# what do you think, how many grams will come out of these?



## Redders (Sep 12, 2007)

have a guess....

Also...... how would you approach the recovery from these chips. So far I have just tapped on the bottomside lids and they all came off very easily. I snipped the lids into quarter inch strips and put them in nitric. The foil came away very nicely. That is as far as I have got. Under the lids there are some nice looking fine gold wire near the core. Mostly, the processors have gold plating on the topside with plated threads to screw on the heatsink. And then there are the legs. 

what would be your strategy?


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## Redders (Sep 12, 2007)

These foils are from just under half of the procs. The foils were not entirely off the strips. The last lot the foils came away very cleanly. Also, what metal do you think the lid is?


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## Noxx (Sep 12, 2007)

Throw everything in AR ! lol


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## Redders (Sep 12, 2007)

Noxx said:


> Throw everything in AR ! lol



I don't have the experience to know wether your comment is ridiculous or my next step. 

I'm on my first chapter of Hoke. It ain't rocket science to work out who recommended that I start with Hoke.


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## jimdoc (Sep 12, 2007)

Redders,
Whatever you do, make sure you understand what you are doing first.
Read Hoke's book, and this forum, and wait for answers to your questions before you start. The gold materials will wait for you, and you can keep accumulating them untill you are ready. When scewing up can be dangerous to you and others make sure you know what you are doing.
That will keep you from making mistakes. I know the urge to rush into it, but patience will be best. Also aqua regia is really nasty stuff, so be safe in dealing with the fumes.
Jim


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## lazersteve (Sep 12, 2007)

Redders,

The lids can vary from copper base to steel base, and possible some are even alloys. Different strategies are needed for different types of base metals. I strip my CPU lids with the electrolytic cell. If you know the lids you are dealing with are copper based, you can use HCl in the crockpot to remove the foil cheaply. 

Since you have already hit the lids with nitric, you could dissolve the loose foils with some HCl-Cl. If you are quick ( let it react for 30 seconds to 1 minute ) pouring off the solution you can get a minimal amount of base metals in the pregnant solution. Pour it off before it starts to turn blue green. The foils that are not loose enough to be absorbed by the quick shot of HCl-Cl will need to be addressed. It make take two or three quick rinses to get all the loose foils.

Jim has some great advice, fight the urge to jump ahead and you'll be glad you did in the long run once you see the purity of your nugget. When I started out I didn't have the benefit of the forum or Hoke, so I made lots of mistakes that I could have avoided had I known what I have learned since.

Take care and thanks for posting.

Steve


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## Redders (Sep 27, 2007)

Not from all of those processors, like. But a lot of good scrap. I reckon that i have lost values somewhere.....

Good quality though (Harold gave me some tutelege, here)...


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## Redders (Sep 27, 2007)

As you can see.... the melting dishes arrived, thanks....


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## lazersteve (Sep 27, 2007)

Redders said:


> thirteen miserable grams



How much scrap did you process to get the 13 grams?


Steve


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## Redders (Sep 27, 2007)

....
the underside lids from about fifty processors (mainly alphachips-DEC)

plus about a Kg of fingers half were good oldish memory and half were poor quality clone-type video and NIC cards.

I didn't keep good records of this shot. I will develop better habits later.... but I was disappointed with the yield, it could be that my expectation was set too high. On reflection, I don't think that I lost much of the values.

I'll take a breather and work out what kind of a shot to do next. maybe the top plating of the chips in a cell (the tops have convenient plated threads for heatsink attachment) and the legs of the chips. I may talk to you about processor processing later..


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## Harold_V (Sep 27, 2007)

Redders said:


> Not from all of those processors, like. But a lot of good scrap. I reckon that i have lost values somewhere.....
> 
> Good quality though (Harold gave me some tutelege, here)...



I'd have to agree-----the quality looks quite good. The gold is nice and shiny, although it lacks a pipe. That can be eliminated by controlled cooling, so that doesn't concern me. Gold that cools with a frosted surface is, guaranteed, contaminated.

One of the best indicators is the flux around the button. When your gold is contaminated, the flux picks up anything that has oxidized, changing the color from clear to anything from blue to dark brown or even black. I've commented time and again, if your gold is clean, the only change you will see in the flux is to shift towards purple, which is a sign of colloidal particles of gold that didn't get included in the button. 

Very nice job!

Don't be too concerned about losing the values. Unless you discard solutions without testing, it's never gone-----although you may not identify it as gold. 

If you are still concerned, turn to the filter in which you filtered everything prior to precipitation, or any filters you may have used in prior operations. Incinerate them until all the carbonaceous materials have been burned away, then give them a wash in boiling HCL, followed by a rinse in tap water. Anything of value will be included in the remaining material, which can then be recovered with AR. 

Filters should never be discarded. They should be incinerated, with the ash stored for future processing, or combined in succeeding batches, so values are recovered. I stored mine for years, eventually running them in a tilting reverberatory furnace-----a wonderful savings plan.  

Various stripping or dissolving procedures when dealing with base metals can be deceiving. Many of the processes that are supported on this forum have the potential to dissolve gold along with base metals. Often, when that happens, the gold will eventually precipitate on the un-dissolved base metal, but it now if very finely divided and may not be recognized as your values. 

While many of these guys are achieving a good degree of success, there are some things I would change if it was up to me to lead those that want to learn to refine. One of them would be to introduce incineration, and the other is to introduce a wash in HCL afterwards, which often changes the nature of the gold chloride that is the next step-----making it very easy to filter. 

But then--------it's not up to me! :wink: 

Harold


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