (using existing theories) but also a bottom-up (empericism). I think development is only possible,if you get use of both, every existing knowledge and belief AND thinking outside the box. It's therefore teams of different characters can obtain a synergistic.

That is, what you are saying. I just lay the intonation the other way round.


----------



## solar_plasma

wow, this takes time! Now, I am washing off the NaOH from the second half of my batch. I used KOH for the first one, I don't know why, but KOH worked better and faster. The solids felt much faster to the bottom. First half is already incinerated. Should have done the whole batch at once, - I need a much bigger funnel! I guess, the silver chloride/oxide makes it slow (if there is any :lol: )


----------



## solar_plasma

> you can remove all the base metal at once except any aluminum. the aluminum is the reason for the hcl bath.



I wonder....since it is only Al that has to be dissolved in the HCl step and there is no Sn, then only hot NaOH would do the same. (Caution: exotherm, will get hotter, etching fumes)

Advantage would be almost pure sodium aluminate as waste and pure waste is a resource. All the other base metals will dissolve in HNO3. 

Another advantage would be, that the incineration would get unnecessary.

Soldered chips could be treated with HCl before crushed or incinerated, this would make the whole process much faster and less nasty.

...does anybody not confirm?


----------



## solar_plasma

...Then it comes on my to-do-list. 

*My advice to all new ones is ofcourse to do, like the very experienced guys on the forum do. Their methods work for sure and you can get help, if you meet some probs. *


----------



## solar_plasma

Okay, I read on ofcourse and have deleted the last idea from my list, because:

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=15026



Lino1406 said:


> Aluminum should be dissolved in HCl
> Iodine with Al - a mess
> NaOH with Al - a mess




...and when Lino, my taciturn favorite chemist says, it is a mess, it must be a mess....


----------



## alvaschein

Hi all

I took my time for al little "research" on gold content of black chips. First I sorted a pile of black chips into more or less similar type classes. So at the end I had 16 different classes. From each class I took a sample of about 50 g, depending on how much I effectively had, treated them to get to the gold bond wires and calculated the ratio of gold content.
I have to say that the washing process without losing to much bond wires was rather difficult and there still remained some dirt of cracked silicone chips. So, I guess the resulting yield might be the maximum possible yield with this kind of treatment.

Well, take a look at the results (see attached doc) and calculate for yourself which type of chips is worth for hunting for. My personal favorites are the FCBGA's. They had surprisingly long bond wires.

Have fun

Roy


----------



## Claudie

Very nice! 
Well laid out and easy to understand. A lot of time and work in this, thank you for putting it on here.


----------



## solar_plasma

An impressing piece of foundational research! Thank you very much!!!


----------



## g_axelsson

Thanks a lot! Fantastic work!

I just wish I had it six month ago when I sold a lot of chips...  

:mrgreen: 

Göran


----------



## mjgraham

Good work, thanks for the information.


----------



## Rodthrower18

Has anyone used a blue bowl or other concentrator yet? Panning takes a certain amount of skill. How fine is the gold supposed to be? I ran a test batch of 200g of the black epoxy part of s/n bridge chips and the best I got was a few heavy ultra fine almost flour like "lines" of color. I've kept all of my "wash" water and keep repanning and every time I get more color back out from what's supposed to be my wash water lol. So any ideas or confirmation on the blue bowl would be great.


----------



## tamlove

Good day all. I'm new to the forum. Great posts and great thread. Ill be posting my procedures and yields soon. cheers for now.


----------



## patnor1011

You will be better served in appropriate threads. But if you want ask something about processing IC chips this thread is right place for it.
8)


----------



## tamlove

Can sum1 mabe explain the chemical way of dealing with chips? I'd like to do a batch inciniration way and another the chemical way. To compare time,effort,and yield.


----------



## Geo

tamlove said:


> Can sum1 mabe explain the chemical way of dealing with chips? I'd like to do a batch inciniration way and another the chemical way. To compare time,effort,and yield.



please drop the texting lingo. it is not permitted on the forum. do try to spell the best you can when writing in English. use spell check if you can.

to answer your question, there is not a safe way to chemically process the plastic bodies.


----------



## tamlove

Ok then. I apollogise for making spelling mistakes and using text lingo . Thankyou for the answer.
I'd still like to know though (safe or not) has anyone had sucsess with chemicals on chips? Please share your experience good or bad. I shall post my findings too when I'm done experimenting.


----------



## Geo

tamlove, out of an over abundance of caution, i seriously doubt anyone will lay out the process for you because of safety concerns. it deals with compounds and processes that can maim, cause blindness and even kill. it has been spoken of and described here on the forum as one of the more dangerous processes and the consensus is that it should not be recommended for anyone other than a trained chemist in a laboratory setting should attempt it. if you have the patience to hunt for it, im sure you will find it. my conscious will not allow me to describe it or even tell you the name of the process. any member thats been here for the last couple of years might can help you but i will not, not with this.


----------



## tamlove

Thank you for that. ill just do more research and experiment. More research than experiment.


----------



## Pantherlikher

tamlove said:


> Thank you for that. ill just do more research and experiment. More research than experiment.



The second post I've read by tamlove and all I see is an accident waiting to be mixed / made.

Stop posting and begin your journey into this endeaver and let your eyes see the world around.

PLEASE?

B.S.

... There is no such thing as an accident; but carelessness has been renamed to make it someone else's fault...


----------



## Stowmaster

Hello!
I'm newbie in processing circuits. I have collected 1 kg of chips north and south bridges with a ceramic lid, and I want to try processing. I want to consult how best to work newbie
1) to burn the top (ceramic) and lower (textolite) parts separately or together?
2) from ceramic pieces after burning, remove to the crystals, or grind crystals with burned ceramic?


----------



## g_axelsson

I don't understand your description, I have never seen any "north and south bridges with a ceramic lid".

Is this what you have? It is a flip chip BGA and doesn't contain any gold. What you see is the back side of the silicon die.




Or is this what you have? This is an epoxy filled bonded BGA and contains a lot of gold.




Here is a short description of the two technologies. One with bond wires of gold, one with solder balls. As seen even a flip chip could be covered in epoxy.
http://images.yourdictionary.com/flip-chip

[rant] And I really think we should try to call them bonded BGA packages (Ball Grid Array packages), the ones with a plastic top on a small PCB with a golden corner marker. North and south bridge chips are the glue logic that binds together the CPU with I/O and RAM in a PC and there are a lot more functions that are packaged in BGA packages. For me as an electronics engineer it is as I would start calling all carat scrap for gold rings. Not all north and south bridge chips contains gold.[/rant]

Göran

(edit spelling)


----------



## Geo

in the pictures above, off the forum, all the electronics guys i talk to refer to them as "Graphics processing unit" or "GPU" for short. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Processing_Unit

of course this also includes most "flip chips" and "quads" or flatpaks. using the "one name for everything" gets confusing.


----------



## Stowmaster

I read this top. I've been collecting these chips only. Sorry for the poor photo quality. Part of the chips I have already burned.


----------



## patnor1011

This is what is the most valuable item on motherboard. There is more gold on this IC than on all of the pins combined.


----------



## g_axelsson

Stowmaster, that is plastic top BGA:s, no cheramics.

Don't mix the tops with the small circuit boards. The gold bond wires are all inside the plastic part with the silicon die. It is easy to rip it off the board before incineration. After the incineration you would have some copper and the gold bond wires mixed in with the ash and silicon dies. Some of your BGA capsules had a copper plate as heat spreader, just pick then out while washing if you didn't remove them before incineration.
I would wash the ash away, remove the copper traces with a little bit of nitric and then go after the gold with AR or HCl/Cl.

The board part contains only trace amounts of gold... I've been told, haven't tested that myself yet but I don't see anything wrong with that statement. What is clear is that the board part contains all the tin and you don't want to mess with that, it would probably cost more in chemicals than you would get in extracted gold.

Göran


----------



## Imran

pat thanks for posting so much invaluable informations.

Thought i should post. There are gold bonding wires in transistors too. It is not much but every little bit counts 8) After all there are a lot of transistors on motherboards. The ones on boards from power supplies dont have any gold just ones on the motherboards.


----------



## g_axelsson

Geo said:


> in the pictures above, off the forum, all the electronics guys i talk to refer to them as "Graphics processing unit" or "GPU" for short. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Processing_Unit
> 
> of course this also includes most "flip chips" and "quads" or flatpaks. using the "one name for everything" gets confusing.




Are you sure they not calling it a BGA capsule? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_grid_array

In the wikipedia article they mention 18 different sorts of BGA packages. Not all of them contains gold but there is no data about that on wikipedia.

Just as in chemistry we should try to use the correct terminology. It removes ambiguity and makes it easier to search for information.

As an example, which of these are GPU:s?












Would you treat them the same to get the gold out?

The answer is that all three are GPU:s but only the top two contains gold as bond wires. This is what I'm talking about, I could just as easily made three pictures of north bridge or south bridge chips.
To tie the function of a chip to the way we process them is wrong, as technology advances the packages will change and there would be a lot of confusion. We should describe the way we process scrap depending on the type of package, just as we describe carat refining depending on the alloy, not what the object were used for.

Am I making any sense or just rambling?

Göran


----------



## Geo

you make perfect sense. this is like a discussion on the forum previously about the names of components. any particular component may have several misnomers but only one true technical name. electrical engineers or techs make up their own names for components at a time before the technical name was well known and the misnomer has been passed from one tech to another. the same thing happens here. when north/south bridge chips are discussed, the BGA chips are what comes to mind even though it refers to the "flip chip" as well. as long as members and new readers are not confused about what is being discussed, they can honestly be called anything as long as everyone calls them the same thing.


----------



## patnor1011

Imran said:


> pat thanks for posting so much invaluable informations.
> 
> Thought i should post. There are gold bonding wires in transistors too. It is not much but every little bit counts 8) After all there are a lot of transistors on motherboards. The ones on boards from power supplies dont have any gold just ones on the motherboards.



Yes, you are correct. I am collecting them and do have tad less than one kilogram. I will play with them to find out some numbers.


----------



## IntelGold

Hi, Would someone kindly let me know what sort of transistors you are refering to? Maybe a Picture.
Thanks.


----------



## patnor1011

Give me minute I will take quick picture of what I have laying on table, not every one of them do have gold bonding wires but even if only half do, that will add up.


----------



## IntelGold

Thanks Pat,
Guess what? I have been stripping boards and leaving these on as i thought they had nothing worth saving in them....Doh!
Oh well back to the satrt of the pile to remove them.
Cheers Pat.


----------



## IntelGold

Pat, How do you remove them? I have been trying to use a chisel but they just keep splitting in half and make a terrible mess. I dont really want to desolder them as i am the same as you and sit watching telly whilst doing it.
Thanks.


----------



## Imran

@intelgolf I use pneumatic hammer. it works really great. I can remove 9 out of 10 unbroken. Furthermore i can strip whole motherboard in no more then 3 minutes. I used to do it with chisel and hammer and have spent about 10 minutes in order to strip a motherboard of all parts. If you have a a lot of boards you should definitely buy one.

Ps: dont bother taking them off from low grade boards (like ones from tv-s and power supplies). After testing them i found that they only contain aluminum bonding wire and no gold.

hope it helps...


----------



## IntelGold

I can't seem to find any gold or even aluminum bonding wires. I have taken apart 20 or so and nothing. Are the wires in the top plastic part or the bottom Metal bit?


Thanks for any help.


----------



## Geo

bonding wires are about 1/10 the diameter of a human hair. you need a good jewelers loupe to see them clearly. normally, they are in the plastic body connecting from the legs to the silicon chip.


----------



## IntelGold

Thanks Geo.


----------



## Imran

intel...of course you cant see any bonding wires like that. 
Follow this instructions.

Use blowtorch to incinerate those chips. Half a minute under direct flame would do the job. After that they should be white outside and easy to pulverize. Do that so that the powder is as fine as possible. You also need to remove bottom copper part. Now you should have really fine black dust. Put it on a sheet of paper and if you have really good eyesight you should be able to see gold wires. If not use magnifying glass. 

Second step is to concentrate powder. In order to do that you should pan it. Be very careful. After that you should be left with a gold concentrate. Than use HNO3 to remove any possible base metals. In the next step use HNO3/HCl or Hcl/NaClO to dissolve gold. Precipitate it with Alkali metabisulfite or FeSO4.

Voila you have pure gold powder ready to be melted :lol:


----------



## Smack

patnor1011 said:


> Give me minute I will take quick picture of what I have laying on table, not every one of them do have gold bonding wires but even if only half do, that will add up.



I bet the one on the left in the picture with the number 30127 has gold bonding wires.


----------



## patnor1011

I use heat gun to remove them. It is quick. Some things can be done while watching TV some cant but gold is gold so we must count a bit of sweat and blood as price of getting it. :lol: 

Yes, Imran that is exactly how I do them. If you do handful at a time you will see bonding wires easier as they will accumulate in one spot.


----------



## IntelGold

Thanks Guys


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## alvaschein

Stowmaster said:


> I read this top. I've been collecting these chips only. Sorry for the poor photo quality. Part of the chips I have already burned.


I took a closer look to this type of chip. I removed the top body from its base and found a gold plated circuit on the base. So I decided to treat those bases with AP, and yes, I got the gold foil off. The next step will be to treat the top body the same way to remove the remaining gold which kept there while removing them from their bases.
Well, my advice: Do not just burn them. Take off the top body and treat both, body and base, with AP. After this you can burn the top body for recovering the bond wires.

Roy


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## patnor1011

No need to put top piece to AP. If you split them carefully then there will be no plating there. Even if there will be same you will recover it after incineration.
But generally that do not bother me too much, plating there is so minuscule amount that if it will be lost along way I would not cry too much because of it. :mrgreen:


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## tamlove

Panther killer. What's your problem? I m new to the forum and I came here to get some advice and or info on some topics. I don't need anyone to tell me how dangerous anything is I'm not stupid as you are implying! I've done enuff research to know that I I'm willing to do anything and everything I can to be sucsessfull in refining. Since I'm new at this I unfortunately don't have much information to share like tips and how to's. As soon as I can ill post pics of my material and how I prossess it. As time goes on ill probably have more posts that are more interesting. Sory to everyone else for this message as its not on the topic but Its not nice to be welcomed on a forum in such a harsh way. Don't judge me by whatever means it is that u do because you don't know me mr panther..ill stop moaning now thanks for listning .any comments on this message in pm please in order to keep the thread clean and on topic. 

Happy refining evryone. Edit: I'd like to appologise to you pantherkiller and felow members for bein over sensitive. I take bake anything that might've offended you. I apreciate your concern for my safety. Cheers for now.


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## jimdoc

tamlove said:


> Panther killer. What's your problem? I m new to the forum and I came here to get some advice and or info on some topics. I don't need anyone to tell me how dangerous anything is I'm not stupid as you are implying! I've done enuff research to know that I I'm willing to do anything and everything I can to be sucsessfull in refining. Since I'm new at this I unfortunately don't have much information to share like tips and how to's. As soon as I can ill post pics of my material and how I prossess it. As time goes on ill probably have more posts that are more interesting. Sory to everyone else for this message as its not on the topic but Its not nice to be welcomed on a forum in such a harsh way.
> 
> Happy refining evryone.



When it comes to safety, you should accept all warnings whether or not you feel you need them.
Attitude about a safety warning is totally uncalled for in my opinion.

Jim


----------



## butcher

Many times I will state a safety warning when replying to a question, even if I know the person already has a good grasp of the working safely with a procedure, this warning is a friendly reminder and also many people read these posts, so many times the reply may be also to help other members to understand something, or remind them of the dangers. many times answers to questions are not just directed at the question or the only to the person asking the question.

I agree with Jimdoc the attitude is uncalled for, and over a safety warning really makes it uncalled for.

tamlove, what is your problem?


----------



## Geo

anytime a dangerous process is recommended, it should also have a warning about the safety issues even if you are responding to a moderator.the safety warning is more of a general statement where the rest of the reply may be to you personally.

if i can, id like to give you some advice. any response you get from a question should be considered a gift even if its a negative one. if someone offers you a hand made cookie, you should take the cookie with a smile and a thank you. even if you throw it away later because you didnt like that kind of cookie. if someone offers you something, its considered rude to some people to refuse or make comments about it ( "i dont like those kinds of cookies"). the next time, it may a cookie you like but because they thought you were rude, they just dont offer.


----------



## Imran

Patnor or someone else, what do you guys think about going straight with nitric and then AR after crushing chips (thus omitting panning)? I am kind of afraid i am losing values while panning.


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## alvaschein

Imran said:


> Patnor or someone else, what do you guys think about going straight with nitric and then AR after crushing chips (thus omitting panning)? I am kind of afraid i am losing values while panning.


From my experience I can say following:
I do not pan. First I remove the magnetic parts, sieve the rest to remove the copper fragments and then simply flush repeatedly the incineration-dust in a beaker until I have very few "sand" in it. There may remain some little pieces of base metal. I remove them with nitic acid and flush again until I have removed all acid.
From this point I have the choice of three methods:
1. solve the gold with AR
2. panning
3. dry it for direct melting

I use method 1 when the risk is big to lose bond wires during panning or I have to much small silicone fragments, method 2 only when there are large bondwires and method 3 when I'm in a hurry.
You can, after having removed all base metals, go directly to the AR method. So you won't lose nothing or at least nothing on the "mechanical way".

Well, it depends on you.

Roy


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## patnor1011

Never tried that. I guess too much nitric spent. You need to reduce that ash somehow, hard to say how it will react with nitric. Also too much waste created.
Water is much much cheaper.
I do it pretty much like previous poster said, I use smaller bucket in bigger one and run water till it go off clear. Agitate from time to time. I pan only concentrate.


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## Imran

Thanks roy and pat. Gonna try your method patnor by using 2 buckets. It sounds awesome.


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## patnor1011

It is easy. Put all ash to smaller bucket. Put this smaller in bigger one. You can place everything in small thing used for baking cakes and everything in sink. Let water go to small bucket, when it fill it will carry mud and fine ash as dirty water in bigger bucket, from there in cake tray and from there into sink. If any value go for some reason from small bucket it will end up in bigger or cake tray. When water clears I then agitate material in smaller bucket again and wait till it clears. In this way I get rid of about 80% of material and only bigger pieces and gold will stay. You can pan this concentrate or maybe you can ground it bit more and wash again. If you are careful and slow there is poor chance anything will be lost.


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## solar_plasma

After removing ashes and base metals I am soaking my flatpacks since days if not weeks in HCl/chlorox and still get no positive SnCl2. Well, I have it outside at 15 degC and only stirring trice a day, guess that's the prob. This is no crying for help, the gold cannot escape. Just one more example that the processes often sound much easier, than they are.

edit: another possibility is, that I hadn't washed enough after HCl and before incinerating and now the gold is hiding in the HNO3 solution....this would be very stupid :lol:


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## patnor1011

Can you tell me what you did exactly and take a picture of what you have?

HCl/Cl is not recommended for this type of material. It is good on foils or powder, for wires AR is much better suited.


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## solar_plasma

> HCl/Cl is not recommended for this type of material. It is good on foils or powder, for wires AR is much better suited.



It's a heavy fine sand that forms a concrete cake that is not easily stirred up, so the liquid has no good contact to the gold fibers. AR would have been my next choice.

Steps (every step got one or a few days):
incineration of 1,2 kg flatpacks, ramchips, ic, black tops of n/s-bridges (with small amounts of Sn, but mostly cut)
washing the light ashes off, always waiting some minutes before pouring off
trying to pan without succes, after 4 hours I had more gold in a probe that wasn't panned - wisely I haven't thrown anything away
HCl, dissolving basemetals, especially Sn,solution got green like diluted CuCl2
Washing by decanting and filtering till the filtrate looked clean
NaOH, possible AgCl should form AgOH, solution got blue like when Cu++ react with NaOH forming soluable Cu complex
washing till no colour
incineration again
HNO3, solution got slightly blue like Cu(NO3)2, some drops of HCl in a probe didn't form any AgCl (no white cloud)
washed til no colour
HCl/Cl

2 days ago I added about 10 pieces of cutted ram fingers with only a little copper and assumed cemented gold on them from an old failed process, wanted to see, if it would dissolve or even cement.
The fingers are slowly dissolving and the solution got very slightly green. The fingers show no visible cementation. Since it still smelled of chlorine, I added more HCl today for about 8 hours ago. Now, it has got more green. I test SnCl2 tomorrow.If still negative - after what you said, I expect it will be negative - I will pour off most of the liquid and add nitric for estimated 2g (max.5g) gold, unless I read other advices. Alternatively: wash first and start with clean AR (covering with HCl 33%, adding 1ml HNO3 65% in maybe 3 portions about every 30min).


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## patnor1011

Hmmm.
It is maybe that you did not incinerate between HCl and HNO3 washes.

Anyway, when I encounter this thick sand then what I do is that I dry it completely again and incinerate second time. That will help to reduce it to finer particles which are washed with water again. In that way you can reduce concentrate to half.
At this stage when you just take bigger pyrex dish and swirl material inside with water you must see gold wires and powder accumulated on bottom and on the middle.


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## solar_plasma

> It is maybe that you did not incinerate between HCl and HNO3 washes.



Yes, I have incinerated between HCl and HNO3.



> Anyway, when I encounter this thick sand then what I do is that I dry it completely again and incinerate second time. That will help to reduce it to finer particles which are washed with water again. In that way you can reduce concentrate to half.
> At this stage when you just take bigger pyrex dish and swirl material inside with water you must see gold wires and powder accumulated on bottom and on the middle.



Ok, I'll do that before AR. Thank you!


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## Geo

i have been washing as much light ash out as i can with water and drain. i then run it through a bucket of AP solution letting the air stir the ash.since the base metal is exposed on all sides, it only takes a day or two to remove whatever metal the magnet wouldnt pick up. it seems to be working good and making the dissolution a lot cleaner.


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## patnor1011

I remove all undesirable metal with sieve and magnet first, then rest is dissolved in HNO3. I am talking about reducing that silt like heavy sand. 
I just incinerate it again, ground up in mortar and pestle a bit and then wash with water again. 
It can be repeated as many times as you want or till most of it is gone.
As you proceed you will see more and more gold being visible.


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## tamlove

Gosh I spend my first 6 or so posts defending myself and appologising because I goet nailed for spelling and so called text lingo and because some guy and other members get offended if I didn't respond correctly towards a safety warning. Well this is not what a forum is about its about asking and learning and staying on the topic and if possible provide info that's usefull to others I'm sorry that I wasted the precious forum space it might've cost some money to post my posts witch got me nothing but a rude welcoming to the forum and even tho I apologised and took back what I said I still get attitude from sum1 I've never even had a single conversation with( butcher) so goodluck to everyone with all your projects. I love urban mining its a passion to me and not a hobby ill. Have to do it without help since its quite obvious I won't get any here.so as this is my last post I say farewell
. And as stated over and over and over before by many many users: stay safe safety first stop posting ( as I was told by panther ) cos if ur new on a forum and u don't know someone it seems apropriate to make them feel like they don't know what their doing or stupid as panthers comment clearlly implied. Sorry for the lingo if any and again soryy for wasted space on the thread. Goddbey all.


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## jimdoc

You don't even need to post here, just study and learn.
If you do choose to post, there are a few rules you need to follow, and you need to have respect.
If you can't follow the rules without causing a disturbance, well like you said, goodbye!
Any safety warnings are a blessing, attitude because of them doesn't make any sense at all.

Jim


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## butcher

tamlove,

I am sorry you have had a rough start, We do have rules, and attitude towards members is just not cool here, no one is trying to run you off, I personally would like to see you stick around and learn, and share with others what you learn, but part of that is following our forum rules, there is nothing against you in these rules, and asking you to follow them was nothing against you personally, the rules help to keep the forum running smoothly, it is really not hard to follow them, and doing so will make the forum a good place for you to learn, and a place you can enjoy learning at, which is what I hope you will do, stick around, follow the forum rules, and have fun learning, and become one of our finer forum members.

I think we could become good friends, if you could just stick around (and just follow the guidelines adopted by the forum to keep it running smoothly), I do not know you but would like the chance to get to know you, and nothing I have said to you so far was personally against you, but it was against the behavior you acted on that was not conducive to a good forum, and was against our rules.

The choice is yours my friend, and what ever you choose I wish you luck and happiness.

P.S. stick around be good and make friends.


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## solar_plasma

@tamlove

Everyone has tried to help you. What will be the best help is something you (like everyone) often don't know by yourself, when you need help. If you knew it, you wouldn't need help.

In this topic I haven't even asked for help, because I knew, I know the process, or the various processes, since everyone does it a bit different, in theory, and I know, I just have to read them again and agáin, follow the routines like testing, doing everything proper, then I will figure it out. I did not expect any help. That I suddenly got it, is a gift. A gift, that will save me much time. It#s not me to decide, when someone else wants to give me a gift. When it comes, I just say thank you and do like I've been told - even if I can't see the whole meaning! I know, they know, what they talk about.

So stop feeling bad, just read, what we told you and you will understand, like everyone here once understood. I think no one has been harsh or offending. If you feel so, we can talk about it.


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## some888

hi!
I followed this topic and my personal opinion that economically it really makes no sense to process the ashes.

I had nothing to do over weekend and decided to have a fun
so far I get some amount of different chips
* burned them 
* separated ash from silicone chips and metal parts (including pins) by simple means of filtration

Yes it looks like there is some gold plating (not pure gold for sure) in silicone chips and pins

but what do you really do with ashes?

I thought that it will be useless to start processing it in AR or even at first HCI +filtration problems
because of too much chemical crap it it.
Ok I decided to dilute whatever possible in water at first (quite many things actually dilute in water)

So after boiling ashes and decanting solution for the whole of the day I finally had a look at what remains.
Certainly it does not look like a golden mine, and it's even hard to imagine what amount of gold it may contain.

but for now it is more or less ready for whatever acid
I'm still thinking that probably will spend more on acid then recover any gold from there

Did anybody recovered anything significant from the ash?
if yes how much? - for example if from 2 kg of just ash you will get about 2g of gold you will certainly loose more then gold is worth + the time spend - unless there are other precious metals

any Ideas?

thanks


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## Geo

a gram of gold per pound is good numbers. if your time is worth more than that, i recommend you find some different material to work with. on average, i may work 2 - 3 hours a day 4 - 5 days a week and might reclaim and refine $300 - $400 per month of my own material. i am disabled and cant work a manual labor type job anymore and so this suites me just fine. i have no doubt that if i needed it badly, i could do up to $1,000 per month if i really worked at it. thats just the gold as i am putting everything else up in storage as i go.


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## some888

> gram of gold per pound is good numbers


do you mean ashes? or the whole chips? 
in any case it looks way too optimistic especially if we are talking about ash

in my own case when I look at the remains of ashes it looks more like a my garden soil then anything worth recovering )

P.S or anybody knows (from his experience) really smart way to process the ash ? )


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## Geo

a pound of chips (raw).

as with anything we deal with, some are better and some are worse.


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## some888

Geo said:


> a pound of chips (raw).
> 
> as with anything we deal with, some are better and some are worse.



thanks for your answer - it's what I thought 

I'm still interested in approximate gold yield in ashes
I'll give a try myself anyway, but to find the yield I will need some considerable amount of ash
Seriously doubt I will have so much since I'm not really keen to start refining gold on any serious level, but the whole process is quite fun and it is exiting to get some gold out of scrap ( and who knows maybe will earn few bucks 8) )
Another option to process "washed" ashes together with pins and silicone chips but then gold yield in ashes will be unknown (well, if there is any worth mentioning) 

I'm asking about just the ashes because for me it looks really most troubled material for gold refining.

Correct me if I am wrong but I do not think it reasonable to process "raw" ash straight in AR or even HCI and the way I did (boiled and decanted) it is really time consuming (and boring)


----------



## solar_plasma

What exactly do you mean with "ashes"? What I call ashes, is the light material,that has to be washed away and it is useless. The gold fibres from *bondings *are heavy and get concentrated in the residue.

The yields are discussed and proven many times and can go up to 5-6 g/kg (black tops of n/s bridges) of raw chips. So I don't really understand your question. How much gold you get from it, or if you get gold at all, depends on your skills.

If it is worth processing? That depends on your equipment, what you expect and what your motivation is.


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## patnor1011

Download my first ebook and you will see.
From one kilogram of chips I incinerate, sieve and separate pins and silicone dies from I get ashes which are then washed with water to obtain concentrate. Only this concentrate is treated with acid first to remove any small metallic contaminants, then it can be incinerated, crushed and water washed again. From one kilogram I will get about half a cup of concentrate which is good to go to AR. 
It certainly is profitable for me to recover gold from this. I incinerate in fireplace which heat mu water along with incinerating chips, water is very cheap here, in fact we do have water free as for now. When they will start charging for water I will utilize rainwater which we have more than we need here. 
It is certainly more profitable to process IC chips than plated pins from common computer scrap.


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## patnor1011

No point to spend acid on incinerated chips until they look like on picture which I posted several post up here. 
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827&start=320#p188596


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## some888

> is the light material,that has to be washed away and it is useless



yes it's pretty much what I mean by saying ashes

funny enough I could not see any solid gold bondings in the whole bunch of processed chips what consisted mainly from different IC chips
the very most of bonding material was copper with some gold plating, (alliminium - disolved already using sodium hydroxide)

where do I find chips with solid gold bonding ? it looks they has to be rare these days :roll:


----------



## Geo

there are no copper bonding wires. bonding wires are either aluminum or gold. have you searched for bonding wires. try this, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gold+bonding+wires


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## some888

hi!
Surely they do not look like a gold to me unless gold could oxidise so much due to burning with oxygen, besides just to have a look how that metal may look without heating I took a pliers and crushed one chips manually - it is absolutely same material in it (looks like plated copper)

So far I had from chips Aluminium or / and Nickel (pins and wires)

And plated copper lookalike metal (wires)

including quite big square plates with at least 4 flat wires on the edges 

I will process it all anyway, but honestly I seen no solid gold bonding wires so far
if anybody will tell me that something I think is copper, but actually solid gold I will jump in joy 8) 


thanks


----------



## some888

Geo said:


> there are no copper bonding wires. bonding wires are either aluminum or gold. have you searched for bonding wires. try this, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gold+bonding+wires



hi!
I just followed your advice and found out that copper is perfectly used for bonding as well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_bonding

another number that does not look good



> Typical manufacturers make gold wire in diameters from 0.0005 inch (12.5 micrometres) and larger


this number is a bit close to quite many gold plated materials


----------



## Geo

thats all good, but if you read the whole article, it states that copper is difficult to work with due to oxidation and has a shelf life. i have looked at many bonding wires magnified many times and have yet to find any copper bonding wires. must be fairly new. leave it to the crafty Chinese to make inferior products. like i said previously, some are better and some are worse. for all of our practical purposes, for now, it is safe to assume that the chips to date contain gold or aluminum bonding wires. 

by the way, from your descriptions, you may not be looking for the right objects. a single bonding wire is very hard to see with the naked eye. i need a jewelers Loupe to determine whether they are copper or aluminum. the only real way to determine gold content is to follow steps set down by Pat. when you deviate from his steps, you will be disappointed every time. 

if i were you, i would stop posting commentary until i knew what i was talking about and start reading this post from start to finish along with relevant links.


----------



## some888

> if i were you, i would stop posting commentary



do you want me to stop posting?
I was just looking for some advices and I think I did not offended anybody in any way 

anyway I get a bit tired of looking at the miserable remains of chips - I put all ash+metal+silicone into one bunch and treating for now with HCI
I hope I will manage today to treat it with AR and to recover some gold (if there is anything :lol: )

I will let you know results


----------



## Geo

no, of course not. i did not mean for you not to post, i just meant commentary about chips. questions asking for advice is great, how else would we learn AFTER we have searched for the answer and could not find it otherwise.


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## solar_plasma

> I will let you know results



I know the results already.


----------



## some888

hi!
ok as promised here are results.
I successfully recovered some gold :lol: 
but I can not weight it up - I simply do not have such a weights.

So far from about one pound of Chips I recovered gold far less then 1g - probably about 0.1 maybe less.
they were different IC chips with production dated probably early 2000 on different expansion boards
just to compare when processing gold plating like "gold fingers" or gold plated contacts from the same expansion boards I recovered about 1.5g of gold

I did not processed any chips like north bridge , south bridge or ram. but when googling a bit more about chips found out that even CPU like Celeron contain no gold content at all, so what do you really expect from regular IC which is times cheaper
when thinking a bit more you could buy even mobo starting from 20 quid or so. That is including:
* production cost
* profit
* shipping cost
* profit for reseller (wholesale + retail)
* VAT 
So I do not know how much gold really should be in it
I do not think I will process any chips again, because even the chips I used are quite old, looks a bit unrealistic to get more ancient chips with more gold content 
In my case Very most of chips used Copper bonding wires (80-90%) and aluminium. Very very few were using gold unless on plated copper.


----------



## patnor1011

You can not look at it this way. While motherboard may cost 20$ not all of weight represent IC. Also IC bonding wires are so small I can guarantee you that you will have hard time to see it with naked eye. You need a lot of them to accumulate visible pile.

I have to disagree with you. 
IC chips are the most valuable part from electronic boards. Try to take off s/n bridge and your buyer will downgrade price for at least a half of what he pay for motherboard.
Try to take out all IC and he will offer you even less if anything.

Processing IC take some time to master. I know what I talk about I was working with them for a few months before I started this thread. Many times I washed too fast and then I was wondering why I do not have gold in my pan. Since then I processed IC, hundreds of pounds of them and I can assure you that if you will master process, and do it with maximum concentration and slow, you will be amazed at results. 
Every shortcut or rushing things will cost you dearly.
If you do not get at least 0.3-0.5 g from pound of mixed IC you do something wrong. (maybe you just had a lot of eprom type, bigger IC in your lot, from those I would estimate very small yield)


----------



## some888

Hi. 
No disrespect but how did you managed to get them using simple panning if they not visible. So they were visible enough for you. 
But as I said in my case I ended up with pretty much nothing. Quite likely after some time I will have some amount of this chips again I have no problems to sell it for next to nothing if anybody could recover more gold from them. But trust me In my case gold bonding wires were almost not present

P.S Eprom was clearly present among my chips, but difficult to say percentage

P.P.S 0.3 g your yield from pound of chips is not really far from my estimated 0.1 ( as said earlier I have no means to weight it up) . But even then I will not process them anymore, unless having for free 100 pounds of chips even then I doubt I will make any profit out of it. I rather recover gold from otheir materials


----------



## patnor1011

Easy peasy.
Even that they are very hard to be seen they are way much heavier than ash. Besides, ash is being dissolved in water and go out as dirty water. Simple panning done carefully ensure that those wires will get accumulated in the middle of your pan.
I can once again point you to pictures I posted few posts up. There you will see how wires look when they are accumulated. 0.3 g is not my yield, I simply said that if you do not get at least this you do something wrong. You stated that you got less than 0.1 g which is three times less than bottom number of my suggestion. I said .3-.5 g
Eprom type will lower yield significantly.
Look, I cant convince you there is more gold in IC as processing them is clearly not working for you. 
It is your experience and your decision. 
This is clear example of yield controversy. Every time when somebody ask what is yield of this and that, correct answer is: as much as you can recover, or - it all depend on your process, your experience and your efficiency.
I will process them all day long without hesitation as I know what to expect and what to look for.
Now please note that I do not mean it in bad way or do not want to be disrespectful.
You may be world famous piano player but if they will give you guitar first time, you wont be able to entertain people.


----------



## g_axelsson

The wires are really thin, I use microscope to check my concentrates as I can't see the single wires without help.

For an idea of how much gold there could be, check in the pictures in this thread.... I just say WOW!!! Nice pictures!
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=13667

Göran


----------



## Geo

g_axelsson said:


> The wires are really thin, I use microscope to check my concentrates as I can't see the single wires without help.
> 
> For an idea of how much gold there could be, check in the pictures in this thread.... I just say WOW!!! Nice pictures!
> http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=13667
> 
> Göran



thanks Goran. when i try to refine a new material, i jump into the effort with both feet and try to gain as much information as i can even if it means i have to deconstruct a few things. 8)


----------



## some888

Via KT133 - stopped production in 2003, used for AMD Socket A (that is when they still had some ceramic CPU's).
*So what are the realistic changes of getting even few kilos of these?*
first at all to consider AMD sales where always shadow of Intel sales so this via chip depended on it
I do not have all stats but majority of "branded" PC where not using (and still are using very small amount of AMD compare to intel)
So AMD was left in those days (and still is) for relatively small amount of PC enthusiast (including overclockers), but even myself to be considered quite IT qeek never ever had AMD 

Secondly most of them should go to rubbish bin or to be recycled about 5-7 years ago, Because these days Pentium 4 and duos are recycled

I'm not questioning gold content in this particular chip
but it looks like a bit inappropriate example of " Look mate here it is so much gold - how did you manage to miss it?"




patnor1011 said:


> You may be world famous piano player but if they will give you guitar first time, you wont be able to entertain people.



Agree 100% but you still did not convince me that I left some gold out of recovery..... Well even if I knew I did I will not admit it easily even to myself :roll: :roll: :roll: 
But so far you convinced me to give it another go
Very soon I will have another bunch of IT related scrap ( I asked my friends to give me it scrap instead of putting to rubbish bin)
Next time I will be more specific and include pics as well




g_axelsson said:


> The wires are really thin, I use microscope to check my concentrates as I can't see the single wires without help.
> 
> Göran



Just from curiosity why do you check them in microscope? 

A bit time consuming - if using conventional microscope you will need to check it drop by drop between two glasses.......adjust the illuminator and diaphragm......focus the image ......readjust the mirror, or diaphragm......needles to say microscope has to be covered every time when not in use


----------



## g_axelsson

some888 said:


> Via KT133 - stopped production in 2003, used for AMD Socket A (that is when they still had some ceramic CPU's).
> *So what are the realistic changes of getting even few kilos of these?*
> first at all to consider AMD sales where always shadow of Intel sales so this via chip depended on it
> I do not have all stats but majority of "branded" PC where not using (and still are using very small amount of AMD compare to intel)
> So AMD was left in those days (and still is) for relatively small amount of PC enthusiast (including overclockers), but even myself to be considered quite IT qeek never ever had AMD
> 
> Secondly most of them should go to rubbish bin or to be recycled about 5-7 years ago, Because these days Pentium 4 and duos are recycled
> 
> I'm not questioning gold content in this particular chip
> but it looks like a bit inappropriate example of " Look mate here it is so much gold - how did you manage to miss it?"


It's not the model it's the type of package... I give up. :roll:

I have to admit, you are unique. Normally any new member here sees only the gold and we have to tell them it's just a small amount and not as much as they think. But this is the first time we failed to convinve someone that "Therrre's gold in them chips!"
Okay, I put my money where my mouth is, I'll buy them from you dirt cheap any day.

My first batch that I have collected during the winter concists of 200 grams of the top plastics, somewhere between 100 and 200 chips totally, so I would say that it's a good probability to find this type of chip.



some888 said:


> g_axelsson said:
> 
> 
> 
> The wires are really thin, I use microscope to check my concentrates as I can't see the single wires without help.
> 
> Göran
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Just from curiosity why do you check them in microscope?
> 
> A bit time consuming - if using conventional microscope you will need to check it drop by drop between two glasses.......adjust the illuminator and diaphragm......focus the image ......readjust the mirror, or diaphragm......needles to say microscope has to be covered every time when not in use
Click to expand...


Not my microscope, it's a focusing microscope from an electron microscope that I have mounted on the end of a movable arm (part of an old monitor arm) so I can adjust the height. I use it daily so I never cover it up. It gives only 10-20 times magnification but in stereo and it has a working distance of around 30 centimeters. It takes me seconds to swing it up and look down in a jar or on the fracture of a broken IC to check for golden wires.

For higher resolutions I have an electron microscope, a SEM that goes to 100.000 times magnification and a TEM that goes to 800.000 times, but those takes longer time to run.

Göran


----------



## solar_plasma

> I have to admit, you are unique. Normally any new member here sees only the gold and we have to tell them it's just a small amount and not as much as they think. But this is the first time we failed to convinve someone that "Therrre's gold in them chips!"



I think we even don't want to convince anyone. His ignorance is his very right. 'What makes me wonder about the constitution of his personality is, that I feel, he wants to convince us. This entire behaviour has a missionary touch. In fact, I do not only wonder, I feel disturbed, since this one is a more important forum thread to me, so I can't just stop reading those posts.

888
Yes, you are right, there is no gold at all. You are very skilled, smart and intelligent, thank you for enlighting us by your wisdom.


----------



## some888

solar_plasma said:


> 888
> Yes, you are right, there is no gold at all.


no mate it's not what I'm saying. Gold is everywhere: in Gold plating, in Chips 8), even in ocean water and human body (actually quite a lot from dental point of view :evil: ) - but what is more important quantities 




solar_plasma said:


> 888
> You are very skilled, smart and intelligent, thank you for enlighting us by your wisdom.



You are welcome m8, I know I am good :lol:

Despite my attitude ( looks like quite few people think I'm arrogant) I still hope to find some new friends here. Trust me I have no intention to offend anybody and all my post purely "scientific discussion" 

thanks

*P.S did anybody came up with idea of using a centrifuge for extracting bonding wires?*

I simply can not imagine myself doing this in my garden 8)


----------



## solar_plasma

You can't fill a chalice, which is aldready filled. When I came here, I had the same problem, that you have. I had already some successes, I had a relative good chemical background. I was a filled chalice. But the difference between you and me is, I read the forum many hours everyday and I started to read Hoke, because I read again and again posts about how important that should be. So, I got very soon aware of, that I know nothing, compared to the pro's in this forum. In a hurry I threw away everything, I believed to know about refining like a bad selfmade wine and started to fill my chalice with this old, grown wine, perfect in colour, smell and taste, this community is.

Well, friend, even if you only empty your chalice of 5$ wine half ways and fill up with famous 30$ wine, - what do you think, you will get?

So, as long as you don't start searching the forum and read, you will not stop boring us with discussions older than Methusalem, semi-knowledge and simply nonsens.


----------



## some888

solar_plasma said:


> When I came here, I had the same problem, that you have.



mate I have no problems so far and I do not know why did you started personal attacks on me?




solar_plasma said:


> But the difference between you and me is


the main difference is - for me it is just a temp fun and quite likely I will abandon after some time when it looks it is something else for you, Much more serious



solar_plasma said:


> I read the forum many hours everyday.



Come on ..... Do you really have nothing else to do in your life??? If you really need the money so badly and for whatever reason can not work. Go and empty rubbish bins on your street, get aluminium cans and sell it to scrapyard you will earn definitely more then burning computer chips.



solar_plasma said:


> you will not stop boring us with discussions older than Methusalem, semi-knowledge and simply nonsens



Where is the nonsense so far?

as I said myself earlier


Some888 said:


> *Despite my attitude ( looks like quite few people think I'm arrogant) I still hope to find some new friends here. Trust me I have no intention to offend anybody and all my post purely "scientific discussion*"



But if I will face personal attacks I have no problems not to post as well


----------



## patnor1011

To discuss if something is worth or not to d is very subjective. What you consider as not worthy may be gold mine for another person.
You regard processing IC as waste of time so be it. It is your subjective feeling and your experience. No need to trying to convince others about your view, you presented it and I can accept this. I do not agree and for me it is worth doing it and I am not going to convince you I am right. 
We exchanged our views and that is it. No point on tit for tat type of talking or forcing our way of thinking on each other.

Yes, Rusty do have couple of threads where he use centrifuge on separating concentrates from incinerated or milled IC chips.


----------



## solar_plasma

> Come on ..... Do you really have nothing else to do in your life??? If you really need the money so badly and for whatever reason can not work. Go and empty rubbish bins on your street, get aluminium cans and sell it to scrapyard you will earn definitely more then burning computer chips.



You are right, I can not work at time, - it is summer vacation and my students just don't want to come to school. So, I spend my time collecting bottles and cans, begging in the streets and mourning people, who make fools of themselves.


----------



## some888

patnor1011 said:


> To discuss if something is worth or not to d is very subjective. What you consider as not worthy may be gold mine for another person.
> You regard processing IC as waste of time so be it. It is your subjective feeling and your experience. No need to trying to convince others about your view, you presented it and I can accept this. I do not agree and for me it is worth doing it and I am not going to convince you I am right.
> We exchanged our views and that is it. No point on tit for tat type of talking or forcing our way of thinking on each other.
> 
> Yes, Rusty do have couple of threads where he use centrifuge on separating concentrates from incinerated or milled IC chips.



indeed I found that thread

but that particular centrifuge just freaks me out :lol: :lol: looks really scary device even if it the best centrifuge in the world for gold recovery.

I will try to have a look if car oil filter centrifuges (or juicer) can be adapted for that that purpose


----------



## chlaurite

some888 said:


> Do you really have nothing else to do in your life??? If you really need the money so badly and for whatever reason can not work.


I think you'll find that most of the participants here fall into one of three (not necessarily mutually exclusive) categories:

Professional salvagers/recyclers
Retired
Don't need the money, just doing it for fun
Personally, I fall into the last category, and it sounds like you probably do as well. So if you don't enjoy it... Why bother?

I don't mean that rudely, BTW. If you _do_ enjoy the challenge of trying to squeeze gold out of garbage, listen to the regulars here, they know their stuff. If not... As you point out, you most likely would make more as a Walmart greeter.

Heh, I _finally_ got enough RAM and PCI card fingers to try the simplest type of extraction you'll find mentioned around here; If it wildly exceeds my best expectations, I _might_ get a gram of gold out of it; which puts me at an hourly rate _well_ below $1.00/hr. But I've learned a lot from trying it, and hope to learn a lot more. Somehow I don't think I could say the same if I took a second job stocking shelves overnight for a whopping 8x the pay (aka "minimum wage"). :wink:


----------



## some888

hi!

So finally I have another bunch of chips :roll: 

I'm taking half of my words back - That part I said I will not process them any more.

Yes there is a gold bonding wires in SOME chips.

So far I found "weird" chips with double bonding first gold bonding from silicone and second copper bonding to outer contacts.

For now I will have probably 60 - 70% of that kind of chips - most definitely containing gold. So it depends really of your luck.... with last bunch of chips I had no luck at all (

Last bunch I had almost on every thing you could read " made in china". This time Malay, Singapore and so on
Looks like if Chinese have a means to save 1 cent from 100$ they will do it

So I decided to precess them selectively. At first taking a sample chip and to find if there is anything inside and then to deal with them only (probably)

Second type of chips - copper with partially gold plating (not sure if worthy unless large quantity)

Third type - nothing worthy (pure copper / aluminium ), they will go to rubbish bin


thanks

P.S in the chips I have gold bonding wires are small, but still quite visible with naked eye, so I even do not need to magnify anything (at least in the chips I have)

P.P.S Yes those kind of bonding wires can be perfectly panned. But myself I will still use multiple filtration until or/if I will make suitable centrifuge
Another thing because of my new hobby my wife smiles, but all the rest whoever I made aware of this just laugh 8) .... Well I do not care as far as they bring me chips :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:


----------



## solar_plasma

> Another thing because of my new hobby my wife smiles, but all the rest whoever I made aware of this just laugh 8) .... Well I do not care as far as they bring me chips :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:



Talking about it seldom gives positive response, mostly they will laugh at you or they will envy. If I talk about it at all, I always emphasize, that this is hobby like fishing and it is as expensive as fishing,but that it is also for a educational purpose.


----------



## mitchd

patnor1011 said:


> With Si wafers from IC there may be some catch, I mean all that small transistors and wiring inside die may contain precious metals. I do have about 200-300g again, I will try to find out what is inside. I will put them in hot AR first to remove any traces from where bonding wires were attached and then I will try to grind them to dust and leach in AR again to find out if there is anything valuable inside.




I know this is a old post but you might try HF to disolve the Si and leave any gold or other values unchanged.
HF is really nasty to deal with so be very very careful.

Mitch.


----------



## solar_plasma

This is already been discussed. Conclusions:

Wavers do not contain enough of gold. (Though, maybe they are wrong, - Patnor knows what he is doing )

HF is attempted suicide.

If something would make HF necessary, then sell it, but don't even think of processing it!


----------



## g_axelsson

The silicon die does NOT contain any precious metals inside.
The conductors are made of aluminum, copper and tungsten.

Bond pads on the die is usually made of aluminum.
From http://www.irf.com/technical-info/appnotes/an-1061.pdf page 7


Code:


In applications where the current carrying
requirement and hence heat generation is
relatively low, gold wire may be used for
connection to the aluminium bond pads.


Just because I didn't find any articles with gold plated dies doesn't mean there are none, but even if there is a surface treatment with gold on the landing pads for the bond wire, any such surface gold could easily be dissolved by washing it it in aqua regia or similar solution. There could also be left over parts from the gold bonding wires so a quick wash is not wrong.

Göran


----------



## patnor1011

Correct. As we moved on on this topic I only treat them whole to remove traces of wires and plating from sides. I try to remove them whole. They are like glass shards when broken and damaging my plastic pan.


----------



## chlaurite

Not to resuscitate the horse just so I can kick it a bit more :wink: , but what about the EPROMs that show gold through the window? Perhaps they don't actually have any values (beyond the bonding wires) worth dealing with, but they at least _appear_ to have a layer of gold on the die itself.


----------



## solar_plasma

those cmos sensors from digicams and scanners look to me like they have some good precious solder too beside the bond wires


----------



## patnor1011

A lot of dies look golden colored.


----------



## shmandi

Here is a photo of CCD from mini DV camera. You can clearly see gold wires and gold solder


----------



## some888

hi everybody!

there is another "stupid idea" I came up with. :twisted: 

so far while processing chips I saw main stages

* burning chips
* panning

Obviously it depends of your panning skills But I realised myself washing considerable amount of gold down the drain 

For now to my idea(s)

if to burn the whole chips we ending up with too much crap, that could be actually easily removed before burning them
So I simply grinded off :

* all visible outer contacts on every chip
* reduced it size (width and lengh) by 20%-50% (depends on chip)
* removed a lot of plastic layer (height) around 50% (depends on chip)

To tell you honestly it does not take much time using electric grinder

For now while washing away carbon I had to deal with much more gold concentrated "mash"

and there is another thing I tried 


Instead of burning chips I decided to boil them in concentrated sulfuric acid. :lol: 
Chips disintegrated just within minutes 

*But with horrible fumes!!!*

Anyway when I looked at remains I was very pleased to see that at least 70% of gold wires were still connected to silicone (something I could never see if burning them) and it was *very easy to collect them*. 
Obviously the method I used I *times more expensive and times more dangerous then* just burning them
But in my own case is much more quicker and with higher gold yield.

*P.S Whoever reads it please do not attempt unless you know how to work with sulfuric acid in details!!!*


----------



## jimdoc

Some888,
That idea has been discussed before and is a very dangerous idea.
Don't be surprised if a moderator deletes or alters your post.

Jim


----------



## some888

hi!
Yes it is dangerous 
I even pointed out myself
Somebody has to be idiot to try it without appropriate safety gear and knowledge - sadly there are always idiots
From another hand Sulfuric acid is quite expensive for general public and if you have means to get it for cheap probably you should know what you are doing. If not you will spend more on acid then there is gold inside.
in any case If moderator finds it appropriate I have no problems if he deletes the part about sulfuric acid

But grinding chips is another idea - not much danger involved really


----------



## solar_plasma

some888 wrote:


> Instead of burning chips I decided to



Interesting. How did you control the reaction temperature? And how did you handle the SO3 smoke?


----------



## Geo

wet ashing is not recommended and is actually discouraged on the forum, and for good reason. concentrated sulfuric acid while cold can cause horrible scarring on soft tissue and permanent blindness on contact with eyes. this effect is multiplied as the temperature of the acid rises. hot sulfuric acid can dissolve flesh to the bone in a matter of moments and in far less time than it would take to try and rinse the spill. even lab-ware thats designed to heat can fail. it only take a split second to cause a life altering event. unless you are a trained lab technician and in a laboratory setting, DO NOT TRY TO WET ASH IC CHIPS.


----------



## some888

Even myself I would say: Do not follow my steps!!! 

It is very dangerous..... but still less dangerous then Sarin :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: just kidding


----------



## solar_plasma

For those readers, who don't know the link and got curios why exactly wet ashing is not advised:

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=12508


----------



## some888

solar_plasma said:


> For those readers, who don't know the link and got curios why exactly wet ashing is not advised:
> 
> http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=12508



I still could not get what is main danger

can you kindly explain to me please 8)


----------



## solar_plasma

> I still could not get what is main danger
> 
> can you kindly explain to me please 8)



I do not understand your question. I think it is a very interesting process, though I don't want to use wet ashing, since I am very satisfied with common methods. Nevertheless I like to read every information about the process, especially from those, who have practical experience. Therefore I was interested in, how you ensured, that the temperature not get up to 300°C and how you handled the SO3 fumes, since those are personally my worst practical concerns. A third thing, which would make me feel bad, is the possibility the reaction vessel could break of whatever reason.


----------



## some888

ok

here is my reply

1 - there is no need to heat up up to 300c , what is the point ?........... just to reach acid boiling point?................ IC chips will disintegrate way before that
So I never heated up to that temperature

2 - Fumes Control
honestly I do not want to say in details how it was made ..... that is for very simple reason I did it not exactly as a book says.... and I do not want anybody to repeat that

but when it comes to SO3
I had no time and desire to analyse the fumes
but
* it is not an easy to produce it - in our case possible only when decomposing of Sulfuric acid just before it's boiling point to do that you need to keep constant temperature above 300c and do not let it boil for really considerable time , that is without other material present especially organic.
While we have organic in it most likely SO2 will be produced
it's still toxic and nothing healthy but you will not get sulfuric acid when in water ... you will need really strong oxidiser like nitric acid to produce sulfuric with SO2 even then it will be dilute

*Whatever I said above about SO3 or SO2 I could be wrong but even if right It is still very dangerous!!!*


----------



## g_axelsson

When you boil sulphuric acid you WILL release SO3 gas!

Please, do not do this. One accidental sniff on the gas given off will *INSTANTLY TURN INTO PURE SULPHURIC ACID INSIDE YOUR LUNGS!!!*

... and if that isn't bad enough, if you get a lot inside your lungs it could rip the water from your flesh and turn it into carbon.

A common experiment is to take sugar and add sulphuric acid, the acid rips off the water in the sugar and leaves a carbon mess behind. Look at this video for example of what sulphuric acid can do.
This is at room temperature... I think Harold once said that a rise in temperature of 10 degrees makes a reaction go at double speed. Now consider what 280 degrees C sulphuric acid could do.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=100Bk580mPY[/youtube]

Göran


----------



## patnor1011

Some people just do not get it. They have to do whatever they have to do. It is called natural selection. 
I would not touch this process outside laboratory settings and specialized hardware like titanium reactor. Whoever try this in home or shed is definitely not clever or brave but total opposite.

Every now and then some brave feller come here bragging about perfect way he discovered and how easy it is to do it.
Yeah, I know...


----------



## solar_plasma

_Some888 wrote:



ok

here is my reply

1 - there is no need to heat up up to 300c , what is the point ?........... just to reach acid boiling point?................ IC chips will disintegrate way before that
So I never heated up to that temperature

Click to expand...

_

The process is pretty exotherm, but I will reply with citations from those, who have practical experience and knowledge about *hot *sulfuric, since I always cool it down, when I have to use conc. sulfuric at work and therefore have luckily no experience with sulfuric hotter than 80°C: 


samuel_a wrote:


> - Slowly heated to 90° C (194° F) and left that way for 30 minutes.
> This is a precautionary step to prevent too violent reaction and maybe a boilover.
> The epoxy resin (Bismaleimide-triazine epoxy) will begin to disintegrate alsmost immediately.
> 
> - *Then, heat is ramped up to 240°-250° C (464°-482° F) for one hour.*





_Some888 wrote:



2 - Fumes Control
honestly I do not want to say in details how it was made ..... that is for very simple reason I did it not exactly as a book says.... and I do not want anybody to repeat that

but when it comes to SO3
I had no time and desire to analyse the fumes
but
* it is not an easy to produce it - in our case possible only when decomposing of Sulfuric acid just before it's boiling point to do that you need to keep constant temperature above 300c and do not let it boil for really considerable time , that is without other material present especially organic.
While we have organic in it most likely SO2 will be produced

Click to expand...

_

lazersteve wrote:


> Trust me when I tell you that you don't want to be around 300+ degree celcius sulfuric acid with an open top reactor. A watch glass is not going to make much of a difference, if any. I have a few large ( 71/60 and 55/50 ) soxhlet rigs purchased especially for this type of reaction. Refluxing the water with the SO3 should help to reduce the fumes that escape the vessel and also allow for extraction of a much larger mass of epoxy with a given smaller quantity of concentrated sulfuric acid. Careful temperature control of the condenser and reaction vessel are critical to containing the SO3 gas safely. Proper handling and scrubbing of any off gases is also very important.





_Some888 wrote:



it's still toxic and nothing healthy but you will not get sulfuric acid when in water ... you will need really strong oxidiser like nitric acid to produce sulfuric with SO2 even then it will be dilute

Whatever I said above about SO3 or SO2 I could be wrong but even if right It is still very dangerous!!!

Click to expand...

_


> samual-a wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> At which point, white Sulfur Trioxide fumes are noticble.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> lazersteve wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Careful heating and cooling of pyrex glass is critical when working with these extremely dangerous reagents (eg. hot concentrated sulfuric acid) at high temperatures. If your reactor breaks, there is a very high probability that you are going to get hurt. Fused quartz glassware would be a much better choice for use with this reagent and temperature.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> lazersteve wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Hot acids are all bad, but 250C+ sulfuric acid is especially nasty due to the copious amounts of thick white SO3 that is produced.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Oz wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> hfywc wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> nobody argue that this procedure is highly dangerous. but sam showed that this can be done in a safe manner. all we need is to create a super safe procedure that anyone can follow.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> That will never happen, it is an inherently dangerous procedure.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


----------



## some888

I am not saying it is healthy in any way
but when it comes to sugar

C12H22O11 + H2SO4 = CO2 + *SO2* + H20

and depends what crap inside of chips but it will be pretty much the same


----------



## solar_plasma

> I am not saying it is healthy in any way
> but when it comes to sugar
> 
> C12H22O11 + H2SO4 = CO2 + SO2 + H20
> 
> and depends what crap inside of chips but it will be pretty much the same



I thought also about that sugar experiment, but what I have read about wet ashing of plastics has obviously not much in common with it. And since I read those threads I see conc. sulfuric in a new light.

The reaction above is, if my schoolbooks are right, a dehydration process of sugar....sometimes schoolbooks are not correct, though. But from what we have read now, the SO3 forms in a drifferent process about 250°C and above. I don't dare to say, if it is caused the same reason, why HCL solution will vaporize H2O up to 20% concentration and then HCl vaporizes. Maybe one of the chemists like to tell us. Otherwise I will have a look. Shouldn't be hard to find out.


----------



## some888

trust me guys if SO3 could be produced so easily some toilet cleaners would be never produced... because that will kill pretty much every body in the building from manager to poor cleaner itself
just do not heat sulfuric acid to 300c ( not an easy anyway) only then you have a serious chances of getting SO3 even then that is provided sulfulic acid is left after desintegrating organic


----------



## solar_plasma

> At 650 °C (1,202 °F), copper(II) sulfate decomposes into copper(II) oxide (CuO) and sulfur trioxide (SO3).


 wikipedia

When working with chemicals, differentiate between, what you believe and what you really know. It could save your life.


----------



## some888

> *At 650 °C*



let's think a bit for now

1 there will be no sulfuric acid anymore
2 no BOROSILICATE GLASS will handle it
3 you will need to use the torch to get it

and more likely this could happen when you burn chips


----------



## Geo

sulfuric acid is hygroscopic and will absorb water from the air. its this action that causes the injuries to the human body. the acid pulls the water from the cells leaving carbon behind. it doesnt stop until the acid is neutralized or rinsed off. when the acid is heated, the action speeds up as most reactions do. sulfuric acid is heavy and the fumes settle quickly and will flow like water to the low spots. this is a re-post but i think its a good place for them.


----------



## some888

yes m8.
sulfuric does all of above

but it does the same with reverse electroplating as well if no safety precautions taken

I just do not understand why to point out several times in the row ( probably on about two pages) dangers of this method, when I never argued about it's being dangerous

And for whatever reason nobody comments "grinding chips"


----------



## Geo

because mate' (m8) is texting lingo and against forum rules and a forum with over 23,000 members and countless visitors on various search engines to see someone arguing the pro's of a dangerous and potentially deadly process might think that "hey, if 'ol mate says he did it, then i can do it too). i will fill every page in the forum arguing against its use if i have to.


----------



## some888

can you please quote me where did I say it is safe?


----------



## martyn111

Geo said:


> because mate' (m8) is texting lingo and against forum rules and a forum with over 23,000 members and countless visitors on various search engines to see someone arguing the pro's of a dangerous and potentially deadly process might think that "hey, if 'ol mate says he did it, then i can do it too). i will fill every page in the forum arguing against its use if i have to.




Good point, well made Geo. 
The forum motto, Gold refiners helping one another, begins with safety
A process may be possible, but, unless you have the knowledge and experience to carry out that process in a safe manner, then you have no business attempting it.


----------



## jimdoc

some888 said:


> can you please quote me where did I say it is safe?



You have been a forum member since; "Thu Jan 12, 2012 3:43 am"

If you have been studying the forum like all good members do, you would have read about the dangers of that process, and the fact that it is highly discouraged here on the forum. 

Some processes just aren't worth the risk, this is one of them. 

Jim


----------



## some888

it looks like some people can not read and understand what others are saying

it really does not matter what I say on any there will be furious reaction on and pointing "hey you are quite new so shut and listen what *daddy* says"

ok I shut up then

indeed how could I be so dare not to admire "PRO's" advice

whatever


----------



## jimdoc

some888 said:


> it looks like some people can not read and understand what others are saying
> 
> it really does not matter what I say on any there will be furious reaction on and pointing "hey you are quite new so shut and listen what *daddy* says"
> 
> ok I shut up then
> 
> indeed how could I be so dare not to admire "PRO's" advice
> 
> whatever



Hope you enjoyed your stay here and learned all you needed to learn.

Jim


----------



## some888

no it was very stressful and 100% useless to post anything and nothing to learn

actually I had one good advice

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=18802&p=189728#p189757

rest was just waste of time

besides it is insane trying to prove me and parrot like repeating on two pages about how dangerous sulfuric acid is after I wrote in my first post 



> P.S Whoever reads it please do not attempt unless you know how to work with sulfuric acid in details!!!



what I you trying to prove me ??????


----------



## Geo

some888, i apologize. i dont mean to come off as a hard case on this but i speak from personal experience when i say that you can destroy your health not knowing any better. its nothing personal against you at all. i would have responded to anyone the same way. if you follow the link from solar_plasma, you will see where i tried the dissolution of the plastic bodies. i was very careful and was curious about the outcome. its not something that can be controlled easily. you really have to be standing next to it to keep the heat regulated. when the heat builds, the reaction gets out of control and you get a boil over. its never "just right", its always too little or too much. its way too much danger for the little reward you get when theres a lot less dangerous way to accomplish the same thing.


----------



## patnor1011

jimdoc said:


> some888 said:
> 
> 
> 
> can you please quote me where did I say it is safe?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You have been a forum member since; "Thu Jan 12, 2012 3:43 am"
> 
> If you have been studying the forum like all good members do, you would have read about the dangers of that process, and the fact that it is highly discouraged here on the forum.
> 
> Some processes just aren't worth the risk, this is one of them.
> 
> Jim
Click to expand...


I agree.
You did not invented anything, just did what was documented and discussed here long time ago. What is wrong is that long time ago it was concluded that this process is unsuitable for hobbyists and thread was left only to show why not to use this process, yet every now and then somebody come here and talk loudly that "Yes we can".
From your first posts in this thread it was clear that you did not read what was written here before you started posting. I tried to explain or show you how I do it but you knew better. You were argumentative and instead of reading what was said before we had to literally hold your hand showing you what you did wrong or what you should do if you want to see any results. 
Then you stumbled somehow on wet ashing and here we go full circle again. It is like déjà vu again you, against everyone else because you know better and somehow survived your experiment without any harm.
I applaud your decision to "I shut up then" that is probably the best thing you can do. Spend more time reading instead of trying to fight with everyone here.


----------



## some888

no problems Geo.... it is all ok



> we had to literally hold your hand showing you what you did wrong or what you should do if you want to see any results.


and what was I did so much wrong and what was advised???????
To buy your Ebook?????

I'm really fed up with all that
It looks like even if I say (or ask) about folding a filter even then somebody will be furious and angry.... because it was discussed earlier or for whatever different reason
I'm logging off for good

pan your gold well


----------



## patnor1011

some888 said:


> no problems Geo.... it is all ok
> 
> 
> 
> 
> we had to literally hold your hand showing you what you did wrong or what you should do if you want to see any results.
> 
> 
> 
> and what was I did so much wrong and what was advised???????
> To buy your Ebook?????
> 
> I'm really fed up with all that
> It looks like even if I say (or ask) about folding a filter even then somebody will be furious and angry.... because it was discussed earlier or for whatever different reason
> I'm logging off for good
> 
> pan your gold well
Click to expand...


I never told you to buy my eBook. I told you to download it for free from this thread. If you at least pretended that you went through few pages of this thread you would knew that it is here, and it is free for everyone to download it.
I am glad you managed to find some gold in IC as only few days ago you were trying to convince everyone that there is no gold in them or that there is so little it is not worth hassle. 
Yeah, you will find that most of questions which are troubling you at this moment were discussed here and many times over. Take your time and do some reading.


----------



## some888

this time it's a last post for real

there nothing to read

even with my naive questions about chips it was like a surprise for everybody that there is a copper bonding wires..... and I felt myself really stupid trying to prove it.

Write here yourself and enjoy reading it yourself as well

regards


----------



## solar_plasma

Sometimes I envy those, who are starting refining at zero, those who have no idea about chemistry and no experience. Those who only read for years, then make their first gold button and it gets to be an almost perfect one. Those have great respect of chemicals. They do not know much, but what they know, they know for real. Our greatest threat is, when we feel seasoned and smart. But only slightly altered conditions, an unexpected reaction and we, refiner veterans, engineers, teachers, chemical industry workers, hydrometallurgists, prospectors, skilled hobbyists and even the chemists, are all beginners.


----------



## solar_plasma

some888 wrote:


> can you please quote me where did I say it is safe?



for example there:


> just do not heat sulfuric acid to 300c ( not an easy anyway) only then you have a serious chances of getting SO3 even then that is provided sulfulic acid is left after desintegrating organic



You didn't get the point. So I will try to explain it. I don't want to offend you, in fact I can see you are pretty intelligent.



> just do not heat sulfuric acid to 300c ( not an easy anyway)



WRONG! It takes me 4 minutes to make a steak, within that 4 minutes the oil reaches a temperature of 230°C and I have to add a lot of energy. Sulfuric with organics developes its own energy.

In the link above, they pointed out, that this process easily can develope its own dynamic. The heat will rise by its own exotherm reaction. Knowing, acids get more reactive the more they get heated, it must me possible, that the reaction escalates in a loop. Controlling the temperature sounds easier, than it may be done. You will necessarily stay near the vessel. Cooling implicates high danger of cracking the vessel. After an amount of organics is added, you can't take it out again, like some control rods.

It is interesting, yes. Doing it at home or even in a normal lab, which is not specialized on that process, is a mistake. And especially people, who come into this forum, only reading a few lines, should not get the impression, that this is a way to go.


----------



## some888

I promised not to write
but I left browser window open and while trying to close I saw reply - that really freaks me out

I did a mistake I should really understand that I'm talking mainly to scrapyard audience not a chemists.

!!!!!Please DO NOT EVER BOIL SULFURIC ACID!!!!!
the way I did is a bit different from above example while frying steak..... If you do that is murderer indeed!!!!!

More then it please stop playing with chemicals at all even "safest" Hydrochloric acid can do a lot of damage and possibly kill yourself and your family

OUT


----------



## solar_plasma

Mistakes happen. I don't want to pretend that I never have done things, I first later learned, they were stupid and that I only have been very, very lucky. And if you would get off your high horse, called "


> there nothing to read


", you could discover, that some of us have not been lucky always. Don't feel bad and don't take it that offending, - it is not meant offending. The best and mostly trained chemical worker can get harmed at work in a moment of thoughtlessness. And they do. Every big plant can tell about a lot of terrible accidents happened to professionals under "safe" conditions.

I only wished you would understand, WHY this mistake happened to you. You haven't searched the forum or you haven't read whole of the thread about wet ashing.


----------



## butcher

some888,

I am going to give you a chance to cool off, I suggest you spend that time studying the safety thread, and think before you post again, you have an opportunity to learn a valuable skill here that could help you in the future, I would not give that up over an attitude, especially when someone trying to help keep you from hurting yourself or others.

If I see one more post that gives me the impression you do not wish to be here, and take the advice given, or an attitude which will disrupt others who are trying to learn, it will be your last post as far as I am concerned.

The choice is yours.


----------



## solar_plasma

I have prepared my next 1,2 kg batch. Definately no solder, no iron/magnetics, if aluminium present, then only bondwires, which I don't believe (almost only from ram and n/s-bridges). Fine powder. 

Now, I thought in the meantime of my process, while reading repeatedly the common steps and versions. 

I did not find Ag or Pd in any of the solutions or sediments the last time and as said the powder is very well prepared, so I would like to skip HNO3 and only dissolve Cu and traces of other basemetals with HCl. Correct so far? If correct, I wondered, if I can use old, but active AP instead of HCl?

Traces of Pd, if present, will be dissolved later together with Au in AR (the Au will be re-refined one or two times).
Traces of Ag, if present, will stay in the sediments and will be recovered later (NaOH/incineration/HNO3).

Does that look right or did I miss anything?


----------



## butcher

I cannot see much wrong with going that route, to lower the copper content.


----------



## stevenh

Just wanted to thank Patnor for the ebook -- cheers


----------



## jmdlcar

Hi all,

I want to thank Pat for the CD Rom he sent me. After my problem with poison ivy I got the money to send him after his long wait for it. I paid $10.00 for both PDF files I wanted it with all the pictures. I have already printed both files on photo paper because I wanted a good copy and put them clear plastic folder that made a nice book. I know cost more to do it but I already had both item from 3 years ago. One day I will put those 2 books to good use. I wanted to get them cause one I might be able too

Pat sorry for the long wait. And if I own any buddy for something they sent me please tell me so I can remember who.

Thanks
Jack


----------



## patnor1011

Latest baby, born 12th of august, 2,3g. :mrgreen: 
Parents - saved old filters used to filter solutions accumulated in last 12 months :lol:


----------



## rusty

some888 said:


> patnor1011 said:
> 
> 
> 
> To discuss if something is worth or not to d is very subjective. What you consider as not worthy may be gold mine for another person.
> You regard processing IC as waste of time so be it. It is your subjective feeling and your experience. No need to trying to convince others about your view, you presented it and I can accept this. I do not agree and for me it is worth doing it and I am not going to convince you I am right.
> We exchanged our views and that is it. No point on tit for tat type of talking or forcing our way of thinking on each other.
> 
> Yes, Rusty do have couple of threads where he use centrifuge on separating concentrates from incinerated or milled IC chips.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> indeed I found that thread
> 
> but that particular centrifuge just freaks me out :lol: :lol: looks really scary device even if it the best centrifuge in the world for gold recovery.
> 
> I will try to have a look if car oil filter centrifuges (or juicer) can be adapted for that that purpose
Click to expand...


Yes I made the investment and made the time available to make that simple centrifuge, a six inch bowel turned from a solid piece of polyethylene will not disintegrate at 2500 rpm even when loaded with half an inch of values.

I've also had some success using liquid dish soap with a mixer attached to my drill to create foam to which values will adhere to. From a 1 liter bottle of soap add half to a 20 liter pail 2/3rds full of water, agitate to a froth scrap off the top layer of foam repeat the process adding more liquid soap as needed. You'll know when the values have been depleted from the milled or incinerated material when the soap is not collecting anymore values which show up as black crime.

To eliminate the foam pass a flame over it, I pass it through the centrifuge to collapse the foam bubbles.

Stay tuned for this winters project, the wet belt. Precious metals have a tenacity for water, the smooth belt is wetted with the precious metals clinging to the belt to be removed at the upper level as the belt continues on its upwards travel. Unwanted crud is washed downwards with water sprayed onto the belt hence the name - wet belt.

I said in the very beginning when I first joined the forum treat e-waste as you would ore mined from the earth. We shouldn't still be stumbling over how to make concentrates, patnor got it right with his gold pan.


----------



## ubaid

patnor1011 said:


> I had some time and was interested to find how to get that gold out. There was few processes mentioned here already so I just combine few of them and here is what I did.
> 
> We all know that there is gold inside.  I do not have ball mill build yet so I decided to try another way. Incineration, or poor man`s pyrolysis. I used bucket of coal and made it red glowing hot. I then placed iron vessel in the middle where I dug small hole. Chips in vessel did not even burn with flame, they just turned yellow/red from temperature and when I took them out they were whitish/grey and practically powdered. There was no visible smoke and hardly any smell.
> I did not took any pictures up until this moment maybe I will do it later and upload here.
> 
> Incinerated chips were powder like so I put them in my pan. Some of powder floated on surface so I used drop/two of washing up liquid. Then came hard - long part of panning all that material. When I panned all or say 99% of non metallic material I have used magnet from hdd to pick up all iron/nickel pins. Then I panned out most of copper pins. All panned pins went to my stock pot - lets say I throw them to my spent AP solution I will wait till all dissolve. What was left was small amount of fine gold wires and dust. All this was put to nitric to get rid of any small metallic pieces. Last two pictures show end product at this stage which is like 90% gold and 10% of some small pieces of ceramics.


hi,
please tell me which chemical is use for washing up liquid.thnx


----------



## patnor1011

What country are you from? I can point you to brand you use there. 
Or ask your wife she will know better.

It is liquid used when you wash greasy plates and bowls like this one.
http://www.google.ie/search?q=washing+up+liquid,+dishwashing+liquid,+detergent&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ssUPUszHHKiw7Qb8j4HwBg&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=643#bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&fp=297ced0577cf305c&q=fairy+washing+up+liquid&sa=1&tbm=isch

It reduce surface tension on water so powder will sink.


----------



## patnor1011

Not to sidetrack this thread but I just got hands on nice sample of sim cards so I may help to supply forum with additional data about yield from those. I do have some reels too but for now I do have 10.000 pieces in AP.
Yeah I noticed small chip and bonding wires on back side of plated area. That will be incinerated, crushed and leached to combine with foils.

Thread where I describe what I did with them:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=19050


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## patnor1011

reels


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## patnor1011

700g of those reels, amount on picture - yield very disappointing 0.4 g


----------



## Magiskt

And how much did you get from the 10.000 sim cards? Or are you still processing them?


----------



## Stowmaster

The my first experiment with the chipsets.

Source material - 250 gram chipsets without tin.
Chipsets (S/N bridges) were immersed for 12 hours in a 3% nitric acid for remove the tin.
Then 250 grams of chipsets were burned.
Ash was treated with 65% nitric acid to remove the base metals.
Gold was dissolved SSN, and precipitated by SMB.
Equipment for melting I'm not have today. A about the final results I will report later.

Thank you!

02.09.2013 Updated: it's not all! Milled chips are sent for re-processing of SSN
22.09.2013 Updated: The end result was 0.71 grams. It is little, but it is very good for the first attempt.


----------



## patnor1011

Magiskt said:


> And how much did you get from the 10.000 sim cards? Or are you still processing them?



:arrow: http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=19050


----------



## patnor1011

Just finished processing 1960g of mixed s/n (computer variety) yield was 10.2 g
Now, why I said computer variety? I just got my hands on kilogram of s/n harvested from TV, they are 2 types and are heavier than what you usually get from mobo or video card. Yield will be smaller, I will do that sample to confirm or compare yield with another member who already processed them. Stay tuned. :mrgreen:


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## pattt

hi 

offtopic, but, I made the 24000 th view :shock: 
must be one of the most viewed topics here?
I wonder how much gold it produced so far  

Pat


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## patnor1011

I just spoke with Sucho, he confirmed what I suspected that it is essential to remove as much of burned carbon as possible prior leaching. That burned crap somehow absorb a lot of dissolved gold.
Hope he will chime in soon with more details, I cant explain it in my backyard terms.


----------



## samuel-a

Pat, your yield seems fine to me, assuming the N/S bridge were complete (fiber + molded resin).

As to Carbon, loose carbon powder has a lot of surface area. By nature, Carbon adsorb metal ions onto its surface, thus locking values in our case.
Several washes with plenty of hot water or dilute HCl and hard stirring will release most of the locked values. Or you can dry, incinirate and leach again.

Incinirated materials (i.e. no carbon, just oxides + ceramics) will absorb any solution, but is quick to release it due to larger particle size (and lower surface area) and morphology. This is also some of the reasons why it is almot always easier to filter ashes


----------



## patnor1011

I can remove most of burned carbon from s/n as there is no metal inside so no problem to get rid of nearly all of that. Problem is when concentrating values from IC chips due to large amount of metal pins inside. If you crush too hard, gold will smear on pins, also bonding wires disintegrate to very small particles - which is not happening sith wires from s/n.

I just processed 914 grams mixed IC from boards, yield was 1 gram. After second refining.


----------



## patnor1011

Anyone processed this type of older RAM IC? Can you share yields? 
I got surprisingly low yield only 0.6g from 2.5 kilograms and that look low to me but no matter what I do, cant squeeze more from them.


----------



## g_axelsson

Sorry, I haven't refined any chips of this kind yet so I have no hard facts to add but I'm not surprised by the low yield. There are only 20 bond wires per chip and a lot of metals and plastics. I have always suspected that old ram sim modules with tin plate actually have a low yield. You only confirms my suspicion.

Göran


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## patnor1011

My logic tells me this.
I got about gram from thin IC from newer type of ram.
Thin IC from RAM is about half of weight of this particular type. So to get gram you need 2 kilograms of them - weight/number wise. Then there is another thing, new IC do have about 56 pins - which lead to bonding wires and thick do have less than half of it 24. That makes me think that in order to get similar results you again need to double that amount. 
Am I right? Can someone discuss this with me preferably with his own observations or yields?
Summary - I got: 
0.5g from 590g thin IC - new type of ram 
0.6g from 2520g thick IC older type of ram


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## denim

Hey Patnor,

I think your logic is right on track. Makes a lot of sense to me. I wish we had access to a yield report where it would show the expected yields from all the different types of IC chips we see in electronic scrap. That way we would know which ones to concentrate on and which ones to pass on. I would be willing to send to any person (chips refiner) a quantity of any particular style of IC chip for yield test purposes, so long as I am given time to collect them and it is agreed that the person receiving them would post the yield results when known. Maybe you could spearhead a project like this Pat. If there is any way I can help let me know. Please understand- I love your work with the BGA chips yield report!

Best regards,

Dennis


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## Geo

im expecting a 5 gallon bucket of ram chips next week. ill try to get some yield data from the ones in question.


----------



## Smack

Pat, those in the picture are EDO type memory chips, the flatter thinner ones from newer RAM are (I call) SD type memory chips. I put some pic's up in my "Show Your Work Area" post of some of the chips I've been saving and will be processing them soon. Finally got my counter top for the lab in, got that mounted and set the fume hood in place, now just have to finish with the electrical, duct work and plumbing. I was hoping to be refining again by now but it's hard to get things done and done right sometimes when other people are involved.

Off topic, I was at a place today looking at some computer stuff the owner, who is 71, wants taken away and in this room, sits a IBM 5360 in pristine condition with printer and about 3 monitors. The computer is supposed to be over 500 lbs. He said he paid over 60k for it when it was new back in 1983 or 84, I said to him after hearing that, "Now there's a lesson in depreciation" we had a good laugh on that one. He's a little attached to it but I'm going to see if I can pry him from it.


----------



## g_axelsson

Smack said:


> Off topic, I was at a place today looking at some computer stuff the owner, who is 71, wants taken away and in this room, sits a IBM 5360 in pristine condition with printer and about 3 monitors. The computer is supposed to be over 500 lbs. He said he paid over 60k for it when it was new back in 1983 or 84, I said to him after hearing that, "Now there's a lesson in depreciation" we had a good laugh on that one. He's a little attached to it but I'm going to see if I can pry him from it.


Ooooohhhhh, if I was any nearer to you I would buy that machine from you at the spot. That is a collectors item today.
Back in 1984 I did my first paid job on a System 36 (IBM 5360). I haven't forgotten the metallic "clonk" when you gave the shut down command and the contactor disconnected the power in the other room.




If you don't find a new owner and decides to scrap it, don't tell me, I don't want to know.  

Göran


----------



## Smack

Some better picks of it here http://www.corestore.org/36.htm


----------



## g_axelsson

And if you need manuals they are here: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/system36/

I've been looking for one of those for a couple of years now but so far none have surfaced here in northern Sweden.
But in two weeks time I'm picking up a Datapoint 2200, more than a decade older than IBM system 36. 
The memory in the DP-2200 is round metal capsules with 512 bits per capsule. Fully expanded it has 8 kbyte! :mrgreen: 

Göran


----------



## patnor1011

s/n bridge chips you should avoid.

From now on I am separating s/n to 2 types. Computer and video cards do have s/n on which bottom green part is thin, we all know how it look like.
There are different s/n which can be found on boards from TV. Those do have green part which feel considerably thicker, I would estimate double of computer s/n. They also have round shaped metallic heat sink visible on black top part. When incinerated some of them do have big square metal piece, I did not identify what metal it is but it is soft. I recently processed 1.7 kilogram of them which is 3.74 pounds and yield was 2.6 gram of gold. So this is very important message to everyone who purchase s/n always check source or do visual/touch check - green bottom part must be thin for better variety which yield 5g+/kg and if thicker and with visible metallic heat sink part then yield is just 1.5g/kg.
The ones I processed did have Vise View logo.

*edited added pictures


----------



## ericrm

Pat, did you look under to see the number of solder ball / gold wire number? do they have less than the computer type one?


----------



## patnor1011

Here it is.


----------



## ovidiuanghel

patnor1011 said:


> When incinerated some of them do have big square metal piece, I did not identify what metal it is but it is soft.
> 
> *edited added pictures



The metal is cooper!


----------



## Geo

the copper heat spreader and then theres an aluminum piece that is shaped somewhat like a star (these differ from each other too).they break into pieces that looks like fluffy white metal that does not react to nitric acid. you can add hcl first until all the fizzing stops and then dry and incinerate the material. the nitric bath will then remove the copper legs with no problems.


----------



## patnor1011

Yeah and the point is that if you have those in batch yield drop significantly. As I said, 1,5g/kg instead of 5.


----------



## lysdexic

Greetings Everyone!

Awesome Thread (old school, I mean topic). Sorry I'm new and should probably keep my mouth shut and just keep reading. It took me 2 days to read all of this and my head is spinning. I'm not yet prepared knowledge wise or equipment wise to attempt this, but it is what I was seeking to learn when I found your forum. I did skip over a bit but only after learning one of the most important things spoke of here. The danger in trying something that a group of experienced people won't consider because of safety concerns. Thank you for that.

The thing I was wondering about has been touched upon near the end. Older chips and a while back newer chips. I read that after 1998 there began a movement away from gold (ie gold bonding wires) and some newer processors have no gold whatsoever in them. The same article mentioned that older ic's and transistors used more gold (thicker wire). patnor seems to have dispelled the older chip theory I was forming. I'm going to keep collecting and reading for now.

Thank you patnor and the many others here for giving me a wealth of knowledge. If I may borrow from a couple of the signatures here: Knowledge is Power, but Experience is wisdom... both can help clear ignorance ...stupid is still incurable. I hope I'm just ignorant


----------



## lysdexic

Edit: Delete double post, sorry about that.


----------



## Geo

bonding technology started out using different types of metal for connecting the base to the die. the two main types are aluminum and gold. these two metals were used from the beginning and both metals were used even in the same type of processor chip. trying to determine which chips contain gold bonding wires by outside appearance is next to impossible.


----------



## jays_computers

Hi Pat! Still going strong here. I did a little organizing and took a picture. Starting at the top left going clockwise, 2880g memory stick chips and similar looking ones ( thin with tiny legs), 3240g miscellaneous tiny ic's with big legs, 4lbs gold fingers of wide variety from old to not so old, 5440g medium ic's with many tiny legs, 1720g s/n ic's. 

Taking it one slow step at a time. Absolutely no hurry here. I've got some more goodies coming down the pike again too. Some telecom cabinets and some school networking equipment. 

Anybody want to take a stab at an estimated yield for this?

Awesome stuff, I'm having more fun than should be allowed!


----------



## solar_plasma

There is a very valuable list of tested yield on those here on the forum, I just can't find the link:

Testing Black Chips and SMD Packages on their Raw
Gold Content.pdf


----------



## jays_computers

Thanks I'm well aware of that. That was more of a general purpose conversation starter question.


----------



## solar_plasma

Love it! :lol: 

15,6g 8)


----------



## patnor1011

I would say more. 8) 
Notice that his s/n are just black top. Whole pieces yield 5+g/kg yet when we talk about black top part that could and should run about double of that. I would say that he should get 13+g just from his s/n.
I would estimate close to ounce there.


----------



## solar_plasma

WOOOW I didn't see that! HOLY ....!

24,2g


----------



## jays_computers

I'm sorry Pat, the whole sn parts are there I just hastily lumped them together for a picture so that's good news thanks! I actually have quite a bit more to harvest still. That's interesting about the TV s/n chip because I've got quite a bit of tv scrap here and the local scrap guy has a lot too. Will have to take a second look and thanks for the input Solar!


----------



## resabed01

Geo said:


> bonding technology started out using different types of metal for connecting the base to the die. the two main types are aluminum and gold. these two metals were used from the beginning and both metals were used even in the same type of processor chip. trying to determine which chips contain gold bonding wires by outside appearance is next to impossible.



I've been dabbling in the electronics industry for about 40 years now and my understanding is the only two metals used for bonding is gold and aluminum. There may be some weird high temperature aerospace application where platinum is used but I'd expect that to be rare. Aluminum bond wire is used in cheaper electronics like VCRs, older TVs, radios and stereos... you know, the junk that comes from China. It has a lower reliability because of the die bonding used but for the most part it works ok.... :lol: at least until the warranty expires.

Applications that demand more reliability (computers) will see gold bond wires attached to the die.

The thing is, you can't tell one from the other because of the black epoxy so you might as well incinerate and process all of them.


----------



## Pantherlikher

solar_plasma 

This thought is directed your way since you have panning trouble with the flatpacks.

Think wind for a moment.
A long white sheet of paper in front of a slow blowing fan.
Black incinerated powder slowly dropped in the wind path and allowed to slightly be blown along untill it hits the paper.

Gold being heavier, would it not be closer to the fan then alot of the other dust?

The idea being to concentrate gold and bigger pieces needing further crushing, seperation.

In my odd mind, it would rid most of the black powder as it moves further along with the wind from a fan.

To test, I will someday crush my pyrolized packs and empty the garage floor and start with a gentle breeze and look with the magnifying glass down the paper to see if it works, or just causes me to sanitize the garage.
When I empty the garage of course....I think there is a floor there somewhere.

B.S.
Idea? or no?


----------



## Geo

i think water would be a better medium in any use of separating ash from the bonding wires. the wires, being wires, are going to be more aerodynamic than the really fine dust.


----------



## solar_plasma

panther


> solar_plasma
> 
> This thought is directed your way since you have panning trouble with the flatpacks.



The light ashes that aren't sinking with 2 min are no problem. It was more the panning technique and after all I am pretty sure I didn't incinerate enough. But after I used AR instead of chlorox my yield was right.


----------



## Pantherlikher

My thought is as an alternative to panning... I'm sure I will take a long time to get it right...
Maybe with just the right breeze, it'll remove almost all crap and leave very little with gold.


----------



## solar_plasma

I have some sympathy for every concept which saves drinking water. Physically your method will work in theory, though I think it will be much work to realize it. Wet panning is probably easier to control. With a flow of air you will have to take care of a method to catch the aerosoles in a micro filter, while building the whole thing as a closed system. I could even imagine a combination of your method with the incineration of the already pyrolysed material which has to be grinded slightly in a screw continously...an air flow which both oxidizes the surface and at the same time takes away the light ashes. :lol: 

Additionally some way of controlling where the gold is concentrating by some kind of imaging methods, would make it easier to adjust the whole thing. I am thinking of infrared, röntgen, röntgen flourescence and electromagnetic fields or a combination of those, combined and filtered by some software.

So,you will need a dozen masters of engineering and some millions of dollars.

All in all, this could be an invention worth to save the rights on it, but I don't believe it is worth the effort just to do some pounds.


----------



## niteliteone

solar_plasma said:


> I have some sympathy for every concept which saves drinking water. Physically your method will work in theory, though I think it will be much work to realize it. Wet panning is probably easier to control. With a flow of air you will have to take care of a method to catch the aerosoles in a micro filter, while building the whole thing as a closed system. I could even imagine a combination of your method with the incineration of the already pyrolysed material which has to be grinded slightly in a screw continously...an air flow which both oxidizes the surface and at the same time takes away the light ashes. :lol:
> 
> Additionally some way of controlling where the gold is concentrating by some kind of imaging methods, would make it easier to adjust the whole thing. I am thinking of infrared, röntgen, röntgen flourescence and electromagnetic fields or a combination of those, combined and filtered by some software.
> 
> So,you will need a dozen masters of engineering and some millions of dollars.
> 
> All in all, this could be an invention worth to save the rights on it, but I don't believe it is worth the effort just to do some pounds.



I think you would be just as happy if you used an old panners trick when dry panning in the desert. Just gently blow in the pan and shake it (the pan, not you) until you have all the light powders gone.


----------



## g_axelsson

Pantherlikher said:


> solar_plasma
> 
> This thought is directed your way since you have panning trouble with the flatpacks.
> 
> Think wind for a moment.
> A long white sheet of paper in front of a slow blowing fan.
> Black incinerated powder slowly dropped in the wind path and allowed to slightly be blown along untill it hits the paper.
> 
> Gold being heavier, would it not be closer to the fan then alot of the other dust?
> 
> The idea being to concentrate gold and bigger pieces needing further crushing, seperation.
> 
> In my odd mind, it would rid most of the black powder as it moves further along with the wind from a fan.
> 
> To test, I will someday crush my pyrolized packs and empty the garage floor and start with a gentle breeze and look with the magnifying glass down the paper to see if it works, or just causes me to sanitize the garage.
> When I empty the garage of course....I think there is a floor there somewhere.
> 
> B.S.
> Idea? or no?


Not a good idea!

There is a reason people doesn't dry pan when they have any access to water.
- Powder easily stick together when dry, water breaks that static bond and makes it easier to separate the gold from the dust.
- As water is heavier than air it is better to separate material based on density.
- The dust that would be blown away is easily suspended in water and just poured off.

If you have problem learning to pan, use a larger vessel to catch the material you pan off, then you can pan it again as many times it takes. Stop when you doesn't find any more gold in your pan.

Göran


----------



## Pantherlikher

g_axelsson 

Makes the most sense to not do it although all are good reasons why not.
I was thinking only about the density of different materials. Different areas will cause different effects so really not a great idea especially as Solar explains. You will create dangerous dust particles.

A closed system as described would be needed which would be way to over-engineering as he explained.

Thanks for shooting it down before I experimented and caused possible harm.

B.S.


----------



## chlaurite

niteliteone said:


> I think you would be just as happy if you used an old panners trick when dry panning in the desert. Just gently blow in the pan and shake it (the pan, not you) until you have all the light powders gone.


I always thought dry panning only worked on significantly larger particles - Medium-sized flake at the smallest, with virtually all dust and even smaller flakes lost?

It seems this would matter for recovery from incinerated (or milled) flat packs, since most of the gold therein counts as dust at best.


----------



## niteliteone

chlaurite said:


> niteliteone said:
> 
> 
> 
> I think you would be just as happy if you used an old panners trick when dry panning in the desert. Just gently blow in the pan and shake it (the pan, not you) until you have all the light powders gone.
> 
> 
> 
> I always thought dry panning only worked on significantly larger particles - Medium-sized flake at the smallest, with virtually all dust and even smaller flakes lost?
> 
> It seems this would matter for recovery from incinerated (or milled) flat packs, since most of the gold therein counts as dust at best.
Click to expand...

Gold panning is a density separation method and I do believe the density of gold is greater than anything else that would be in the bowl.
By classifying the material properly, then only applying the breeze necessary to remove the lighter material a patient person could get a 99+% recovery of the gold with little to no loss.

PS. What common IC's, spoken of in this thread, do you know of that has gold plated (flakes) anything inside :?:


----------



## chlaurite

niteliteone said:


> PS. What common IC's, spoken of in this thread, do you know of that has gold plated (flakes) anything inside :?:


I mean that as a reference to the common sizes of gold you get from panning. In order of decreasing size: nuggets, flakes, then dust.

Don't think of this in terms of micron-thin foils peeling off gold fingers... "Flakes" actually means some relatively large chunks - Think "bigger than a pinhead", with nuggets bigger than a BB.

The gold we get from inside ICs comes purely from the bonding wires - Literally one-tenth the thickness of a human hair. They barely even qualify as "dust" from the traditional panning perspective.


----------



## niteliteone

I would think those "round" (aerodynamic) wires with a density of more than 15 times that of the ash would stay in the pan, like they do every time I have done this :shock: 
I guess my proven results have been wrong all this time :roll: 

PS. I started this dry panning process back in 1996 and it still works perfectly every time I do it. 

edit to add;
I should add that I have since replaced this Dry Panning, by using my blue bowl that I bought 2 months ago. It's a lot easier on the lungs as I suffer with COPD


----------



## patnor1011

I live in pretty windy area so some days when I use sieve to catch Si wafers or pins very light dust do not make it in bucket again.


----------



## jays_computers

Using the forums and videos I've been trying a few different ways to incinerate the chips. After trial and error I found this setup works good for me at my level. And it's cheap and simple. There's nothing new about it but I thought it would help to have some good pictures and explanations for the total noob like myself  

Basically I just used firebricks, charcoal briquets, a 22oz/625g dog food can with holes drilled in it and a hair dryer. I also mixed in small amounts of regular coal once it got going. I could fill the dog food can a little more than half way with chips and have them all get glowing red hot for as long as needed, about 10 minutes. I would have to add 3 or 4 charcoal briquets after each batch. The can started melting after 3 or 4 runs. 

I'm just doing a practice run using low grade chips. If you see any flaws or something please let me know. Thanks!


----------



## FrugalRefiner

Not a good idea to be operating that inside an enclosed space.

Dave


----------



## ericrm

how do you deal with the fumes?


----------



## jays_computers

Thanks, I did this outside, the table has wheels so I pulled it in a little for some pictures. The garage is more of an open long house. In hind sight perhaps I will retake some photos outside so as to not mislead a novice into thinking they could do this in their garage. As for fumes the wind carries them south. We have no neighbors for at least a quarter mile.


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## JHS

I know I will be shot down for this.Would it be possible after incineration is complete to then put
the ashes in a crucible and melt the gold to the bottom .
Then let the crucible cool,dump the ash and remelt the gold and pour to cornflake?
My first thought is you would need to have a large crucible and a lot of ash to make it 
worth while.
john


----------



## 4metals

The overall percentage of precious metals to other metals will be low, you will likely end up with a high copper alloy. 

In the days that I incinerated this material (commercially on a small scale) we ended up with 2 fractions, a pulp which was the burnt powder which was crushed and sifted and shipped off to have any values recovered from a major sweeps refiner. The metallics, which is the part you were inquiring about, were melted with copper and shipped to a copper refiner. Our trays held about 500 pounds and we had enough volume to run 2 to 3 burns a week (that is why I said small scale, in the scheme of things that is relatively small scale) 

If I were doing this on a very small home refining scale, I would melt a few lots with copper and have them assayed for PM's. Then, depending on the assay and how much I could get of this type of material, I would set up a small electrolytic copper refinery and collect the values in the slimes. 

With copper at $3 a pound and a decent supply it could be cost effective.


----------



## Geo

if you were going to use a collector for the gold, wouldnt silver do just as good a job for small lots (a home refiner)? the silver could be used over and over again.


----------



## patnor1011

Copper is cheaper and besides there will be quite a lot of copper there already in form of pins.


----------



## solar_plasma

> With copper at $3 a pound and a decent supply it could be cost effective.



...only 3$ in the US? Here it is at 4,5-5,5 €.


edit: oh I see, you said POUNDS, I thought of kg


----------



## 4metals

The reason I said copper was this is the kind of material that is recovered from electrolytic copper refining in the slimes. If you wanted to make it an electrolytic silver proposal you would have to have upwards of 80% of the entire alloy as silver. Since the copper is at 60%, going the rest of the way up to the high 90's is easier than overcoming all of that copper with silver.


----------



## nickvc

Following 4metals approach would also allow the copper to be re used once the cell was working so the initial outlay of funds would be relatively small if any as copper is usually a large component in e scrap.


----------



## Geo

of coarse 4metals is correct and i would never argue against someone with so many more years of experience than me. it was just a thought that when processing chips and after the base metals have been removed (iron, copper), the remaining material containing a small amount of ash and silicon chips with the gold bonding wires could be melted together with silver and then the silver digested in nitric acid leaving nearly pure gold, like inquarting. of coarse its just a thought as i have never experimented and tried it myself. my thoughts being that copper content of quads and VGA,s is quite small to begin with.


----------



## nickvc

Geo I get your drift now and I can't see why it couldn't work with the items your thinking of and it would be cost effective because as you say the silver can be cemented and constantly re used, the bonus might be if there's any PGMs as they would be carried by the silver and could be recovered via a cell or by making silver chloride and then cementing them out. I know various items contain Pd but not sure which ones without looking them up as e scrap has never been a large part of my refining life up till now.


----------



## chambersjr

First, a big thanks to Patnor for this process. Also, thank you to all other members who've shared tips and insights on processing this material.

I've been saving N/S chips & Flatpacks in separate bins. On telecom type boards, I generally remove 1/2 or more of the quads and DIP chips. I do leave a few on the board so I can some return from my buyer. So cutting to the chase, I busted up one of the quads I have. This particular chip is one that is on a lot of boards I've had recently so I've removed many. My concern is when I busted the chip all I can see is copper wires and a large copper Heatsink that is imbedded. Now I'm concerned the gold content that could be recovered from this particular type will not be enough to cover all the value I've removed from the board had I sold fully populated. 

Here's a few photos....


----------



## g_axelsson

What you see is the lead frame, the copper wires that leads from the legs up to the edge of the silicon die. The gold wires connects the lead frame to the die and are often only 2-3 mm long. You need a microscope or a strong lens to see the individual bond wires of gold.

Göran


----------



## chambersjr

g_axelsson said:


> What you see is the lead frame, the copper wires that leads from the legs up to the edge of the silicon die. The gold wires connects the lead frame to the die and are often only 2-3 mm long. You need a microscope or a strong lens to see the individual bond wires of gold.
> 
> Göran



Thanks Göran! I was hoping that would be the case. Is this amount of copper (minus the heat spreader) what we should expect to encounter in the avg black flatpack.


----------



## g_axelsson

Yes, I would say it is a quite ordinary IC in this case.

When packaging the chip they try to get the lead frame as close to the edge of the chip to minimize the amount of god. Limiting factors here is the mechanical stability in the lead frame, the closer to the chip it comes the thinner will the pins in the lead frame be and at a certain point it will warp and short circuit between the pins. So when the chip shrinks with newer technology the distance between chip and lead frame increases and the amount of gold goes up. :mrgreen: 

Göran


----------



## Buzz

> Limiting factors here is the mechanical stability in the lead frame



I've been wanting to know about this for quite a while now and not been able ascertain for sure.

When we talk about lead frames, do we pronounce the word "lead" as in the metal or as in "leading the way"?
I know it's a geeky question but it's just one of those things that's been driving me nuts!

Regards
Buzz


----------



## Geo

ive never found large pieces of lead in the ash. i have found copper and aluminum in quantities that have to be dealt with before any chemical processing can be done.


----------



## eastky

Buzz lead as in lead the way. Each pin on the package leads to a area on the chip inside the package. That's why it is called a lead package.


----------



## g_axelsson

I've never thought about the ambiguity in the name "lead frame" as I always pronounce it in my mind while writing... but as eastky said, it's leading the signals to the chip.

Even a lead free package could have a lead frame.... :mrgreen: 

Göran


----------



## Anonymous

Goran I was always told that the best formula for a lead free package was C22H30N6O4S.


----------



## g_axelsson

spaceships said:


> Goran I was always told that the best formula for a lead free package was C22H30N6O4S.



With risk of being banned... ROTFL!

:lol: 

Had to look it up, didn't know what it was first.... and anyone that says otherwise is a lier!

Göran


----------



## Anonymous

Hehe I doubt that well thought out situational humour is a problem mate :twisted:


----------



## niteliteone

spaceships said:


> Hehe I doubt that well thought out situational humor is a problem mate :twisted:


I don't know. Last year, I got slapped hard for properly using the term "Pen*s envy" to describe an appreciation over a gold bar Kadriver hand poured.


----------



## Harold_V

It's pretty simple. Keep conversation such that it isn't uncomfortable for proper women and children. If you wouldn't say it in front of your elderly grandmother, _don't say it on this board_. It serves no purpose aside from disclosing the fact that one may be unable to put two words together without profanity or vulgarity. It's all about trying to present a professional appearance on the board. If we allow it to degrade to the level of the common saloon, who do you think is going to spend their time here trying to help? Certainly not me. 

Beyond that, respect the fact that we are all guests in the home of the owner of the board. Treat the board with due respect. 

Harold


----------



## chlaurite

Harold_V said:


> If you wouldn't say it in front of your elderly grandmother, _don't say it on this board_


I feel pretty frickin' confident that my gran (and 99% of the general population) would have no clue that "C22H30N6O4S" refers to a drug we so commonly get ads for in our spam folders. Even _*I*_ had to look it up, and I take some pride in my knowledge of "recreational" (heh) pharmaceuticals. :lol:

You do, however, raise an interesting question I've often wondered about - Do we actually have any women present? I don't ask that to hit on anyone (happily "involved", TYVM), but of all the posts I've read on this board, I honestly do not think I have _ever_ read one from a woman. From a quick search of the newbie threads, I see only 7 total women - Three deleted, two with a single post (to the newbie thread) and they never came back, and two with a halfway decent number of posts but who only visit every few months.

Not that that negates your official policies, Harold, but... Know your audience. :mrgreen:


----------



## jimdoc

chlaurite said:


> Not that that negates your official policies, Harold, but... Know your audience. :mrgreen:



Some members could have someone reading over their shoulders from time to time, maybe even grandma.

Jim


----------



## Anonymous

jimdoc said:


> chlaurite said:
> 
> 
> 
> Not that that negates your official policies, Harold, but... Know your audience. :mrgreen:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Some members could have someone reading over their shoulders from time to time, maybe even grandma.
> 
> Jim
Click to expand...


My grandma certainly didn't have a chemistry degree Jim. C22H30N6O4S would be a line of letters and numbers. Besides which, even if she knew what it was, she would have laughed her head off. Having a sense of humour didn't make her any less of a "proper woman" and as the wife of a preacher I'd suggest that she qualifies. She knew how to laugh and enjoy life.


----------



## butcher

Yes we do have some very nice ladies here on the forum as members.


----------



## Harold_V

chlaurite said:


> Not that that negates your official policies, Harold, but... Know your audience. :mrgreen:


My ex wife shared your philosophy. She figured that so long as I was unaware of the ongoing sexual relationships she had throughout our marriage, no harm was done. Do you believe that to be true, too?

Based on your comment, I gather you feel that it's perfectly alright to do something wrong, so long as you're not caught. Very characteristic of those who see themselves as a victim, never taking responsibility for their actions. You might understand that I have little regard (or respect) for such people. 

I don't have to "know my audience". I demand proper behavior, and that's not up for debate. Makes no difference to me who is reading. We will not permit this forum to degrade to the level of much of the internet, where one must search for a few sentences not filled with profanity and misinformation. Here, you will observe the rules, without exception, or you can move on. There are no other choices. 

You might understand that I don't agree with you--and I'd ban you just as fast as I'd ban anyone else if they (or you) don't adhere to the mandates that have been set forth on this forum. It's one of the ways that we keep the riff-raff to a minimum. 

I'm shocked that you feel it's acceptable to be disrespectful of ladies, regardless of the numbers that may or may not be reading. Yet another quality I abhor in people. 

Harold


----------



## niteliteone

butcher said:


> Yes we do have some very nice ladies here on the forum as members.


I know of 2 active almost daily, female members here.


----------



## zoltan

Hello all,
I have 1kilo of these BGA chips. They are from set top boxes. Have someone try to process them?


----------



## g_axelsson

zoltan said:


> Hello all,
> I have 1kilo of these BGA chips. They are from set top boxes. Have someone try to process them?


Yes, that's really nice material and should contain approximately 5g of gold. (Less if they have an integrated heat spreader, makes them heavier.)

Try https://www.google.com/search?q=site:goldrefiningforum.com+bga+chips

There are even an eBook about it, http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=17967

Göran


----------



## zoltan

I will process them tomorrow and probably say Woohoo :lol: thank you.


----------



## bmgold2

I put off posting here for a while but then couldn't take it any more. It took me a bit over a day to go through this whole thread but this was exactly the information I needed to get me started. The circuit boards I have a lot of have very little visible gold on them and I don't have a garage full of old computers to scrap. My boards do have integrated circuits on them so I ripped a couple off and crushed them up. I didn't bother burning them to ash yet but I did do a real quick test. 

What I did was crush a couple chips up. Sift the dust through a fine tea screen. Then, I put a pinch of the powdered chips into a small glass vial along with a couple mL of the SSN leach that I got with a gold testing kit and heated it up a bit. As you would expect, the solution turned green but when I tested it with a drop (one tiny drop) of stannous chloride, the test gave an instant black color. On waiting longer (over night), the test was negative for gold but I expected that since there was so much copper in the dust. I did another quick test where I pre-leached the dust (a new batch) with a little HCl to get rid of some of the copper. That test worked even better but I still didn't get all the copper out.

It doesn't really matter. My goal was to prove that there was gold in these chips and I did it. Now I plan to save up a bunch of them and do it right. This is so much better than my last idea which was crushing up rocks looking for some gold. With that idea, I was getting a questionable light purple test with the stannous and it took a few drops of stannous to get that.

Another reason for posting here was because several people mentioned using a blue bowl to concentrate the ash. My idea is to build a device called a Miller table.http://lmgtfy.com/?q=miller+table+gold It looks like a very easy and cheap to build device that should get you a clean concentrate to process. That's my plan anyway although I am pretty confident in my gold panning due to not having gold in this area but still looking. I can find microscopic specks of gold if they are here.

I hope bumping this thread back up will give others who might not have seen this another place to find gold in your scrap. It was worth the time to read the whole thread even if there was a bit of unneeded content to sort through.

Thanks to Patnor1011 for starting this topic and for the ebook on the process. 

bmgold2 - a very happy new refiner


----------



## cmiller92

bmgold2

Would the Miller Table work to separate the all metals from the ash or would it separate your gold from everything?
The reason I ask this is because from what I understand about the blue bowl is to separate the metals from the ash, therefore giving you a less junk to PGMs ratio to process.
Therefore if you were trying to clean ash from your material the blue bowl (along with some agitation) would be more efficient then the Miller table for you could deal in larger proportions at a time.
But this all depends on what exactly the Miller table separates.

CJ


----------



## bmgold2

cmiller92 said:


> bmgold2
> 
> Would the Miller Table work to separate the all metals from the ash or would it separate your gold from everything?
> The reason I ask this is because from what I understand about the blue bowl is to separate the metals from the ash, therefore giving you a less junk to PGMs ratio to process.
> Therefore if you were trying to clean ash from your material the blue bowl (along with some agitation) would be more efficient then the Miller table for you could deal in larger proportions at a time.
> But this all depends on what exactly the Miller table separates.
> 
> CJ



I think it all depends on the water flow and the angle you set it at. It also needs the material classified so it is all the same size much like a blue bowl does (to work best). I haven't tried it yet but I think you should be able to at least separate the metal from the ash. It may be possible to even separate the gold from the copper. From what I seen, I think the larger copper pieces will be easy to separate from the ash by screening but I haven't actually burnt any to ash yet so I'm unsure. I'd still process the copper in case a little gold is on it. I think the main amount of gold in these parts are very fine wires which require a good magnifier or even microscope to see until they are gathered together like in a gold pan.

I'm not sure how fast or slow the blue bowl is but the miller table is not a real fast tool. You feed it material with a spoon and wait for the water to separate the lighter blond and black sands from the fine gold. It is really a clean up or finishing tool. Once I get to work on the chips (which are still in the devices needing ripped apart), I will try to take some pictures of how it works for me. I don't have an actual miller table but plan to use an aluminum sluice box with the riffles removed and a small water pump to improvise one. Like I said, it's really about the water flow and angle of the table as well as the surface that determines how it works. Various surfaces have been used by others including old chalk boards, sand blasted glass, or other flat surfaces with a little grip to the surface. Self-healing cutting mats (especially green ones) seem to be the ones most used in homemade ones (from what I've read).

I'm slow and impatient so I don't know when I'll actually get enough chips together to try this with enough quantity to have a good chance of getting more than a gram of gold in the end but I do plan to try this and will try to take some pictures as I do. Scan through the rest of this thread and you will find lots of pictures and even an idea of how much gold to expect from various types of chips.

Oh yea, the homemade miller table would be a lot cheaper than buying a blue bowl. If you already have a blue bowl or want an excuse to buy one, use it. I'm sure it works good. 

bmgold2


----------



## niteliteone

Bmgold2,
We have a well respected member here that made a step-by-step guide on how to build and use a "Miller Table"
Here is the link;
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28318404/How-to-Build-and-Operate-a-Miller-Table
Hope this helps you and others 8)


----------



## kjavanb123

All,

After incineration 2 kg of ICs from varity of boards, crushed them, removed everything magnetite, seive the ashes and leaving the non magnetite metallic part out. So I was thinking using bromoform which is a liquid with dentsity of 2.8 g/cm3 can be used to separate the ash from all the free gold wires. Anyone tried this before?

Regards
Kj


----------



## nickvc

Doesn't sound too clever to me having read the data on it, we have enough hazards on our particular field already.


----------



## skippy

Making a bromoform and ash sludge sounds like a mess to me. You would likely waste more money on bromoform than find gold worth recovering, 
I don`t imagine bromoform is cheap. Why not try a water separation technique, like panning or wiffle table.


----------



## solar_plasma

kjavanb123 said:


> All,
> 
> After incineration 2 kg of ICs from varity of boards, crushed them, removed everything magnetite, seive the ashes and leaving the non magnetite metallic part out. So I was thinking using bromoform which is a liquid with dentsity of 2.8 g/cm3 can be used to separate the ash from all the free gold wires. Anyone tried this before?
> 
> Regards
> Kj



Though I would not like to mess around with anything that starts with "bromo" and ends on "form", the idea behind is nice. I googled heavy liquids and found this website:

http://www.heavyliquids.com/


----------



## niteliteone

I like the water method a lot better than any chemicals.
Though this article could explain why so many seem to be stupid these days :shock: 

This from our friendly EPA;
http://www.epa.gov/ttnatw01/hlthef/bromofor.html



> Hazard Summary-Created in April 1992; Revised in January 2000
> 
> Exposure to bromoform may occur from the consumption of chlorinated drinking water. The acute (short-term) effects from inhalation or ingestion of high levels of bromoform in humans and animals consist of nervous system effects such as the slowing down of brain functions, and injury to the liver and kidney...


----------



## solar_plasma

I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_polytungstate could be the answer.

100g for 155€ and this is used to make a 85% solution...hm...does anybody know how to make sodium polytungstate cheaply?


----------



## kjavanb123

All,

Bromoform is expensive, but I assume it can be used a lot of time for separating, I tried the water method and I am not good at it and there was not enough gold wires at the end of wash, I guess I am going to buy the special pot for doing water washes, the heavy liquid came to mind because usually the amount of ashes is into few kgs and can run through it, but it would assure a very high recovery rate for gold wires.

Thanks and regards,
Kj


----------



## patnor1011

It really depend on amount. I did batches of kilograms in simple pan. Now I work on bigger batches so I had to scale up.
Something like Miller table will be nice to have, I now build sluice for separating ashes from wires. Rubber mat with rivets and small pump for recycling used water. 
I am now working on this lot. Almost 14 kilograms of beauty.


----------



## bmgold2

kjavanb123 said:


> All,
> 
> Bromoform is expensive, but I assume it can be used a lot of time for separating, I tried the water method and I am not good at it and there was not enough gold wires at the end of wash, I guess I am going to buy the special pot for doing water washes, the heavy liquid came to mind because usually the amount of ashes is into few kgs and can run through it, but it would assure a very high recovery rate for gold wires.
> 
> Thanks and regards,
> Kj



Keep in mind that anything (gold pan, blue bowl, sluice box, miller table, etc.) will take a little bit of experimenting and practice to get it to separate your materials. I'd be more inclined to stick with a home made piece of equipment instead of paying hundreds of dollars for a pre-made one but that's just me.

Here's a video of another pretty simple looking fluid bed box that _*MIGHT*_ work for concentrating the gold wires from the ashes. It's a long video but the idea looks like it would work. Just pre-wet your ashes so they don't just float out of the device. Even if they do, everything is self-contained so you can't lose it and you could always run the material a couple times if needed or try another method to get anything it missed.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw25MdZbWh4[/youtube]

Use whatever works for you but my thought is that the more money you spend on equipment, the less profit you get to keep. Of course, if something increases your efficiency or speed things up...Just giving another option to think about.


----------



## Anonymous

bmgold2 said:


> Use whatever works for you but my thought is that the more money you spend on equipment, the less profit you get to keep. Of course, if something increases your efficiency or speed things up...Just giving another option to think about.



No you got it the wrong way around. The more you spend on your equipment the more of the profit you get to keep. 

In the long term of course and not initially but it pays dividends to have high quality equipment.

I'm assuming here that you're doing this for a profit and therefore you have a replenishing supply to refine.


----------



## bmgold2

spaceships said:


> bmgold2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Use whatever works for you but my thought is that the more money you spend on equipment, the less profit you get to keep. Of course, if something increases your efficiency or speed things up...Just giving another option to think about.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No you got it the wrong way around. The more you spend on your equipment the more of the profit you get to keep.
> 
> In the long term of course and not initially but it pays dividends to have high quality equipment.
> 
> I'm assuming here that you're doing this for a profit and therefore you have a replenishing supply to refine.
Click to expand...


That's where my situation is different. I'm only (still) doing this as a hobby and learning experience so you are right. If doing this for profit, especially when speed matters, then the better equipment would eventually pay off. That's assuming that the equipment is actually faster and/or more efficient. Homemade tools can take some time to perfect but they might work just as well as the store bought tools. Maybe better if built and adjusted to do exactly what you need. You're probably safe buying a proven piece of equipment but it will still need to be set up right and adjusted to the material being run. I'm assuming we were talking about a blue bowl type of concentrator. I haven't used one but from what I have seen, they are not the fastest method. Time is money right? I could be wrong though, ashes would be a lot lighter than the black sand they usually have to separate the gold from.


----------



## patnor1011

Picture of what I started with is on previous page.

*picture 001* --- some of the BGA after incineration, Si die removed
*picture 002* --- setup for first crushing and sieving 
*picture 003* --- small mortar&pestle
*picture 004* --- material after first sieving


----------



## patnor1011

*picture 005* --- material ready to wash, after second sieving with fine sieve
*picture 006* --- coarse material from fine sieving which is going to be crushed again in mortar&pestle
*picture 007* --- gold wires started accumulating after shaking container in circular motion (still dry)
*picture 008* --- accumulated wires removed from container prior second crushing, these will be treated with nitric to remove copper traces and added to wires washed from crushed material.

More pictures coming soon.


----------



## maynman1751

Great pics Pat! You da Man!!!!!!


----------



## patnor1011

See that Haribo container? There were 3 of them full. My process may be slow I just try to do everything very carefully as I hate to lose even single bonding wire. However I improved washing - from gold pan to two stage sluice, one smaller (thin, long) one bigger (shorter but more wide) I will post some pictures tomorrow. 
I use pump to circulate the same water going through cloth filter to catch mud but power supply failed so I have to do it with water from mains directly. Cant wait week for another power supply owner of them is waiting.


----------



## samuel-a

Pat,

I have tried incinirated chips through the Blow Bowl... so far not very impressive. The gold wires tends to break while crushing and the small wire particles tesnd to float. have you noticed that as well ?

p.s. - I hope you wear respirator while working with all of these fine powders.


----------



## patnor1011

Yeah, the same happened to me, I had water running too fast on my sluice and some fine wires were carried away. I had big box to catch everything so nothing is lost I just have to run material again. I managed to run only about quarter and even that need to be run again. I will post pictures later on.


----------



## chambersjr

Wondering if anyone has experience with the chips shown below. Should these be processed using Patnor's process?

These chips are from 90's Silicon Graphics boards. 

They seem similar to bridge ic's, but are white with a thin copper top plate over what appears to be a small "black top" part as are common in bridge chips, only these are smaller. Under the "black top" part is another thin copper plate, followed by what i think is double sided tape (seems similar to athletic tape?). What I found on the underside of the tape, between it and the pcb, is what has me baffled...it's a gold foil that mirrors the chip in size and is easily peeled from the board. The best way I can describe how it is attached is it reminds me of separating items that are velcroed together.


----------



## patnor1011

Separate that foil and process in AP. That part with that black square epoxy will most likely contain bonding wires. It is very easy to find out, just incinerate one, crush. Wet crushed powder on some black surface and check with loupe. You should see wires if they are there.


----------



## patnor1011

If you ever wondered what is in s/n bridge BGA IC chip solder balls, I had one sample analysed recently. 
I was intrigued to see if there is indium present as was mentioned in some thread here but unfortunately my sample did not contain any. 
Enjoy.


----------



## solar_plasma

that's 20g silver and 2g gold per kg... :shock: 

Did you collect the solder by scraping or melting?

I wonder, if something like this method would be the way of choice: http://www.matarka.hu/koz/ISSN_2063.../ISSN_2063-6792_vol_37_2_2012_eng_019-026.pdf
(electrorefining the crude tin in HCl-SnCl2-electrolyte, Ag, Au and Pb are collected in the slimes and the cathode tin contains only 1/50 of the contaminants in the anode)


----------



## kjavanb123

Patnor,

I also got very curios, is this analysis for solder balls under the N/S bridges?

Thanks
Kevin


----------



## maynman1751

solar_plasma said:


> that's 20g silver and 2g gold per kg... :shock:
> 
> Did you collect the solder by scraping or melting?
> 
> I wonder, if something like this method would be the way of choice: http://www.matarka.hu/koz/ISSN_2063.../ISSN_2063-6792_vol_37_2_2012_eng_019-026.pdf
> (electrorefining the crude tin in HCl-SnCl2-electrolyte, Ag, Au and Pb are collected in the slimes and the cathode tin contains only 1/50 of the contaminants in the anode)



Very interesting process. It would be cool to do if you had the materials and knowledge. Thanks Solar!


----------



## patnor1011

I harvested it by scrapping and with heat gun too. I scraped or heated chips only. I mean all what was analyzed was taken out of chip not from boards. 
That sample was few grams out of few kilogram pile I managed to save during few years. I was wondering about what to do with it as I accumulated quite a lot. Plan was to make some fish lures for mackerel as tin is shiny, silvery but now I would be more inclined to find out if there is some inexpensive way to get that silver and gold out of it.
Kevin, it was exactly that - solder balls from s/n bridges, the same as I processed in my second ebook.


----------



## joubjonn

Very nice info Patnor, thank you for sharing!! 

i also save a bit of solder when i can!


----------



## stardust18

patnor1011 said:


> It really depend on amount. I did batches of kilograms in simple pan. Now I work on bigger batches so I had to scale up.
> Something like Miller table will be nice to have, I now build sluice for separating ashes from wires. Rubber mat with rivets and small pump for recycling used water.
> I am now working on this lot. Almost 14 kilograms of beauty.



Hello everyone. Venerable patnor 1011 ask if it is possible to put a photo of your washing plants for ash from the chips. With gratitude.


----------



## joubjonn

I think he did on another thread for chips. He uses a corregated plastic drain pipe. Something like 4in or 6in with half of it cut. It's pretty simple to do. Just need a pump to circulate the Water


----------



## patnor1011

I did not take picture of whole setup operating but it is one big barrel to catch waste water and values which may be washed out. I run material 2/3 times. Then roof drain plastic pipe with rubber matting with riffles glued to bottom of that plastic pipe. And pump for circulating water from barrel to roof drain pipe sluice. 
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=20428#p209816


----------



## stardust18

patnor1011 said:


> I did not take picture of whole setup operating but it is one big barrel to catch waste water and values which may be washed out. I run material 2/3 times. Then roof drain plastic pipe with rubber matting with riffles glued to bottom of that plastic pipe. And pump for circulating water from barrel to roof drain pipe sluice.
> http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=20428#p209816





joubjonn said:


> I think he did on another thread for chips. He uses a corregated plastic drain pipe. Something like 4in or 6in with half of it cut. It's pretty simple to do. Just need a pump to circulate the Water



Thank you very much, I now come to the stage of metal recovery from TSV solution, much became clear When the soaps and virtually separated unnecessary material.Esche thanks again.


----------



## joubjonn

One tip could be to glue a couple hard drive magnets to the back of the drain pipe. Then when you do your cleanup of concentrate any mag pieces can be separated and you can go straight to AR for the gold wires. I'm sure you may have a small amount of copper present but that wouldn't ruin your day.


----------



## patnor1011

Depending on type of chip it can be a lot of copper and I would go for nitric leach first. That do have some other advantages, some chips contain Ag/Pd brazing, Ag will be dissolved in this leach along with copper.


----------



## Phillip Barrett

Does anyone know what temperature it takes to burn the chips to a good ash? I have an old pottery kiln and was thinking of running a couple of pounds in it but i dont know what temp. to set it for. Do you think about 1000 to 1200 degrees F. would cook them enough or is that too hot?


----------



## GotTheBug

You might run into a lack of oxygen to properly incinerate in the kiln. I'm using a small, home built foundry, lid off, with a steel container to contain the chips. There are holes drilled into the container to allow flame and air to pass over the chips, which sit on a steel screen inside the container. At approximately 1200 degrees, it takes 5 minutes to completely incinerate 300 or so grams of chips. Next time I do a run I'll take some pics.


----------



## g_axelsson

Temperature should be enough to get the chips red glowing and then enough time and air that the center turns into ash and loses the black coal. The more packed together the chip are the harder oxygen have to reach the center.

Göran


----------



## Phillip Barrett

Thanks a bunch guys for the fast answer !!! I just joined the forum less than a week ago and all i want to do is get on and read, read,read, I thought i knew a little about this but find out i know nothing !!! Just love it, so much to learn. I just ran across a bunch (lucient 1674ct48 chips). Is there any way of finding out from the number if they have any gold content without running a sample first? Again, Thanks for answers !!! Pillip


----------



## solar_plasma

Can you post a picture?


----------



## Geo

Phillip Barrett said:


> Thanks a bunch guys for the fast answer !!! I just joined the forum less than a week ago and all i want to do is get on and read, read,read, I thought i knew a little about this but find out i know nothing !!! Just love it, so much to learn. I just ran across a bunch (lucient 1674ct48 chips). Is there any way of finding out from the number if they have any gold content without running a sample first? Again, Thanks for answers !!! Pillip



Trying to chase down part numbers from mixed scrap is a huge waste of time. Unless it's for a collection or you have a large lot of the same part number to do. A more useful data is by testing a good cross section of what you will be working with. If you ask someone that has already put in the time, "how much gold can you get from this many of this type chip", the answer would be meaningless to you.


----------



## Stowmaster

My experiment with 500 g of chips of mobile phones. 
Procedure: 
1) removed all the solder. 
2) chip burned and milled in a coffee grinder. 
3) dissolved base metals and held flotation 
Under magnification gold threads I dont see. Only yellow sand and a slightly fragments of crystals. Weight 1.7 g 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ieftb5kmpspyka3/3.1.jpg

4)Burned chips without base metals sent to aqua regia. Result of the third part of the experiment delayed.


----------



## Geo

After milling the chips, the gold bonding wires will not look like wires. It will look more like what you have. The picture is very fuzzy but the yellow is unmistakable.


----------



## patnor1011

Coffee grinder will do quick job with gold wires. It will turn them to gold powder.


----------



## Stowmaster

I made a better quality photo
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ji17gur5rv6935f/3.1.1.JPG


----------



## g_axelsson

Stowmaster said:


> I made a better quality photo
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/ji17gur5rv6935f/3.1.1.JPG


Obviously that isn't gold, just a lot of trash. It could have some gold hidden though.

I would add some AR (Cover it in HCl and add a few drops of HNO3) and then test the solution with stannous. 1.7g of material wouldn't need any more than 1.7 ml HNO3 at the most if it was pure gold. If you get gold in solution, then filter it and either save it or drop it with a little bit of SMB.

What do you mean with "3) dissolved base metals and held flotation"? Gold can easily float on surface tension. What acid did you use for dissolving base metals?

Göran


----------



## patnor1011

It may be gold. I have seen it many times that gold got dirty look with this process. All he need to do to be sure is just to wash that material in straight nitric first. Then use AR and proceed from there.

But Goran is asking some valid questions.


----------



## Stowmaster

g_axelsson said:


> Stowmaster said:
> 
> 
> 
> I made a better quality photo
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/ji17gur5rv6935f/3.1.1.JPG
> 
> 
> 
> Obviously that isn't gold, just a lot of trash. It could have some gold hidden though.
> 
> I would add some AR (Cover it in HCl and add a few drops of HNO3) and then test the solution with stannous. 1.7g of material wouldn't need any more than 1.7 ml HNO3 at the most if it was pure gold. If you get gold in solution, then filter it and either save it or drop it with a little bit of SMB.
> 
> What do you mean with "3) dissolved base metals and held flotation"? Gold can easily float on surface tension. What acid did you use for dissolving base metals?
> 
> Göran
Click to expand...


I used about 23% nitric acid solution. I dilute 70% nitric acid rainwater.
This powder is precipitate at bottom of the jar.
In aqua regia (more precisely - in SSN), I put all, except this powder.

updated: Only considering density, I can confidently say that there more than 1 gram of gold.
updated2 added foto https://www.dropbox.com/s/hh9kp5lxqhvbxii/3.2.JPG


----------



## patnor1011

I dont understand if you just washed it in nitric how come that you have any precipitate at bottom. Perhaps you used wrong term. I am no expert in SSN and never did that so I cant be of any help there.


----------



## Stowmaster

Maybe I'm incorrectly to use the term flotation. Maybe somewhere error interpreter. 
Sequence of my actions: 
1) 500 grams of chips I filled 23% nitric acid for 2 days. 
2) Brushing I cleaned the remains of tin acid. 
3) I manually separated useless phragments of chips. 
4) Chips I burned. Chips burned very well. 
5) I burned chip grind in a coffee grinder. 
6) I milled chip on 2 days filled 23% nitric acid. Several times a day mixed. Purpose - the dissolution of base metals. 
7) I poured the contents of the jar onto the filter. Powder on the photo stayed at the bottom jar. *I do not know how it happened. I did not plan this event*. But I remember the technique of mixing in paragraph 6. I made ​​a circular motion relatively the plane of the earth, holding the jar in hand. I think that there was a natural gravity separation.
8. The filtrate is washed with water and i added SSN - 30 ml of 70% nitric acid, 60 g of crystalline NaCl for 2 days. Several times a day mixed. 
9) I added water, dissolved salt residue and the mixture was filtered. Then I washed several times with the filtrate.


----------



## Geo

Stowmaster said:


> Maybe I'm incorrectly to use the term flotation. Maybe somewhere error interpreter.
> Sequence of my actions:
> 1) 500 grams of chips I filled 23% nitric acid for 2 days.
> 2) Brushing I cleaned the remains of tin acid.
> 3) I manually separated useless phragments of chips.
> 4) Chips I burned. Chips burned very well.
> 5) I burned chip grind in a coffee grinder.
> 6) I milled chip on 2 days filled 23% nitric acid. Several times a day mixed. Purpose - the dissolution of base metals.
> 7) I poured the contents of the jar onto the filter. Powder on the photo stayed at the bottom jar. *I do not know how it happened. I did not plan this event*. But I remember the technique of mixing in paragraph 6. I made ​​a circular motion relatively the plane of the earth, holding the jar in hand. I think that there was a natural gravity separation.
> 8. The filtrate is washed with water and i added SSN - 30 ml of 70% nitric acid, 60 g of crystalline NaCl for 2 days. Several times a day mixed.
> 9) I added water, dissolved salt residue and the mixture was filtered. Then I washed several times with the filtrate.



8. The filtrate is washed with water and i added SSN - 30 ml of 70% nitric acid, 60 g of crystalline NaCl for 2 days. Several times a day mixed. Here is where your gold is hidden. Do you still have the SSN from step 8? Did you test the SSN with stannous chloride for the presence of gold?

Everything solid after step 8 should be trash and there should be no solid gold after step 8.


----------



## Stowmaster

Geo said:


> Here is where your gold is hidden. Do you still have the SSN from step 8? Did you test the SSN with stannous chloride for the presence of gold?
> Everything solid after step 8 should be trash and there should be no solid gold after step 8.



Sand, which remained at the bottom of jar (step 7) on the picture 3.1. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ji17gur5rv6935f/3.1.1.JPG I left "as is." At this moment I did not process it. Maybe I'll leave it as a souvenir. Maybe melted without processing. In step 8 was sent to all, except the sand 
The result of processing in the steps 8-9 on the photo 3.2 https://www.dropbox.com/s/hh9kp5lxqhvbxii/3.2.JPG in jars (currently precipitated SMB). 
That's not all. Burned chips the second time I burn and filled SSN...

Added photo 3.3 https://www.dropbox.com/s/dvxlc38l0asd98w/3.3.JPG First fraction after SMB. Precipitation time about 150 minutes. Сolor is not very good.


----------



## Geo

Ok, so the yellow solids is more than likely gold and you successfully leeched the remainder. It was successful because you dropped the gold with SMB. So basically, you are outlining the process you used to get what you have. I thought you were asking a question. Try refining the dark powder again so that it resembles clean gold powder.


----------



## jason_recliner

Hi Pat
I've just found this thread and downloaded your PDF from page 3. (I've not gone through all 28 pages of this thread.) It's very nicely documented.

I just want to slap myself.

About eight months ago, before I found this forum, I went through a couple of kilograms of old RAM sticks (as old as 30 pin, 72pin), ISA cards, 386 motherboards and the like. I'd been hanging onto them at work since 1988 in case we needed to service a machine that only ran on a 386 and 387 and finally we were done with it. I collected everything gold coloured, trimmed the fingers nicely and went about my first recovery. The rest went in the bin.

I'll bet that old stuff was loaded with much thicker gold than we find now...


----------



## Ibrahimcoe

Thanks for your replay.

[email protected]


----------



## solar_plasma

patnor1011 said:


> Depending on type of chip it can be a lot of copper and I would go for nitric leach first. That do have some other advantages, some chips contain Ag/Pd brazing, Ag will be dissolved in this leach along with copper.



Has anybody ever found some details, in what kind of chips Pd brazing can be found or where definitely not?


----------



## patnor1011

solar_plasma said:


> patnor1011 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Depending on type of chip it can be a lot of copper and I would go for nitric leach first. That do have some other advantages, some chips contain Ag/Pd brazing, Ag will be dissolved in this leach along with copper.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Has anybody ever found some details, in what kind of chips Pd brazing can be found or where definitely not?
Click to expand...


Sadly it is mostly on package only. Somewhere here is a picture of IC called Rabbit which I got one bag of them and they did have AgPd brazing according to sticker from top of bag.


----------



## Stowmaster

It was more than 3 kg of black chips. No bridges, no memory. And there is no very poor analogs 74 series and EEPROM. Most part - controllers with motherboards 1997-2004.
Result - 1.82 g
Because the technology is significantly different, the process I publish in a separate topic.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=21666


----------



## maynman1751

patnor1011 said:


> I harvested it by scrapping and with heat gun too. I scraped or heated chips only. I mean all what was analyzed was taken out of chip not from boards.
> That sample was few grams out of few kilogram pile I managed to save during few years. I was wondering about what to do with it as I accumulated quite a lot. Plan was to make some fish lures for mackerel as tin is shiny, silvery but now I would be more inclined to find out if there is some inexpensive way to get that silver and gold out of it.
> Kevin, it was exactly that - solder balls from s/n bridges, the same as I processed in my second ebook.


Hi Pat! Did you ever try to process the solder or do you have a process in mind? Thanks, John.


----------



## patnor1011

I did not John. Point is acid is very expensive here and 2g out of kilo solder would not pay for itself. I used some of it to make some shiny lures and got more money selling these than I would by recovering gold out of it.


----------



## maynman1751

patnor1011 said:


> I did not John. Point is acid is very expensive here and 2g out of kilo solder would not pay for itself. I used some of it to make some shiny lures and got more money selling these than I would by recovering gold out of it.



Cool! You have any pics of the lures?


----------



## MarcoP

patnor1011 said:


> I did not John. Point is acid is very expensive here and 2g out of kilo solder would not pay for itself. I used some of it to make some shiny lures and got more money selling these than I would by recovering gold out of it.


I suppose you are talking about 2gr of silver, any gold traces in it?


----------



## kole55

greeting for PATNOR. I have a question: have you dealt with these chips and whether it has value to them? Thank you.


----------



## maynman1751

My dealings with these chips are that they are totally worthless. Anybody else mess with them?


----------



## Barren Realms 007

maynman1751 said:


> My dealings with these chips are that they are totally worthless. Anybody else mess with them?



Ain't going there and won't touch them.


----------



## kole55

thanks guys


----------



## MarcoP

There it shouldn't be a bonding wire each pin connecting to the silicon die? You always keep saying those are worthless thus they must be ...

In that case I would try to give 'em away for free in ebay and add a couple of dollars on freight? That's what I was thinking to do when I'll have all pins removed from mines. If it doesn't work they will go straight to the nearby WEEE centre.


----------



## Barren Realms 007

MarcoP said:


> There it shouldn't be a bonding wire each pin connecting to the silicon die? You always keep saying those are worthless thus they must be ...
> 
> In that case I would try to give 'em away for free in ebay and add a couple of dollars on freight? That's what I was thinking to do when I'll have all pins removed from mines. If it doesn't work they will go straight to the nearby WEEE centre.



The ones in the picture do not have pin's they are BGA's


----------



## solar_plasma

MarcoP said:


> There it shouldn't be a bonding wire each pin connecting to the silicon die? You always keep saying those are worthless thus they must be ...
> 
> In that case I would try to give 'em away for free in ebay and add a couple of dollars on freight? That's what I was thinking to do when I'll have all pins removed from mines. If it doesn't work they will go straight to the nearby WEEE centre.



flip chip BGAs are made without any golden bonding wires


----------



## patnor1011

MarcoP said:


> patnor1011 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I did not John. Point is acid is very expensive here and 2g out of kilo solder would not pay for itself. I used some of it to make some shiny lures and got more money selling these than I would by recovering gold out of it.
> 
> 
> 
> I suppose you are talking about 2gr of silver, any gold traces in it?
Click to expand...


Few pages back in this thread there is picture of analysis of sample of that solder. There is 0.22% gold and 2% silver if I remember correctly. So we talk about 2g of gold and 20g of silver in a kilo of solder from under BGA IC. Solder I scraped off the back of them.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827&start=520#p211524


----------



## patnor1011

maynman1751 said:


> patnor1011 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I did not John. Point is acid is very expensive here and 2g out of kilo solder would not pay for itself. I used some of it to make some shiny lures and got more money selling these than I would by recovering gold out of it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Cool! You have any pics of the lures?
Click to expand...


I do not have much in this computer, most of them are on laptop, mostly finished ones with holographic eyes attached on them. I use mostly red, sometimes golden but red ones are the best. Here are some pictures of work in progress, three types which sell the most.
Lure3 with red eyes proved really deadly using from pier or rocks for all kind of fish. They are small 3 and 5 grams.


----------



## patnor1011

That is one way how to use solder and lead recovered from electronics, I was intrigued and plan to get to stage when I will be able to produce this: - see picture (copper plated lead jig head).
That would be cool thing to do to use copper cell to add more value to lead and tin.


----------



## g_axelsson

MarcoP said:


> There it shouldn't be a bonding wire each pin connecting to the silicon die? You always keep saying those are worthless thus they must be ...
> 
> In that case I would try to give 'em away for free in ebay and add a couple of dollars on freight? That's what I was thinking to do when I'll have all pins removed from mines. If it doesn't work they will go straight to the nearby WEEE centre.


I throw them in with other low yield circuit boards I sell as scrap.

For the flip chip BGA:s the die is attached to the fiber board with small solder bumps and the fiber board uses solder balls to connect to the main board. The fiber board usually have ENIG as surface treatment and that is where the small amounts of gold comes from. It is dissolved by the tin when soldered.

The BGA chips that have gold bonding wires (pins are not a necessity) is the ones with the die covered in plastic. The black resin is there to protect the bond wires.

Nice lures, Patnor!

Göran


----------



## maynman1751

Sweet looking lures Pat. Good use of 'waste' materials.


----------



## METLMASHER

Way to think outside the box! I think there's a way to get the pm's, but meanwhile, you're fishing for dinner, since there is no sure path yet.

Till then, get what pays, and tight lines!


----------



## solar_plasma

If there are 2g Au and 20g Ag per kg, I believe the last words hasn't been spoken regarding profitibility.

I need to accumulate more of it, since I have only a few hundred gramms, but those are my thoughts and I would likely try them, once I have enough:

1l 25%~7M HCl would theoretically dissolve about 420g Sn or 700g Pb. We will need more in practice due to acceptible speed of reaction and to prevent too fast degradation of SnCl2.

Ag, Cu and Au will be left over. Filter.

Any Pb (if any) can be precipitated by small portions of H2SO4 to insoluble PbSO4 until no more reaction occurs. Filter.

The remaining SnCl2 solution goes to a tin electrowinning cell or can be precipitated as sulfide and roasted (at least if you need a lot of SO2). Also it will reduce silver salts to metal, but if this can be useful for reducing AgCl from other sources, I am still trying to find informations about. Maybe SnCl2 could be processed hot, - haven't found much about it.

Problems: Tin++ is a b.... Too much HCl it degrades, too little HCl it degrades, contact with oxygen it degrades....and forms a dozen or more different tin compounds, each having different stages and there is not enough information about when, why and what exactly.

It sounds easy, but everyone having only a little experience would know, this is a lot of work and time. A lot of possible problems and if anything fails, a lot of waste.

The idea isn't new, there are some threads about making a dissolved solder mess and I think all of them are still left open end.

But Au for 60$ plus 7$ Ag at today's prices! It might make sense to use 3l HCl, at least for those, who buy it for cheap. The spot of 99,9% tin isn't that bad either (maybe 10$). The nice lures could then be made from cheap lead instead.


----------



## patnor1011

Problem with lead lures is that they darken within days. Tin stay shiny and that is why I use it in alloy for those lures. It make no sense for me to even attempt recovery as I pay over 10 euro for 1l of 15% strong HCl. If I am going to spend countless of hours and 20-30 euro to get 60 back I would rather make lures and get back more and faster. 
I had only about 2 kilograms of solder and that is not amount I would consider sending to some refiner.


----------



## jason_recliner

Those are some pretty lures, Pat!

The irony here is that we all strive to keep our waste metals from ending up in the ocean. :lol:


----------



## Alegiance

hi guys  

i see a lot of your post is very educative. :idea: 
for the gold recovery .. 
why not just shred into pieces very thin and then filter with a bowl of water like it was before..

like coffee grinder maybe or Better machine 

or if i have to absolotely burn them and have the ash after ?

some advice on this ?

:roll:


----------



## patnor1011

Alegiance said:


> hi guys
> 
> i see a lot of your post is very educative. :idea:
> for the gold recovery ..
> why not just shred into pieces very thin and then filter with a bowl of water like it was before..
> 
> like coffee grinder maybe or Better machine
> 
> or if i have to absolotely burn them and have the ash after ?
> 
> some advice on this ?
> 
> :roll:



That was discussed many times over.
If you shred and grind them in powder most of gold wires get smashed to dust and end beaten or smeared on top of base metal pins and pieces from inside of IC chips. If incinerated then ash is easier to wash out and there will be just small amount of gold attached to tip of base metal pin..


----------



## patnor1011

jason_recliner said:


> Those are some pretty lures, Pat!
> 
> The irony here is that we all strive to keep our waste metals from ending up in the ocean. :lol:



I had a good laugh on this, nearly choked on my coffee. You are correct but I am sure recreational fishing will not make any measurable impact on ocean pollution. Plastic is what is killing ocean life and there is not much we can do. It make me sad when I see what end up washed on shore, I once found few cell phones. Amount of garbage I have seen when I used my metal detector on beach is unbelievable. 
I would dare to say that all recreational fishing gear lost in last 200 years and perhaps with next 200 years combined did less damage than Tepco did in a month. Not to mention that their disaster is spewing pure poison into the pacific for the last 48 months.
Also there are countless magma eruptions on ocean floor going on pretty much constantly, introducing tons of metal in the water.


----------



## Alegiance

i have QUestion !

is there gold in every chip who are not bga chips ? 

because every time i cut one in half i only see white and red color  

i have collected maybe 2 pound of mixed Ic chips in few weeks and i have some cpu 
pentium pro look very nice !


----------



## patnor1011

Alegiance said:


> i have QUestion !
> 
> is there gold in every chip who are not bga chips ?
> 
> because every time i cut one in half i only see white and red color
> 
> i have collected maybe 2 pound of mixed Ic chips in few weeks and i have some cpu
> pentium pro look very nice !



There most likely is, with exception of eprom like type IC they do contain very little. Gold is so tiny wire you will have problem to see it with eyes, take some magnifier and you will see it better.


----------



## Stowmaster

I made the experience over the gold content in Intel chips (bridges, very old versions without textolite substrate) and full similar in form of mix chips from other manufacturers (Sony, Sega, Adaptec, WDC and other). The gold content in the Intel chips is several times larger. Some chips have little or no gold. For example Sega chips contain aluminum wire.


----------



## Alegiance

Do you have special tips for remove that bga chips ?

heat the chip glue a little bit ?

hammer ?

:idea:


----------



## solar_plasma

I bend the green rim with pliers. Some are using heat, which has the advantage that you get the gold plated areas beneath to cling to the black top.


----------



## Smack

Alegiance said:


> Do you have special tips for remove that bga chips ?
> 
> heat the chip glue a little bit ?
> 
> hammer ?
> 
> :idea:



2cm wood chisel, then use the same chisel to scrape the solder balls off the bottom but don't discard them.


----------



## Alegiance

and can i just use the chisel alone without hammer to remove this chips ?

because i cannot make so much noise in my appartement.

:mrgreen:


----------



## kurtak

Alegiance said:


> because i cannot make so much noise in my appartement.
> 
> :mrgreen:



If you live in an apartment you CAN NOT DO THIS :!: PERIOD :!: :!: :!: 

The chemicals used to extract/recover the gold &/or refine the gold once it has been recovered are extremely TOXIC & CORROSIVE --- you will end up POISONING yourself & the other people that live in the apartment building & anything made of metal in the apartment will corrode (rust) & the waste chemicals (when done recovering the gold) "can not" just be dumped down the drain

You need to find a different hobby :!: :!: :!: 

Kurt


----------



## patnor1011

Also chiseling of IC from board will set out dust which is not very good addition to your apartment. Some of the dust may contain hazardous materials.


----------



## mls26cwru

Alegiance said:


> and can i just use the chisel alone without hammer to remove this chips ?
> 
> because i cannot make so much noise in my appartement.
> 
> :mrgreen:



I use a thin metallic awl.... a couple taps with a hammer is usually enough to get it to seperate from the board enough to pry it appart. 

I did not see where you mentioned anything about the chemical aspect of refining the gold, but thak is indeed a GIANT no-no to do in the house. But even the aspect of the physical seperation would be inadvisable to do in the hosue. Here are a list of my safty concerns concerning the seperation and grinding.

Seperation
fiberglass - fine particles from tearing the bottom away from the top deffinitly go airborne.
solder balls - aside from containing a small bit of lead, they tend to scatter. they will get all over, so make sure you can clean up the area 

Grinding (if you chose to go this route)
ultra fine particulate - the ash from burning/grinding is extreamly fine... it passes through my finest sieves, so it is at maximum 100um. you need to grind the material very fine to release all the gold wire.
silcon fragments - if you grind, the silicon chips will fragment in to tiny shards... look up silisosis (very similar to the effects of asbestos)
gold fines - if you grind up the chip to a powder, you will also grind up the wires very fine too... you have to have a way of recovering this, and its not easy. I dare say that the majority share of gold will end up like this if you grind.

In short, you have to make sure you have very good ventilation and/or a respirator. Outside in a garage would be a good place to do this. I also think it would be a very good idea to have a good set of goggles to keep thd fine dust our of your eyes too....I have started to use one becasue I can feel the grit in my eyes after dealing with dust.


----------



## Alegiance

hi i just collect the chips for a year or 2 and i will find someone to recover the gold 
nothing toxic in there i hope.. lol

hehe


----------



## solar_plasma

To avoid any dust, you can do this under water. I tried this for mlcc's.


----------



## patnor1011

solar_plasma said:


> To avoid any dust, you can do this under water. I tried this for mlcc's.



Neat.

I usually do it outside when weather is nice and with heat gun. 10-20 seconds of direct hot air flow on IC and you can pick it up with needle nose pliers. One two taps over separate container to remove solder while it is still soft-melted. 
I mostly use carpenter spatula, or kitchen cake spatula, something like this: http://goo.gl/4FJbnl
to scrape solder from board and lift IC all while it is still hot.


----------



## jason_recliner

I have finally started a small test run with RAM chips: Just 22 single and double sided SDRAM and DDR sticks carrying 130g of chips.

Using the coffee tin method with a few holes punched above the bottom and placed into the coals of a wood fire, only about half of them burned to white. I am now considering to make one of those soup-can furnaces. [Edit: I may mean forge. I'm not sure.]

This is not a question, but I'm not sure I entirely understand bond wires. Google / wiki don't say much. Inside my RAM it looks like the thick leg connecting wires, made of "whatever" spider into the centre and than have a short (1 - 1.5mm long) golden tip attached to them. They seem fairly firmly attached. But the main point is that they're quite thick and visible, whereas I was expecting something I could barely see.

With the large black bits picked out for reprocessing, I've had a go at panning anyway. I own one of those turbopans, with the spiralling ridges. They're great for processing large amounts of gravel quickly, but I'm not sure it's the best for small amounts with dust; with so many ridges in which to collect, a regular pan might be better. I am also not about to win any prizes for World's Greatest Panner*. Nevertheless I am pleased to start to see a little colour. But this is just fine dust, much finer than what I _thought_ I could see on the legs.

Am I right in understanding that the silicon wafers with the shiny yellow appearance (one placed into shot) contain NO gold at all?



* I googled that term and found a pile of recipes for Indian cuisine.


----------



## patnor1011

jason_recliner said:


> I have finally started a small test run with RAM chips: Just 22 single and double sided SDRAM and DDR sticks carrying 130g of chips.
> 
> Using the coffee tin method with a few holes punched above the bottom and placed into the coals of a wood fire, only about half of them burned to white. I am now considering to make one of those soup-can furnaces. [Edit: I may mean forge. I'm not sure.]
> 
> This is not a question, but I'm not sure I entirely understand bond wires. Google / wiki don't say much. Inside my RAM it looks like the thick leg connecting wires, made of "whatever" spider into the centre and than have a short (1 - 1.5mm long) golden tip attached to them. They seem fairly firmly attached. But the main point is that they're quite thick and visible, whereas I was expecting something I could barely see.



That tip you see is where bonding wire is attached-soldered to pin.



jason_recliner said:


> With the large black bits picked out for reprocessing, I've had a go at panning anyway. I own one of those turbopans, with the spiralling ridges. They're great for processing large amounts of gravel quickly, but I'm not sure it's the best for small amounts with dust; with so many ridges in which to collect, a regular pan might be better. I am also not about to win any prizes for World's Greatest Panner*. Nevertheless I am pleased to start to see a little colour. But this is just fine dust, much finer than what I _thought_ I could see on the legs.



It is dust or more wires it all depend on type of IC some do have bit longer wires some shorter. It all depend also on method of crushing of incinerated material. The more crushing the finer the gold wires - dust. If you incinerate them thoroughly to white dust more wires tend stay not broken. If you magnify that dust you will see it is actually wires. So small and thin they appear as dust. Also with 100+grams of IC you will see about 0.1 g of gold which is not much of dust to be seen. But you found it, you can see it and you now know what to look for.



jason_recliner said:


> Am I right in understanding that the silicon wafers with the shiny yellow appearance (one placed into shot) contain NO gold at all?
> * I googled that term and found a pile of recipes for Indian cuisine.



Well they might. Mainly on sides where wires were attached to them. If you collect enough of them just give them bath in warm AR to be sure there is no more of gold on them. I do keep some with wires still attached, one day when I will get some small microscope I will do some cool pictures.


----------



## jason_recliner

Thanks Pat. As you say, if one can gather about a gazillion of them they'd be worth a soak. Otherwise... all that glitters is not gold.


----------



## patnor1011

You will be surprised how fast they add up. I just checked and I do have close to 2 kilograms of smallest one, those with 6-8 legs (3-4 on each side).
Just toss them to a bucket and in no time you will have it full. Then you can process them.


----------



## g_axelsson

Hi Jason, there is a lot of black stuff in the pan. Did you incinerate until the outside was white or were the chips white all the way through?

I always run the chips until the carbon is lost, any chips with black residues goes back again. With properly incinerated chips you could crush the chips between your fingers.



patnor1011 said:


> That tip you see is where bonding wire is attached-soldered to pin.


Actually, the wires are welded with heat, pressure and ultrasonic sound.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_bonding

Göran


----------



## maynman1751

Very informative and interesting link. Thanks Goran. 8)


----------



## jason_recliner

g_axelsson said:


> Hi Jason, there is a lot of black stuff in the pan. Did you incinerate until the outside was white or were the chips white all the way through?
> 
> I always run the chips until the carbon is lost, any chips with black residues goes back again. With properly incinerated chips you could crush the chips between your fingers.
> 
> 
> 
> patnor1011 said:
> 
> 
> 
> That tip you see is where bonding wire is attached-soldered to pin.
> 
> 
> 
> Actually, the wires are welded with heat, pressure and ultrasonic sound.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_bonding
> 
> Göran
Click to expand...

Yes mate. I know it's still very black. I just wanted to try while I had the Easter break. First thing I did was hold a single chip in the gas stove with pliers so I would have a target. It disintegrated like a Hollywood marriage.

So I filled a washing machine tub brazier with fire (wood, actually) and once the flame died down a bit, added the can to the coals. Some pretty flaming colours came from the chips, I stirred a little, and left it a couple of hours. About a third of them burned out to white - as soon as the flame was all gone it had lost adequate heat. Blowing air through a tube into/under the can didn't help much either.

I was going to try a little "chip-apartheid", but it was messy. I need something just a little hotter, or with better airflow, and will ultimately reprocess the lot.


----------



## patnor1011

I learned that less is sometimes more. That mean I try to incinerate only one layer of IC, they are white in no time. If you put more layers IC in the middle or on bottom will never get to that fluffy white stage when they are crumbling while you try to take them out.


----------



## Smack

Been working on chips the last few days, trying to get everything that needs incinerated done before it gets real warm out.
Not going to go over everything I've done as it's all been covered here, I just might do things a little different. If someone (not new) really want's to know the steps I took, ask and I will lay it out for you. The SST bucket is 7 gallon and has 43 lbs. of power ready for panning. The chips are all mixed black IC type off memory, mobo's and so on, gold is gold. Some of the weights are on the post "Show Your Work Area" for individual chip type but I added quite a bit to those amounts. I will say this about the first picture; The chips are pre-cooked in my friends wood burner prior to incineration to get rid of most of the smoke.


----------



## gaurav_347

i am really excited to see the outcome!


----------



## MarcoP

I'm impressed by your furnace! Is it gas or electric? (seems electric to me)


----------



## mls26cwru

jason_recliner said:


> Am I right in understanding that the silicon wafers with the shiny yellow appearance (one placed into shot) contain NO gold at all?



This is a wrong assumption...There will be some gold wire still attached to the chips even if they are ground up. The braze they use to attach the wire is mostly left on the Si chip along with some trace amounts of gold wire. it is most deffinitly worth processing this. I just processed a good amount of these Silcon chips and pulled out a fair amount of silver and more than enough gold to make it worth while.


----------



## Smack

It's electric Marco.


----------



## gaurav_347

any update on the outcome Smack?


----------



## kurtak

g_axelsson said:


> Hi Jason, there is a lot of black stuff in the pan. Did you incinerate until the outside was white or were the chips white all the way through?
> 
> I always run the chips until the carbon is lost, any chips with black residues goes back again. With properly incinerated chips you could crush the chips between your fingers.
> 
> Göran



You "do not" need to incinerate chips to complete ash in the first part of processing them - it is "only" important that the carbon gets reduced to white ash at the very end just before they go to being leached :!: 

Here is a (copy/paste) post I posted on Kens forum - it was a reply to Geo posting a link to this video :arrow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP2_l7SnyVo

My post from Kens forum ------------------

That was a batch of my chips :mrgreen: please take note of how black the ash is - that is because that bucket of ash is actually about 75 - 80 percent carbon --- now you might thinking :shock: OMG he didn't do complete incineration to his chips - & you are right

complete incineration of chips - at this point in the processes "is not important" !!!

There are only two things that are important at this stage in the game 

(1) is that they are at least "completely" carbonized - meaning that ALL the volatiles (epoxy resins) are burnt/roasted out so that they are nothing but carbon to the core (with a surface layer that has gone white ash) 

As long as they are complete carbon to the core they will crush/mill as fine as you wish to mill (80 mesh & finer)

(2) crush/mill to "at least" minus 80 mesh --- that means 80 mesh is the largest that passes through the screen - but - 85 - 90 % is going to be MUCH smaller

Anything that does not go through the 80 mesh screen gets re-milled & re-sifted till all carbon has passed though the screen leaving only ground silicon & base metals (from legs)

The fine carbon is "plenty lite" & will wash off just fine when working on getting it down to your concentrates for processing 

Once you have washed it down to your concentrate - that is when you want to do a final incineration to turn the carbon still in the concentrate to complete ash which you can then do a final wash on before processing

The only real concern for carbon is in the leaching process because the carbon will absorb & hold metal ions - meaning you will loose gold to this absorption if there is carbon in the leaching process

Other then that carbon is not a problem during the washing/concentrating part of the process !!!

I do about 200 - 300 pounds of "mixed chips" per year (in 30 - 50 pound batches) & have no problem doing it this way & get recovery of .5 grams/lb (if there is a lot of proms in the mix) to as high .648 grams/lb (not a lot of proms) 

When I say mixed chips that is RAM, quads & proms - no BGA's - BGA's are always processed alone as BGA's

Kurt


----------



## MarcoP

Soon or later it will all sink into my head. This thread is being very helpful while in getting ready to incinerate about 17Kg (~35lb) of RAM chips only, ~1Kg of mobile phones BGA and one more of MB's BGA. I've tested incineration with small lots of EPROMs like chips and I didn't like it so far but from the above post seems I'm on the right path.

While reading the stock is growing and now my only issue is how to process the big lot of RAM chips :roll:


----------



## patnor1011

I was cleaning my garage and found Fresnel lens I bought some time ago. After while I was looking at my stockpot wondering I need to evaporate about 80% of it as I put in even wash water and it somehow grew in size considerably. I also just finished processing 5,1 BGA s/n bridge for one friend and I again added some water and spent AR in it.
Then I thought I may give Fresnel a shot, sun is a free energy to use. During all time I was doing it (about 30 minutes - evening sun is not too great to work with) solution was evaporating with visible vapour. Sides of bucket or liquid as whole did not heated up even that focal point was making small point of it on surface boiling with visible small bubbles forming. I will give it a try again tomorrow when sun will be highest. I used very crude setup but if this is viable I may construct something for future use. 
I uploaded short cell phone video on youtube just to give you all an idea what I was doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt-9vT0vTtw

Oh and that 5.1 BGA (very sloppy harvesting with big blobs of solder and sometimes even screws and capacitors lodged in that solder) yield was 26.25g (5.147g/kg). 
Picture of gold with melting dish (clean with hint of purple / twice refined should be good quality, only ran out of gas at final stage but it was fully melted anyway).


----------



## g_axelsson

Fun experiment, but you should paint the bucket black and just put some mirrors around it. The energy collected by the fresnel lens can't be more than what sunlight passes through the lens and then is absorbed in the liquid. The bucket in itself would collect as much energy if the area was the same and it was black to better absorb the heat.A black pipe above it could be used as a chimney and suck the air from the bucket, that way you would increase evaporation by removing the heavy water vapors that forms an invisible cover.

Göran


----------



## Smack

gaurav_347 said:


> any update on the outcome Smack?



Not yet, finished incineration of N/S bridge today. I think I'm done with incineration now. Have more ball milling to do, get more Nitric, dentist, vet for my sick pooch, the list goes on.

Patnor, that can be tricky with the Fresnel lens and plastic because of the sun moving across the sky, don't leave it unattended. A large glass container would be better I would think.


----------



## patnor1011

I actually made black spot on that bucket as I was adjusting focus. I plan to do experiment with measurable glass pyrex jug and take note of time. I also plan to get bigger lens. I remember I tried incinerating IC with that lens but focus point is small it will take a lot of time to adjust it to single small IC's. There was also issue with smoke. So evaporating solution may be better idea than incinerating IC unless you own monster size Fresnel lens. :lol:
Short exposure on focal point may be good and free way for harvesting BGA out of motherboard. It may actually be faster than hot air gun.


----------



## Smack

I would have to advise against even trying incineration with a lens, even the lens that has a linear focal point (which I have) will prove to be much work and time wasted for little gain. You need the type of heat a furnace or oven puts off to get proper and complete incineration. The heat from a lens will be a surface heat and you will have little control over temperature.

I had a picture up of mine from when I was depopulating chips from boards and I have to say it works quite well, plus your outside so any fumes can be blown away and being outside in the sun is not a bad thing.


----------



## Geo

g_axelsson said:


> Fun experiment, but you should paint the bucket black and just put some mirrors around it. The energy collected by the fresnel lens can't be more than what sunlight passes through the lens and then is absorbed in the liquid. The bucket in itself would collect as much energy if the area was the same and it was black to better absorb the heat.A black pipe above it could be used as a chimney and suck the air from the bucket, that way you would increase evaporation by removing the heavy water vapors that forms an invisible cover.
> 
> Göran




I'm not sure you should use a metal container. It could be useful for direct incineration though.

https://youtu.be/i_8cynWnAw8


----------



## g_axelsson

Geo said:


> g_axelsson said:
> 
> 
> 
> Fun experiment, but you should paint the bucket black and just put some mirrors around it. The energy collected by the fresnel lens can't be more than what sunlight passes through the lens and then is absorbed in the liquid. The bucket in itself would collect as much energy if the area was the same and it was black to better absorb the heat.A black pipe above it could be used as a chimney and suck the air from the bucket, that way you would increase evaporation by removing the heavy water vapors that forms an invisible cover.
> 
> Göran
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure you should use a metal container. It could be useful for direct incineration though.
> 
> https://youtu.be/i_8cynWnAw8
Click to expand...

Never said anything about a metal container. Of course it should be compatible with the liquid in the container and plastic is best for that.

Göran


----------



## jocelynholmes192

After crushing the chip, the gold we obtained is pure or not. Can we sell that gold to jeweller shop. How much I get this. Actually I have lot of computers which are not working and it is good for me to earn some money from that. Please guide me..if this possible..


----------



## solar_plasma

If you want to make money just sell them as is to refiners like boardsort.com or on ebay.


----------



## Juan Manuel Arcos Frank

Pat:

INDEED!!!!!!!!...I have bought your 2nd e-book and it is WONDERFUL!!!!!!!!!!!.Thanks for sharing.

Kindest regards.

Manuel


----------



## kurtak

Juan Manuel Arcos Frank said:


> Pat:
> 
> INDEED!!!!!!!!...I have bought your 2nd e-book and it is WONDERFUL!!!!!!!!!!!.Thanks for sharing.
> 
> Kindest regards.
> 
> Manuel



Hey Manuel --- good to see you pop in once in while - even its just to say hi

Kurt


----------



## patnor1011

Juan Manuel Arcos Frank said:


> Pat:
> 
> INDEED!!!!!!!!...I have bought your 2nd e-book and it is WONDERFUL!!!!!!!!!!!.Thanks for sharing.
> 
> Kindest regards.
> 
> Manuel



Manuel, thank you for kind words, they mean a lot for me. You are a legend for what you can do in silver field and I am honored to meet you here.


----------



## Juan Manuel Arcos Frank

Well,here I am trying to process IC´s and BGA.

Here is a pic of some IC´s I have found.Do they worth?.How much gold can I recover from 20 kg?

Kindest regards.

Manuel


----------



## g_axelsson

Juan Manuel Arcos Frank said:


> Well,here I am trying to process IC´s and BGA.
> 
> Here is a pic of some IC´s I have found.Do they worth?.How much gold can I recover from 20 kg?
> 
> Kindest regards.
> 
> Manuel


The first three are IC:s, more specific DIL capsules (Dual In Line pin) and the yellow one is a resistor array. Don't know about the exact content of the resistor but at least there are no gold in bond wires there.

For the IC:s I would expect 0.6-1.2 g/kg.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=22581#p237261

Göran


----------



## patnor1011

Manuel, I just break that IC in 3 equal parts. I do process only middle part where bonding wires are.


----------



## Juan Manuel Arcos Frank

Thanks,Göran!!!!.I do appreciate your info.
Kindest regards
Manuel


----------



## Juan Manuel Arcos Frank

Ok,Pat.I am starting breaking them.Here are some pics from cicuit boards they come from.
Thanks a lot!!!!
Have a nice day
Manuel


----------



## g_axelsson

Other values on those cards are tantalum capacitors and MLCC:s with palladium.

Göran


----------



## patnor1011

Here is what I meant. I break them only because I do have time to do it and because I am saving on fuel and time when incinerating, milling and sieving material. That center piece is where gold is so I do not bother with the rest. But if you do not pay too much for incineration or do not have time to cut them just go ahead and incinerate whole IC.

On one picture there is one IC with center broken and silicone die is exposed. I marked it with red circle. That is where goodies are.


----------



## Juan Manuel Arcos Frank

Thanks,Goran!!!!.Do you know any process to recover Ta in capacitors?
Have a nice day.
Manuel


----------



## Juan Manuel Arcos Frank

Ok,Pat.I do thank you.I will keep you posted about my progress.
Kindest regards.
Manuel


----------



## g_axelsson

Juan Manuel Arcos Frank said:


> Thanks,Goran!!!!.Do you know any process to recover Ta in capacitors?
> Have a nice day.
> Manuel


I just physically cut the tantalum capacitors off the boards and collect them for selling later on. There are at least two persons on the forum that buys the capacitors as they are.

On the first board it looks like you have one silver can type where the outer can is made from silver. Between the two banks of blue relays(?) there are three cylindrical capacitors, the first look like silver can tantalum while the two other ones looks like ordinary wet aluminum capacitors.

http://goldrefiningwiki.com/mediawiki/index.php/Tantalum

Göran


----------



## Juan Manuel Arcos Frank

Well,I am ready for IC´s and black packs pyrolysis but I have found some ceramic EPROMS,here are the pics.What to do with them?

Thanks to all

Kindest regards.

Manuel


----------



## patnor1011

Some of them will have aluminium bonding wires some will have gold. You can see it through that small window. Some people just smash them with hammer in small pieces. It is possible to put them in fire and when heated they tend to easy split in 2 part along the middle where they are stuck together. I do not have any yield data as I always sold them on ebay as a part of lot of items I did not wanted to process.


----------



## MarcoP

Manuel, if you don't see any gold from the window it's highly possible there is not gold at all otherwise break them apart. If you get a glass sandwich put them in nitric and the glass will fall as white insoluble sludge ready to be filtered off, gold will be still stuck in the middle layer for aqua regia. If you don't get any glass layers it's possible that you may have silver as well.

I've been saving those and waited to read a little about it [stt], your unanswered question made that happen[/stt] and looks like all I've saved is plain scrap, in fact my ceramic eproms have no gold visible! However, ceramic ones with no window should be broken in half to reveal what they hide inside.

Marco


----------



## patnor1011

There was post recently somewhere which caught my attention however I cant locate it and I decided to post my findings here. It will perhaps reach more people when posted here. It was post where Dan was looking for some answers about potential yield from RAM and there was link to some seller selling some sort of guide for buying RAM. That came when I was half way done with my RAM stash, I went through 8109 grams/591pcs of mixed RAM taking as much notes as possible - funnily enough I was thinking of creating guide with the same purpose. 
I decided to share some of my data with you so here it goes:

I sorted RAM in 4 categories. (Idealy I wanted to divide each one to two more DDR2 and DDR3 but decided not to due to time constraints, I just needed to have this done as soon as possible) All of them were gold fingered RAM. I will add some pictures later on.

1. Long RAM stick with regular legged IC
Average weight of one RAM stick: 17.82 gram
Average weight for 1 RAM stick of:
MLCC: 0.35 gram
IC: 4.31 gram
Fingers: 1.23 gram

2. Long RAM stick with BGA IC (servers)
Average weight of one RAM stick: 18.47 gram
Average weight for 1 RAM stick of:
MLCC: 0.40 gram
IC: 5.52 gram
Fingers: 1.32 gram

3. Short laptop RAM stick with regular legged IC
Average weight of one RAM stick: 9.48 gram
Average weight for 1 RAM stick of:
MLCC: 0.12 gram
IC: 3.70 gram
Fingers: 0.55 gram

4. Short laptop RAM stick with BGA IC
Average weight of one RAM stick: 7.67 gram
Average weight for 1 RAM stick of:
MLCC: 0.19 gram
IC: 1.79 gram
Fingers: 0.62 gram


Average weight of paper stickers on RAM stick is 0,1gram per stick. While it looks like small number it should be taken in consideration when buying large amounts of RAM - you do not want to pay for paper (63.5g in just this lot) :mrgreen:


----------



## Grelko

My first time processing chips was alot of fun. I used Matchlight charcoal, let it burn about halfway, then made a spot in the middle for my stainless bowl. I put in 200 grams of chips, some were ram, some others, to see how this process actually works.

I placed a bigger stainless bowl upside down over top to try and reburn the fumes as they were produced by the chips. That sort of worked. There wasn't any black smoke, just the light grey smoke from the charcoal that was still burning. There was the smell of burning plastic though (it was actually more of crushed circuit board smell than burning plastic), but it dissipated within 10 feet or so because of the wind.

Apparently the charcoal only burned between 300 F- 700 F according to the "heat colors" on the stainless bowl. The chips barely cooked at all. I got out my heat gun "1200 F on high" and flame/heat resistant gloves, turned it on and got a couple inches from the charcoal, so that I could force more heat and flames against the bowl. That finally got things cooking :lol: I got the bowl glowing red along with most of the chips. After using the heat gun about 15 minutes, I shut it off and let the charcoal slowly work.

I let it sit there burning for a few hours and came back when everything was nice and cool again. I took what was left of the chips and put it into a mason jar for now. I shook up the jar very well for a couple minutes and it looks like I have a good amount of powder at the bottom. There is quite a bit of unburnt pieces of chips left also, but it's not bad for a first try.

I'll be sifting the material, rinsing off the larger pieces, putting the powder and rinse water together into another container until I get a blue bowl "henry" or small shaker table, etc. I know I have something around here that'll work.

It should also work if I take a small container, place it into a larger container, turn the water on low and let it slowly rinse the powder from small to large, and out into a 5 gallon bucket, seeing that the material should stay at the bottom of 1 of the containers because of the weight while letting the powder rinse out.

I need to read more and find a work around for the rest of the material because, I don't have any nitric. AP will take out the base metals, I know how to get the gold out, and the work around for silver using ferric chloride, but I'm not sure about the rest "PT, PD etc." So that means I get to re-read Hokes again, yay  I'll keep saving up the material that I can't process for now.

I should use coal next time instead of charcoal because it burns alot hotter. I'm definately looking up information about making my own incinerator seeing that I still have around 10 pounds of chips to go, and I slowly get more while picking up scrap metal.


----------



## Nickperl

"So if I can say I processed about 470g of mixed chips (regular various chips as I mentioned) and I have on that picture 1.7g of mostly gold." Patnor1011 from back in 2011)


This is very close to what I recovered using your process from 139.5g of northbridge ceramic tops only recovering ,77g gold. I pyrolized, crushed, panned, separated magnetized and treated both batches with nitric. Then rinsed, combined, AR, rinsed, used Butyl Diglyme, dropped with Oxylic and rinsed with water, HCL, water and melted.
I posted pictures on the post from member Tzoax titled "My results of specific types of IC chips, flatpacks and BGA" under Data. His results seem double though and I wonder if I missed something as he received almost .011 percent to my .0055 to your .0036 (1.7g Au to 470g chips).


----------



## patnor1011

But I did not do just BGA tops, it was mix of different IC and some tops.


----------



## gfine

I know this is an older thread, but as I'm very new thought I might suggest the use of a sluice box with a catch bowl for your liquid so I might be run through two or three times as a faster, easier way of separating out the gold as vs. panning.


----------



## Pantherlikher

greetings gfine...
We found it rather fun learning to pan... I did a nice pile of ram chips this spring and then placed in a metal coffee type can with steel balls... Then we took turns rolling it around under our feet... Crushed up pretty good. Then panning magnet to get the steel balls and anything magnetic out.
Then panned away... 

My wife got me a nice panning kit for...my Birthday I think. Has several sieves, 3 panning bowls and a bunch of accessories to go with. We sit on the back deck with a nice fire burning when it's nice out so made a fun evening or 5...playing around with it.

Grelko...Just read your last post here... Wood burning got the pyrolizer plenty hot enough so no need to go coal... 

B.S.


----------



## Grelko

Pantherlikher said:


> Grelko...Just read your last post here... Wood burning got the pyrolizer plenty hot enough so no need to go coal...



Ill have to try actual wood/branches next time I work on my chips, since I can get that for free, which saves me a bit of money. I figured that coal might have burned hot enough to stop the smell.

I believe that some of the chips didn't completely turn white, because I didn't have anything on top of them burning, or I didn't let them go long enough.

I did get a bag of coal one day to use, except I got it too hot and think I melted some wires to the bottom of my "non magnetic" stainless steel bowl. Unless the orange/rust color is how stainless breaks down "because of the iron", when it gets white hot? (I now use a cookie sheet, or piece of steel plate)

The last couple times I've worked on chips, it still the has smell to it, but my neighbors haven't said anything, so I guess it isn't travelling far.

Edit - added the part about iron


----------



## jason_recliner

Grelko,
If you have a bad smell, you may have missed something during all your extensive reading.

The idea is to first pyrolyze without oxygen, and then later incinerate with oxygen. They are different processes for different purposes. Yes, you ultimately want complete combustion, but you don't want to release all the plastic nasties onto your neighbours' organic herb garden. Just because they haven't complained, doesn't mean they haven't noticed.

Check out Deano's (NoIdea) posts on Pyro. Maybe start with this one, it's a bit of a gem.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22376


----------



## Grelko

jason_recliner said:


> Grelko,
> If you have a bad smell, you may have missed something during all your extensive reading.
> 
> The idea is to first pyrolyze without oxygen, and then later incinerate with oxygen. They are different processes for different purposes. Yes, you ultimately want complete combustion, but you don't want to release all the plastic nasties onto your neighbours' organic herb garden. Just because they haven't complained, doesn't mean they haven't noticed.
> 
> Check out Deano's (NoIdea) posts on Pyro. Maybe start with this one, it's a bit of a gem.
> http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22376



Thank you very much for this link. This is exactly what I was looking for. I read it back when I first joined here, but couldn't seem to find it, when I was working on my chips. I tried the (put chips into a bowl, and cover it with a larger upside down bowl) to try and re-burn the smoke, but I guess it doesn't quite work that way. 

I'm definately going to see if I can make 1 of these, now that I know where to buy fire bricks at.


----------



## mbn

Hi you there, dear people of GRF
I know most of you have already seen this, but I was eager to see the gold wires in detail. 
I had 40 pieces of s/n bridge chips (only the black tops), which was nearly 60 grams. After incineration and washing the ash with water, I scanned my Bécher where the deep yellow was seen at the bottom.

I posted these images here just to say Thank You in my way for all the good things I learned here.


----------



## maynman1751

mbn, are you sure that you got total incineration? It appears that there is a lot of black material mixed with the wires. If you were to dissolve the wires, with what I believe to be carbon, you could lose some gold by the carbon absorbing the gold. If it is indeed unburned carbon you need to re-incinerate or somehow separate the carbon from the wires. You could also have some wires still trapped in these carbon particles. Everything, but the gold, has to be burned to grey ash.


----------



## Smack

I would guess that's mostly silicon bits, if it's not you should incinerate again. Also noticed foreign components in the mix such as the smd's, not sure why you would want that type of material in the lot.


----------



## UncleBenBen

I read back through Mohsen's posts earlier, just after he posted these photos. He did really well on his first attempt at chips. I got the feeling that he knew he wasn't done with this run yet, but got excited and snapped the pics part way through.

I believe it was Patnor himself that said full incineration wasn't needed until you have your concentrate. From what I read of 'mbn', I would bet that he knows this and will do much better on this run. Can't wait to see the button on this one.


----------



## patnor1011

I am a fan of total incineration. Sample like this which does not contain metallic pins can be simply dried and crushed again in small mortar and washed again. I repeat this till there is not much of black particles left. I however remove all Silicone dies before I proceed with crushing and washing. I just do not like to deal with them as they behave like broken glass. It is fairly easy to remove them right after initial incineration while classifying material in sieve. 
It is also fairly easy to incinerate that black particles, few seconds with mapp torch with thin layer on steel pan will sort them out before that heat start affecting bonding wires.


----------



## mbn

maynman1751, Smack, UncleBenBen, patnor1011,

Thanks for the kind advises. I wasn't done with the sample batch and as UncleBenBen said above, it was only excitement to see the yellow this soon! Last time I incinerated a mixture of chips and that was a long journey to the see the sign of the gold!
While you were kindly commenting, I dried and crushed the debris again and the sample is in a better mood. 
Smack,
I'm in shock that there are foreign components like the SMD in the batch. It was all 60 grams of s/n bridge chips. I only guess they were in my sieve and it was my bad not to clean it. I'll dry the batch and sort them out if I can.


----------



## maynman1751

You're doing great. I just wanted to caution you* just in case the material may be carbon*. Can't really tell from pics. Good luck and let us see the button!!!!!! 8)


----------



## mbn

maynman1751 said:


> You're doing great. I just wanted to caution you* just in case the material may be carbon*. Can't really tell from pics. Good luck and let us see the button!!!!!! 8)



Thanks for the useful reminding caution and your attention.


----------



## UncleBenBen

UncleBenBen said:


> I believe it was Patnor himself that said full incineration wasn't needed until you have your concentrate.



Doh. Sorry Patnor, in reading through the thread again I saw that Kurtak was who I was thinking of.

Smack, in an earlier post you had mentioned doing a preroast of chips in a friend's wood burner then finishing incinerating as in this photo...



I was recently given a pottery kiln that looks very similar and was curious, did you have much smoke and/or smell when completing the incineration?


----------



## Smack

No, there wasn't much at all but (and this was late last summer) I still had the exhaust fan going and the overhead door open and tore stuff apart while it cooked. I may have over did the incineration as I incinerated again after I milled the chips, sticking the powder in and stirring periodically. It was a real lite color and fluffy when it was done. I put the work in the lab on hold until it warms back up this weekend or first of next week, so I'll have a preliminary result on those chips soon.


----------



## UncleBenBen

Thanks Smack. This is good to know. I have a week or two of vacation I need to use soon, and my chip collection just may make its way onto my to do list.

Good luck with your chips!


----------



## SapunovDmitry

What do you mean when you say "carbon will absorb some gold" guys? Is it a fact someone faced? How bad can it be? Or it is just plausable ?
Has anyone tried batch leaching of burned and crushed ic chips in nitric and then in AR wth dropping the gold with SMB? What gold concentrations could be removed from AR by this method? I tried 0,2 gr Au/l min. It was the lowest one i had achieved.


----------



## maynman1751

SapunovDmitry said:


> What do you mean when you say "carbon will absorb some gold" guys? Is it a fact someone faced? How bad can it be? Or it is just plausable ?
> Has anyone tried batch leaching of burned and crushed ic chips in nitric and then in AR wth dropping the gold with SMB? What gold concentrations could be removed from AR by this method? I tried 0,2 gr Au/l min. It was the lowest one i had achieved.



Carbon has an affinity for gold and will absorb a certain amount during dissolution. I myself have not experienced this but it is a well confirmed fact among the professionals on this forum. It's better to be safe and eliminate the carbon before dissolving the gold wires. 8)


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## patnor1011

I also cant explain why it is the case but believe me simple leaching of crushed incinerated material will result in significant loss.


----------



## Oxygene

Adsorption...carbon is a good adsorbent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adsorption


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## nickvc

When you consider that gold mining operations use carbon to leach the gold from their solutions it would seem logical to remove it from any process where gold is in solution whether acidic or base.
If you do leave carbon in your materials you will have losses that can only be recovered by incineration and as the gold will be in salt form losses are to be expected from that which most members will not be able to collect.
Simple logic says remove all carbon before dissolution.


----------



## Smack

Two buttons = 125g, I had some other Au powders that were added into each refining. I got 35g from the chips and 33g out of the larger button was from 12 lbs. of fingers. I have to finish up the palladium recovery, got 2g so far and from the cemented material after recovering Ag as cloride I'm guessing another 2g of Pd, not sure on purity as my recovery method was cementation. I don't plan on refining the Pd, I'll let someone else have that fun. The buttons are scratched up but I'm combining them and some other Au and pouring into a bar so it doesn't matter. I don't have a number on the silver recovered, it's sitting there in AgCl form and cemented form, it can wait, it's not that much anyways.


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## maynman1751

Nice haul, beautiful buttons Smack! 8)


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## jason_recliner

Way to go, Smack! :shock:
clap clap clap


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## UncleBenBen

Very nice sir! Can't wait to see the bar!! :mrgreen:


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## butcher

Good job Smack.


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## patnor1011

Need to get rid of this, anyone want to buy it? I got bit more since this picture was taken. That bucket is full now. 
Well it seems I will have to sort them out myself as postage will be killer for any deal anyway. :evil:


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## patnor1011

I do have quite a lot of work due to backlog from winter when I could not go outside. Few buckets of incinerated IC chips I need to run. I set up my sluice/pump to wash bucket of BGA powder. After 3 runs I concentrated values to approx 1/3rd of starting volume. Now it is time for pan and slow removing of values and getting rid of the rest. 
Anyway here is short vid to show how my closed circuit system looks like. That is first one, I do use my long rain gutter sluice on whatever is washed away just to make sure not a single wire escape my hands. 
Sorry for shaky hands and bad cellphone camera but all other devices were uncharged so I grabbed phone and did at least this.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBUiMjCzLuM&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]


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## patnor1011

Some very bad pictures.
All values and coarse powder got trapped in first 2 sections. Rest of them had no wires, just mud like superfine powder.


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## patnor1011

One picture to see difference. 
Material on left side was washed once. Slow careful wash to remove only super fine particles which come off as colored dirty water. After that remainder was dried and crushed again - container on right side. 
This first wash reduced starting volume by half. Every following wash/dry/crush removed about half of volume. It goes faster as volume decrease and at the end you are left with few spoon fulls of concentrate majority of which is gold bonding wires (by weight).
I repeat this about 5 times to get to smallest amount of concentrate possible. 
All the time washed super fine powder is being collected only to be run in long sluice one/two times. (one time only if no bonding wires detected)
BGA IC feed-stock pictured.


----------



## patnor1011

I was close to finish last 2 batches when things got complicated :twisted: 
First batch with BGA was easy ride I got 85 grams of dried gold sponge - that one is easily recognized on picture. 
Second batch, mixed legged IC but mostly from laptops so thin better variety was one horror story. I am running out of nitric so when I got to about 10 spoons of concentrate I could not wash it in hot nitric as I used to do in past. I used warm HCl which in fact did not do much in a sense of dissolving metals present in there. I moved on to AR got more greener than yellow color which was practically impossible to filter. I left it to settle and filtered like 95+% of it with exception of paste which was on the bottom. 
I used SMB which produced huge amount of precipitate - I mean much more than I expected. I did wash it with boiling water and used HCl but still got a lot of ugly swamp mud looking stuff on bottom. I played with torch on that material as I wanted to reduce it to metallic tin. And that is what you can see in second cup - globules of tin/gold mixture over 60 grams of it. I will get to it next week as I do not have time right now. Anyone want to guess how much of gold will be there? *
*edited - answer is: 25g of gold


----------



## clearsteam

I am in awe of all the great advice and information so freely given. I am a newbie to this hobby but have been eagerly reading, watching and absorbing all that I can in deciding how to process the 100 kilos or so of high end boards everything pre 2006. it has been a few weeks since I discovered this forum, I tip my hat and have much to learn.

I was lucky enough to acquire an ex NHS lab ashing furnace as a punt on ebay for £60 in my quest to get the right gear, I have HCL,NaOH peroxide and iodine, furnace gloves , acid gauntlets, eye protectors, but I have not started refining yet, until I know I am doing it safely for the best possible yield. prior to finding this forum I was researching ways to use the furnace to harvest gold (it does go up to 1200 but its currently set at 650), and looking at different patents and so I thought I would try and bring one to your attention which is part of a patent for removing pgms from incinerated trash.

The waste was milled, incinerated and electro-magnets remove ferrous material.

THEN- the dry powdery results passed along a conveyor belt with a wheel of n/s arranged magnets spinning a small distance above where the conveyor dumped into a bucket.

the spinning magnets induce a current into anything conductive (should be just precious metal) which are then repelled by the megnets causing them to fall into a bucket further away. Any engineers out there might want to try as a method for panning the finest particles maybe. Or has anyone tried this already?

Thanks for the forum, I look forward to making a donation when I have some emoney to spend...


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## anachronism

Have you incinerated your boards or was it a process you were thinking of? Sorry but I struggled to make that out in your post.


----------



## clearsteam

I havent done any incineration yet, I don't know enough yet. It was on a research paper about processing municipal waste for precious metals, and I thought inducing eddy currents in the non magnetic metals to make them magnetic so they could be separated easily from the incinerated and sieved waste was ingenious.

I suggested it as it seemed novel, doesnt appear to have been tried yet by any of the masters on this forum, should work and applicable to back yard operations to help concentrate the concentrate further. I will be panning my first lot and might have a play with the hundreds of hard drive magnets and a bike wheel later if I can master the basic processes.


----------



## Patry0t

any update here?


----------



## patnor1011

What do you mean?


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## Patry0t

regarding your last post at August 9th, 2016.


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## patnor1011

It is all there in the post. :wink:


----------



## Shark

patnor1011 said:


> One picture to see difference.
> Material on left side was washed once. Slow careful wash to remove only super fine particles which come off as colored dirty water. After that remainder was dried and crushed again - container on right side.
> This first wash reduced starting volume by half. Every following wash/dry/crush removed about half of volume. It goes faster as volume decrease and at the end you are left with few spoon fulls of concentrate majority of which is gold bonding wires (by weight).
> I repeat this about 5 times to get to smallest amount of concentrate possible.
> All the time washed super fine powder is being collected only to be run in long sluice one/two times. (one time only if no bonding wires detected)
> BGA IC feed-stock pictured.
> DSC01317.JPG



Pat, I have made a very crude sluice and seem to have about the same returns you have up until the part I noted in red. The long sluice you mention, is that the one you made from a rain gutter? If so, how often do you find gold remaining in your washed ash at this point? 

While I am in the progress of improving my sluice (and abilities using it) here is a look at the first time I used it. On the fourth run, I found no detectable gold, not even when the small remains were run in AR and stannous tested. All the visible gold is within the first 8 to 10 inches of the matting.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfTZ3EepIEI[/youtube]


----------



## patnor1011

Yes, my long one is the gutter one. 
How many times do I find gold there? That depend on one crucial factor. Time spent running material first time. The longer it take or better said the slower you do it, the better recovery is what you get.
When I do first runs very carefully and slow then washed powder is generally just a waste without any gold. The slow run also mean you run material more times as slow run remove fewer ashes. 
Sluice run, dry, grind, sieve, and repeat. Sometimes I do use sluice, sometimes buckets. That depend on volume or weather or just mood.


----------



## Shark

Thanks Pat. I have quite a bit of ash left from previous attempts using a pan. I am sure I missed a good bit of the gold and feel this sluice will be a big help in getting it back. I have tried using buckets in the past as well, and actually had pretty good results, I just need something I can work while handling less weight than a bucket full of water for a while. I need a better way to classify the material also, I think that will be a key factor with this sluice on very fine material.


----------



## Shark

I made a few modifications to my home made sluice and was surprised at the results. Here is a quick look at it in the current configuration. Operating similar to a mini high banker. 







I found a few more traces that I missed from panning, and had run it three times already through the first sluice configuration. 





I hope to use this along with my mini high banker in some creeks later this summer if all goes well. It still needs some work, but getting it ready is half the fun. I may do some more changes tomorrow and try running the same material again.


----------



## chuckgambale

Fantastic Shark


----------



## patnor1011

Looks good. 
I would try to straighten matting, make it more flat. As it looks to me it is in some kind of U shape and you risk that lowest point get clogged with heavy material quick and some specks of gold may get carried away over them. U shape is good just make bottom of it as flat and wide as possible. 
I have used gutter as I did not had enough of matting but if you do have access to more I think that the wider it is the better it will be. My gutter sluice is way too long and also not too wide so I need to clean it more often. Other sluice in my video is ideal. I do use that one and gutter one only for double checking waste if I got all the gold.


----------



## Shark

I finally got around to trimming the mat and retesting it. Here is the new configuration.





It worked very well, much better than having it curved into the bottom of the sluice. After making the changes I ran all my ash again and still came out with gold. Very little yes, but enough to make the changes well worth while. I am close to trying a wider sluice with the same matting but twice as wide. My water pump may not have enough water volume to run it with out some help, but I will find out pretty soon.


----------



## patnor1011

Little offtopic as this material was not from IC but I did not want to start a new thread. Enjoy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdao8hDjz54&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]


----------



## patnor1011

Part of the lot I processed with two forum members a week ago. 156g all of it from BGA IC and mixed IC.


----------



## patnor1011

And here they are with yet more siblings, it is a pity that I forgot to picture all of them as there were another 4 bars to be melted.





And the last one where I put them on top of the box with gold plated pins.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus

Absolutely beautiful!


----------



## cosmetal

Yum!

Delicious looking “candy”. 

How is the swirl effect created when you pour? Experience, no doubt, like any great chef.

James


----------



## patnor1011

Master chef de pour was Jon (anachronism) :wink: 
I was just watching him but next time I will pour some myself 8)
They do look like some chocolate bars


----------



## anachronism

Yeah Nickvc, Patnor, and me had a week's refining together. Sadly Goran was busy that week otherwise he would have come too but we'll have another week together soon enough. It's good to work together and compare notes because everyone knows something that the others don't know and it brings everything together in such a way that everyone benefits. 

I'd already worked with Nick on a number of occasions but as we discovered Patnor really is a top bloke too. I think he enjoyed it. 8) 

Jon


----------



## g_axelsson

That's some nice looking bars! Better put my sunglasses on. 8) 

I'm really sad I couldn't join you guys but better luck next time. Having my own company it can go from no plans to six weeks of 12 hour days in a matter of days.

Göran


----------



## Yggdrasil

Hmm. 
Nice.
Sometimes I really wish I could be a fly on the wall, preferably on the outside of the fume hood :lol: :wink:
Watching you guys working would be close to nirvana for a newbie like me  

BR Per-Ove


----------



## wadesrc

Topher_osAUrus said:


> Absolutely beautiful!



Topher, you got any of that black chip stuff? :shock:


----------



## Topher_osAUrus

wadesrc said:


> Topher_osAUrus said:
> 
> 
> 
> Absolutely beautiful!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Topher, you got any of that black chip stuff? :shock:
Click to expand...


Ohh yah. Indeed I do!


----------



## mls26cwru

i gotta learn to pour better bars  I did pick up a rose bud tip for my torch this weekend, so that might help a bit.


----------



## patnor1011

That is a nice chunk of gold there.


----------



## philddreamer

Another thing to keep in mind, the mold should be pre-heated so the molten metal doesn't "freeze" as soon as it touches the mold.

Phil


----------



## Shark

I enjoyed the video Pat. And one day maybe I can make a bar.

I have been tinkering with my sluice and have tried something that some might find useful if they are making their own. Here is the last post I made on mine. 

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827&start=660#p273334

The problem with it at that point was having material find it's way under the matting. Ash and some gold as well. I used duct tape to form some sides to the mat that didn't cause my mat to curl up in the trough. I cut a piece of duct tape the length of the mat. Use 1/3 the width of the tape to stick it to the bottom of the mat length ways. Folds the remaining 2/3 back over on itself to cover the remaining sticky side. Sounds complicated, but its not, other than duct tape sticking everywhere but where you need it, :lol: 













Maybe it will help someone. It makes a big difference with the mat laying flat and with keeping your material on top of the mat.


----------



## patnor1011

I used silicone, I did a sloppy job but it hold and no stuff go under the mat on sides.


----------



## Shark

patnor1011 said:


> I used silicone, I did a sloppy job but it hold and no stuff go under the mat on sides.



How do wash it out? I roll mine up and rinse it whole into a bucket. I did have in mind of using mine for sluicing along the creek as well though.


----------



## patnor1011

My mat is fixed permanently so when washing material it needs to be perfectly flat and when removing whatever was caught in the riffles I lean the whole thing to one side a bit and wash with a spray bottle.


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## Shark

Easy enough. I would like to find the type gutter you used, but have not been able to find that particular design around here. I am always looking for other ways to do things. Thanks.


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## ahmadbayoumi

Smack said:


> Been working on chips the last few days, trying to get everything that needs incinerated done before it gets real warm out.
> Not going to go over everything I've done as it's all been covered here, I just might do things a little different. If someone (not new) really want's to know the steps I took, ask and I will lay it out for you. The SST bucket is 7 gallon and has 43 lbs. of power ready for panning. The chips are all mixed black IC type off memory, mobo's and so on, gold is gold. Some of the weights are on the post "Show Your Work Area" for individual chip type but I added quite a bit to those amounts. I will say this about the first picture; The chips are pre-cooked in my friends wood burner prior to incineration to get rid of most of the smoke.



How one can sort out the incinerated IC chips in such amazing way ?


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## patnor1011

Short video made from joining some clips I took with cell phone having fun refining some ceramic cpu's and cpu lids in my friends lab. 
Enjoy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIcZRCXGuk0&t=42s[/youtube]


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## Smack

ahmadbayoumi said:


> Smack said:
> 
> 
> 
> Been working on chips the last few days, trying to get everything that needs incinerated done before it gets real warm out.
> Not going to go over everything I've done as it's all been covered here, I just might do things a little different. If someone (not new) really want's to know the steps I took, ask and I will lay it out for you. The SST bucket is 7 gallon and has 43 lbs. of power ready for panning. The chips are all mixed black IC type off memory, mobo's and so on, gold is gold. Some of the weights are on the post "Show Your Work Area" for individual chip type but I added quite a bit to those amounts. I will say this about the first picture; The chips are pre-cooked in my friends wood burner prior to incineration to get rid of most of the smoke.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How one can sort out the incinerated IC chips in such amazing way ?
Click to expand...


I just now saw this.
After running the material in the ball mill, I used a course and then a fine screen sifter then went to a 600 micron, then to a 200 micron, then I think I went to a 100 or a 75 micron screen to clean a lot of the die fragments out of the incinerated media. I then used a blue bowl in the wet process to wash away the ash, then went to acid treatment after drying. You have to treat the material quite a few times with A/R to get all the gold out because it will keep cementing out as the acid weakens. Unless you use a larger container that can hold more acid.


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## Grelko

patnor1011 said:


> Give me minute I will take quick picture of what I have laying on table, not every one of them do have gold bonding wires but even if only half do, that will add up.



I know this quote is 5 years old, but while I was reading through it, I couldn't find any yield data from the chips in that picture. (Page 11) They are the 3 leg with a hole through the top.

Edit - What would be the minimum temperature for pyrolyzing chips? After they are pyrolyzed, when you incinerate them, do they produce any smell or black smoke?


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## saadat68

Hi
Thank you patnor for your eBook
-----------
I read this topic completely. I don't understand something even after some searching
I read this here and same in another topic 



> 3. Gently mill the white chips in a mortar without breaking the silicone chips.
> 4. Sieve the powder to remove silicon chips and pins.



What are silicone chips and why remove them? 
Don't they burn in incineration process? Don't they convert to ash?

Thanks


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## patnor1011

Grelko said:


> patnor1011 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Give me minute I will take quick picture of what I have laying on table, not every one of them do have gold bonding wires but even if only half do, that will add up.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I know this quote is 5 years old, but while I was reading through it, I couldn't find any yield data from the chips in that picture. (Page 11) They are the 3 leg with a hole through the top.
> 
> Edit - What would be the minimum temperature for pyrolyzing chips? After they are pyrolyzed, when you incinerate them, do they produce any smell or black smoke?
Click to expand...


Never processed them alone only with other stuff so no data. I do not pyrolyze as that is hard to achieve without specialized equipment. I incinerate and smoke go through coal bed so it gets burned too. Never had any issues with visible smoke or any smell.


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## patnor1011

saadat68 said:


> Hi
> Thank you patnor for your eBook
> -----------
> I read this topic completely. I don't understand something even after some searching
> I read this here and same in another topic
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 3. Gently mill the white chips in a mortar without breaking the silicone chips.
> 4. Sieve the powder to remove silicon chips and pins.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What are silicone chips and why remove them?
> Don't they burn in incineration process? Don't they convert to ash?
> 
> Thanks
Click to expand...


It is a silicone die, centerpiece where wires connect to. It does not burn or melt. It is like glass and it is kind of hard to break to powder unless running in some ball mill for a prolonged time. I simply make my job easier if I remove them. It is all down to personal preferences on how one wants to run IC there is not one strict rule. Everybody does have little bit different style also a different approach can be taken to different types or sizes of IC.


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## saadat68

patnor1011 said:


> saadat68 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi
> Thank you patnor for your eBook
> -----------
> I read this topic completely. I don't understand something even after some searching
> I read this here and same in another topic
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 3. Gently mill the white chips in a mortar without breaking the silicone chips.
> 4. Sieve the powder to remove silicon chips and pins.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What are silicone chips and why remove them?
> Don't they burn in incineration process? Don't they convert to ash?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> It is a silicone die, centerpiece where wires connect to. It does not burn or melt. It is like glass and it is kind of hard to break to powder unless running in some ball mill for a prolonged time. I simply make my job easier if I remove them. It is all down to personal preferences on how one wants to run IC there is not one strict rule. Everybody does have little bit different style also a different approach can be taken to different types or sizes of IC.
Click to expand...


Hi
Excuse me sir, Are these silicon chips ? 
http://uupload.ir/files/x3u9_untitled_-_2.jpg

Is there any PMs in there or just remove them and add to trash ?

Thanks


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## anachronism

How many of them are you likely to get?


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## saadat68

I don't know I'm learning now


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## anachronism

saadat68 said:


> I don't know I'm learning now



Well you need to think about how many you are likely to get. If you're not getting large amounts then don't bother and move onto something else.


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## saadat68

What's your mean?
Chips or silicon dies ?


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## snoman701

saadat68 said:


> What's your mean?
> Chips or silicon dies ?


Both


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## patnor1011

This silicone dies from inside IC chips are not the best material they contain only traces of values like bits of brazing where wires were attached. I do remove them and collect them in a bucket to run them one day when it may be worth my time. I do remove them as if they are intact it is pretty easy to pick them up compared to milling them to powder. They are like glass and harder to mill than an incinerated body of IC.


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## saadat68

> You can clean resulted concentrate with different methods. There will be some copper
> pins and tin. I have decided to wash that first in Nitric acid. After wash in warm
> diluted HNO3 (30%), I incinerated concentrate (make material red hot but do not
> melt in homogenous mass). After that I washed that in Hydrochloric (also called
> Muriatic) acid 32%.



How much time and temperature needed for incineration in this step?
One hour or 30 minutes in 700°C is OK?

What is the purpose of incineration in this step? Rid of nitric acid?


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## saadat68

Hi
1- Why we must pyrolysis chips (in absence of oxygen) but used filter papers must incinerate in air? 
Is it because in filter papers there are gold chloride and silver nitrate?

2- Is it necessary to pyrolysis chips in absence of oxygen? What happens if we incinerate them in air?


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## kjavanb123

Incineration of chips produce toxic fumes. That is why it is advised to pyrolize them in absence of oxygen, then incinerate in air.


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## saadat68

Thanks
Got it


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## hammerdown

patnor1011 said:


> Feel free to tell me about any mistakes as english is not my first language.
> Hope it is not that bad. I have intention to give all this info free to all forum members and I will put that document on ebay for some small amount to generate some money from which (if I manage to sell some) I will donate to this great forum, and I may get some prize to some contest on forum in future.
> 
> *edited spelling and uploaded again
> 
> Fellow members, I decided to discontinue free download of my guide upon learning that one forum member stole content and start selling my guide on ebay claiming it is his work. This makes me sick and sad that he is stealing money which were mostly destined to end up as donation for running this forum and to various cases which were brought here by some other members.
> 
> *edited again.
> Thief will be thief and one day will pay for his deeds. I am not going to take away knowledge which I shared with all of you so here is my guide back where it belong on this forum. Thank you for patience with me today. 6th of August 2012
> 
> *edited 10/04/2013
> I do have second eBook. This one will not be offered for free, as I try to get as much funds as possible to help Noxx cover cost associated with running this forum. Price is very small, and I think it is worth to pay. Many thousand people benefited from what I gave to community for free already, and I feel great for doing that. It was my way of giving back what I got from here.
> Link to more details about how to get my second eBook here:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Processing s/n bridge BGA chips ebook
> 
> 
> This is my second eBook. I uploaded first one here for every member free to download. I am selling first and this second eBook on eBay and some members bought them from me there. Profit from sale was and will be donated to help to pay for hosting of this forum. I have decided to offer this...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> goldrefiningforum.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT SELLING MY eBOOKS FOR PROFIT. I DO HAVE THEM COPYRIGHTED AND WILL PURSUE EVERY LEGAL OPTION AVAILABLE IF I WILL FIND SOMEBODY TRY TO GET RICH QUICK SELLING SOMETHING HE DO NOT CREATED OR OWN. I WILL ALSO PURSUE ANY DERIVATIVE WORK IF THIS WILL CONTAIN A SINGLE IMAGE OF MY OWN OR THE SAME LAYOUT. THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING.*



Pardon the pun but... this is golden my friend! Much thanks for providing this for others, like myself, who are trying to learn  At present, I have 40+ lbs (20+ kg) of chips that I'll eventually try to process. But until I'm comfortably ready to attempt to start, I will continue to add to the stash. But this guide will be of a BIG help as a beginning to end guide. Thanks again!


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## patnor1011

I could not believe it has been 11 years since I started this thread  It feels like ages ago and yet it feels like yesterday too. Time is strange animal. Hope all my old and new friends are good and getting that yellow shiny stuff we all love so much...


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