# Boards after stripping components



## pcecycle (May 22, 2008)

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what to do with circuit boards after the chips, flatpaks, pins, headers, fingers, tantalum caps and maybe monolithic caps are removed? There is precious little left to interest a professional recycler even if I could find one. I doubt even eBay buyers would be crazy enough to buy that kind of stuff. :wink: 
I am trying to keep as much e-waste out of the landfills as possible!

Mike


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## lazersteve (May 22, 2008)

Someone once told me that 25% of the weight of the card is copper cladding. To the right buyer I'm sure they would be worth something.

Steve


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## goldsilverpro (May 22, 2008)

I really doubt if they are worth anything, to anybody. There's not enough volume out there for anyone to set up for it. Don't forget that all the boards are also contaminated with solder. Probably, the only people in the world generating this type scrap are you guys. A professional refiner would almost never remove and sort all the components. He might trim the fingers and cyanide strip them. He would never, never dissolve the copper. Way too expensive, for many reasons. He would burn everything. Then, he would ball mill, screen, melt the metallics, sample and assay the ash and the bars, and then ship it all to a primary copper smelter. Very, very simple. He would even throw pins into the melt.

Most of you are having fun working the electronic scrap and playing with the chemicals. However, I can't see the possibility of any one of you ever profiting, moneywise, from any process that dissolves the base metals on almost all types of electronic parts - the only exceptions I can think of are CPU type packages that contain gold brazes. I think it's very important that all of you understand that. If anyone can prove otherwise, it would be great. 

If I had a lab, I would spend my time looking for an inexpensive and safe, non-electrolytic chemical process that would selectively strip the gold without attacking any of the base metals. Cyanide was the King for this purpose, but you can't use it any more unless you're a big company. Iodine and bromine are too expensive. The Sulfuric cell is great, but you have to make electrical contact to everything you want to strip. Maybe, something could be done with thiosulfate. Maybe a copper inhibitor could be used with HCl/bleach. Maybe a lot of things.


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## Rag and Bone (May 22, 2008)

GSP,

What is the issue with dissolving copper that makes it so unattractive?


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## daveerf (May 23, 2008)

Hey pcecycle, here's a link to a company that processes unpopulated circuit boards and circuit board trim for the copper, lead, tin and any residual silver , gold or palladium. (Not sure if they do palladium but you should mention it because some circuit board traces are palladium plated)

http://www.metallicresources.com/rc2.htm


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## Anonymous (May 23, 2008)

This company is BADASS! THey provide you with everything you need to get rid of the pcb's.I am sure they are making a profit,but to guys like us it's a plus just to be able to legally get rid of the boards.
Johnny


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## goldsilverpro (May 23, 2008)

daveerf,

On what parts have you seen Pd used on circuit board traces? On the link you gave, maybe there is someone interested in this scrap. Wonder what the minimum is for them to pick up? When they say unpopulated boards and trim, are they talking only about PWB manufacturing scrap?

Rag and Bone,

I am comparing this with two standard methods. The first is the old standard incineration, grind, screen, melt, etc. The second is to process everything mechanically - grind it and separate it into its various fractions using some hand sorting and lots of equipment - magnetic separators, eddy current separators, etc. There are a few patents on this second method.

Dissolving requires:
(1) - More labor and lots of equipment.
(2) - Much more fume control - hoods, scrubber, etc.
(3) - Much more waste to deal with - acid wastes mainly. For every ton of base metal dissolved, I would guess that you would generate at least 40 drums of acid waste.
(4) - Lower efficiency
(5) - Much higher chemical costs
(6) - Much slower process

Most anyone of you that has puttered around with these things know the above list is true.

Given a little time, I could surely think of more disadvantages. I was a very successful refiner, on a large professional level, for 40 years. The only other person here, that I know could make a similar claim is Harold. I may be wrong, but I think Harold would back up my contention that dissolving base metals on electronic materials is not the way to go in order to make money. Neither of us seem to get into many of the discussions involving these alternative dissolving methods for that very reason. Harold, if I'm wrong, please correct me.

I would love to be wrong about these things. If anyone could prove to me, with complete numbers, that one could profit from dissolving the base metals, I would gladly eat crow. BTW, in these numbers, labor must have a dollar value.


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## SapunovDmitry (May 23, 2008)

I think they are 20-25% copper, so folks in a nearby copper refinery would love to get them. They will melt everything in the furnace, make anodes from it, and get cathode grade copper from it. 
That's what we do with PCB's. We cell them to the refinery.


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## skippy (May 23, 2008)

There is a market in depopulated boards. Theres even a listing with a spot price called circuit boards sheared flush here http://www.recycle.net/computer/scrap/index.html?affilid=100029
So someone somewhere buys them I guess.


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## Harold_V (May 24, 2008)

goldsilverpro said:


> Harold, if I'm wrong, please correct me.


Heh!

I had been refining less than two years when I realized that e scrap was a waste of time unless it was done for sheer pleasure. The work involved to recover an ounce of gold is astronomical----making it very difficult to make a profit. As a result, I ran only that which came my way free of charge, and refused any from customers. The time and chemicals involved in extracting an ounce of gold would easily process 50 ounces of scrap karat gold. Why waste my time and resources?

As a hobby?

I'd be the last guy to say it's a waste of time. 

I am a high school graduate, and just barely. I took no math classes in high school, and no chemistry classes. What I learned about refining has been very revealing, and, to say the least, profitable. My horizons were expanded in ways I can't begin to explain. I'd do it all over again, given the same circumstances, starting much earlier. 

I would still avoid e scrap. Mind you, I'm speaking from the perspective of a guy that would make his living as a refiner. I reiterate----it is a wonderful hobby----it's just not well suited to making a profit unless the material can be run in the same fashion as the "big boys". 

The only plated material I ever ran at a profit was a lot of approximately 180 pounds of wire wrap pins and the strips from which they came. The material came from the maker, with none ever making it to assembly. The material was clean---requiring no handling aside from loading to the stripping cell, where it was stripped with a buffered (commercial) cyanide solution. 

Harold


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## daveerf (Jul 13, 2008)

GSP , sorry for delay. I had researched Palladium uses and found several instances of Palladium used on PCB's and Components. The circuit board traces that are palladium plated are on Hybrid Circuits. I should have been more specific in my earlier post. Companies also used Palladium in replacement of Gold for connector pins. IBM predominantly used Palladium plated pins too. Palladium is not just in the monolithic capacitors only.

Also, I had heard back from the company and I expressedly asked the specific question if they will process circuit boards with components removed that were taken from electronic scrap and the answer was yes.


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## Anonymous (May 12, 2009)

Am I correct in understanding this; PCB's, from cell phones for example, that have a lot of gold pads, are a waste of time? Or do you just mean that harvesting the copper from these boards is unprofitable? I've got a ton of circuit boards (almost literally a ton) that I've been hoarding for the header pins and fingers until I could learn and understand the methods of extraction. I do not want to spend time and money just to get a quarter ounce out of the lot; I'd rather have my storage space back.


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## nicknitro (May 13, 2009)

No Disrespect Harold and GSP,

If you have any e-scrap you would like to part with I am sure there are many of forum members that would take them off your hands. 

I agree, the values are hard to come by without a l lot of manual labor, however, I have seen people recently laid-off from 65,000 dollars a year jobs take jobs at Walmart for minimum wage.

I can site many good deals encountered in my readings here on the forum, not all limited to karat jewelry refinings. These opportunities are also few and far between with most jewelry just being worn or sold at close to spot. 

Besides I thought that was kinda the point of this forum, to learn, share, and speculate on refining techniques to fine tune processes. Who knows, with the combined intelligence on this forum, we might come up with a totally acidless heat-less refining procedure for lower grade materials that will revolutionalize refining. My point, discouragemnet is almost never the answer.

Thanks Guys, and keep up the good work,
Nick :wink:


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## Harold_V (May 13, 2009)

nicknitro said:


> My point, discouragemnet is almost never the answer.


It is important that readers understand the truth. It can be the very thing that prevents someone being suckered. 

I appreciate your idea of coming up with a method to refine without the use of chemicals-----but the complexity of the problem isn't likely to be solved by a guy in his garage. Fact is, the laws of physics tend to suggest it isn't going to happen. That's too much like a "free lunch", which, to this point, I have never seen. 

I would liken this idea to the one whereby folks think they can use water to power a vehicle, running off the alternator. Delusional thinking, ignoring, totally, the laws of physics. 

Readers should remain creative, but with logic. It makes no sense to attempt that which is known not to work, in an attempt to make it work. That's a sign of insanity.

Harold


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## semi-lucid (May 13, 2009)

goldsilverpro said:


> A professional refiner would almost never remove and sort all the components. He might trim the fingers and cyanide strip them. He would never, never dissolve the copper. Way too expensive, for many reasons. He would burn everything. Then, he would ball mill, screen, melt the metallics, sample and assay the ash and the bars, and then ship it all to a primary copper smelter. Very, very simple. He would even throw pins into the melt.



Could you outline what happens at the primary copper smelter? I assume they process the material electrolytically, but how complex would the set up be? How do they deal with the ash? Could you recommend a book on the subject?



goldsilverpro said:


> If I had a lab, I would spend my time looking for an inexpensive and safe, non-electrolytic chemical process that would selectively strip the gold without attacking any of the base metals. Cyanide was the King for this purpose, but you can't use it any more unless you're a big company.



What are the regulations/restrictions on cyanide?

J


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## markqf1 (May 13, 2009)

I am not an e-scrapper but I think the point is that, if you are going to extract the pm's, ... something must be done with the remaining materials.

If someones willing to pay you for the copper value of your scraps , then that works toward making it profitable.

If you could sell every single gram of material to someone, you would make a profit.

It's hard for the " refiners" to see the same picture that the e-scrappers see.

Harold and GSP are right though, ... for the time being.

Everything must have a value, somehow, for something , to someone.

It is this type of mentality that will make 100% recycling, a thing of the near future.

Mark


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## semi-lucid (May 13, 2009)

markqf1 said:


> If you could sell every single gram of material to someone, you would make a profit.



Unless you spend too much money and time on the process, and your waste disposal cost is too high.



markqf1 said:


> Everything must have a value, somehow, for something , to someone.
> 
> It is this type of mentality that will make 100% recycling, a thing of the near future.
> Mark



Getting rid of the plastics and fiber glass reinforcement is the problem. I could probably incinerate legally in a legal furnace, but I don't like to burn plastics. I'm looking for an practical (and profitable) alternative. Also, if your going to remove the components from the boards, separating and collecting *_all_* of the solder is a big problem.

J


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## Anonymous (May 14, 2009)

I'm pretty sure there is a market for ABS. Seems like fiberglass could be chewed up and reused somehow (not by me).

I heard of someone using sand on a griddle to melt off solder from boards. I thought I might try it to see how well it works. If it's a hit, then component separation would be easy. 

From doing electronics repair I can tell you that too much heat tends to lift copper traces from circuit boards causing me much frustration at having to use jumper wire to bypass the screw-up. 

It would be nice if we could share leads for businesses that collect the things we are trying to get rid of. Who cares if you can profit or not. If your goal is to profit from every little thing, you will just end up without any storage space left. 

This forum is about how to extract metals of value. But don't forget the reality that all of us are part of the waste stream. Obviously no one wants to lose time and money for naught. 

Ok, so I just bitched without giving a solution. Sorry. I still think sharing ways of getting rid of the waste cheaply and properly is necessary to this forum.


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## nicknitro (May 14, 2009)

Point Taken Harold,

Very tasteful reply as always.

I will say this though, Apple, two guys in there garage. :lol: 

There are also a few newer refining techniques. I'm still interested in finding out how well bismuth amalgamation works on dirty specimens.

I also have not heard too much talk of vacuum involved in refining, except for filtering. Nor microwaves. I can envision, much like your induction furnace, useing microwaves with the specimen under vacuum to selectively vaporize certain undesireable elements. Ok, now I'm getting a little Sci-Fi, but I have mentioned before about a company that uses this same technology to convert steel belted tires back to their original compounds, steel & petroleum.

Even if it's not some little guy in his garage, at least let him be the one to push the big guy to get the big funding to make it reallity, no?

Thanks foreverything Harold & GSP,
Nick


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## Gold Trail (Jan 24, 2010)

I must just spoil the crap out of my Central PA customers.

We buy those depopulated boards @ 0.10 / LB along with the tv and power supply boards.

We also buy ABS @ 0.02 / LB


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## lysdexic (Apr 16, 2014)

goldsilverpro said:


> daveerf,
> 
> I am comparing this with two standard methods. The first is the old standard incineration, grind, screen, melt, etc. The second is to process everything mechanically - grind it and separate it into its various fractions using some hand sorting and lots of equipment - magnetic separators, eddy current separators, etc. There are a few patents on this second method.
> 
> ...






Harold_V said:


> Heh!
> 
> I had been refining less than two years when I realized that e scrap was a waste of time unless it was done for sheer pleasure. The work involved to recover an ounce of gold is astronomical----making it very difficult to make a profit. As a result, I ran only that which came my way free of charge, and refused any from customers. The time and chemicals involved in extracting an ounce of gold would easily process 50 ounces of scrap karat gold. Why waste my time and resources?
> 
> ...



In the short time I've been collecting escrap and sorting and separating to process as I've read here on the forums it's obvious these two guys are spot on. The labor to process a ton of scrap would be off the chart. I do plan to recycle, reclaim and reuse everything possible (including copper) but escrap won't ever be more than a hobby. I get all the scrap for free so PPE "lab equipment" (mostly a one time expense) and chemicals are my only expense. It might be possible to recover enough PMs to pay for all of this and maybe if I'm smart AND lucky help finance my other hobbies... then again, maybe not.

One thing really concerns me though, incineration and halogenated flame retardants. I would guess the big guys incinerators and scrubbers take care of the "dioxins"? produced but I'm not so sure a backyard escapper would be eliminating this stuff. The safe level for this stuff was said by one of the "experts" to be zero (I've read a lot and not sure now who that was). I understand the dangers and safety precautions surrounding the chemicals and processes spoke of here but the plastics scare me more. One of the better pages I found:

http://www.electronicstakeback.com/toxics-in-electronics/flame-retardants-pvc-and-electronics/

If this ever was to be more than just a hobby I would expect it to arise from dealings with the local jewelers that I will sell any gold and silver to.

Sorry for bumping an old thread, it just happens to fit with what I'm researching right now and brought up that sick feeling in my gut about plastics. Be safe, have fun.

Doug


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## jimdoc (Apr 16, 2014)

lysdexic said:


> Sorry for bumping an old thread, it just happens to fit with what I'm researching right now and brought up that sick feeling in my gut about plastics. Be safe, have fun.
> 
> Doug



Bumping an old thread is very rarely a bad thing. It shows you have searched the forum and helps keep topics in one thread.

Jim


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## joubjonn (Apr 16, 2014)

This is an excellent thread for many of those on here that are thinking a handful of escrap will pay the bills. It won't. I do it for fun and I have certainly spent more on equipment then I have gotten back in PM's at this time. I'm sure that will change soon and I even get most of my scrap for free. A few hundred pounds of it! But I'm slow so that might have something to do with it.


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## lysdexic (Apr 16, 2014)

jimdoc said:


> Bumping an old thread is very rarely a bad thing. It shows you have searched the forum and helps keep topics in one thread.
> 
> Jim



Thanks Jim perhaps if more of us newbies kept questions to topics already on the forum "we" wouldn't have so difficult a time finding what's already here. 98 hits just on "AP reusing copper chloride". I understand why people would get frustrated answering the same thing over and over, yet I see more patience from those with knowledge than I'd have. I didn't *need* to say all this, it's just my way of saying thank you to ALL of you. I really appreciate you all taking the time and effort to put this information out there. I don't want to think about what might have been if I didn't find it.

Doug


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## Captobvious (Jun 5, 2014)

I can speak from experience as one of those former newbies that thought they could make a profit from stripping boards, now I have about 10 lbs of partially stripped mainboards nobody wants. Personally I'm chalking it up as a learning experience, but I can say this for certain, I didn't start turning a profit until I started selling the raw boards to middle-men processors (cashforcomputerscrap, boardsort, etc). Once I started doing that I became MUCH less discouraged and began to form a business plan / model. 

That said I do still save the choicest of boards I find to dismantle and recover values from on a hobby level


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## GoogleAdmin (Nov 6, 2021)

Its fairly easy. Use a fire pit, build a fire, wait for the fire to die down untill you have only hot ambers. Use a grill top, or stove shelf etc anthing you might think will work, have that 1 to 2 feet from the hot ambers and let the heat do its job while you pull off connectors, ics etc. If it gets to hot pull it off and let it cool down. Use a respirator, gloves and safety glasses if your using a half face respirator. This is by far the fastest method. Once you complete this process you have several options to remove the solder, soak the boards in ONLY HCL for a day, than wash with warm water and repeat the process one more time if youre anal like me, this helps ensure most if not all of the solder will be remived. Other process is diluted nitric with citric acid. 5 to 10% diluted acid, water and citric acid wait one day and wash the boards should be good to go. Yes the gold traces fingers etc will look a little strange but the gold is still there.

AND YES, they do or did make boards with palladium traces. When gold got expensive several companies started looking for a cheaper metal, platinum is way to dense and at the time they didnt have the technology to use platinum like they wanted. Palladium become the metal they chose. So from 60s and 70s you can find palladium plating, you can google this and find simple evidence to read about it.


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## Rreyes097 (Nov 6, 2021)

nicknitro said:


> No Disrespect Harold and GSP,
> 
> If you have any e-scrap you would like to part with I am sure there are many of forum members that would take them off your hands.
> 
> ...


I recently read an article that talked about 2 brothers that have come up with a revolutionary idea for precious metal recovery from e-scrap. When I read the article my understanding was that they would take all e-scrap grind it up and then electrocuted somehow. Forgive me I don't know the details it didn't speak on details. But the electricity would somehow get all the precious metals off. Or maybe All metals I'm not quite sure. Again. And then they would process it with acid and whatnot to get those said metals whether they be precious or base metals. Perhaps someone can look it up and give a better more comprehensive understanding then I


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