# processing for Rodthrower18



## Geo (Jul 26, 2012)

i just received a package from Floyd today at around 4:30 that contained

1402.2g P III & Celeron green base
250.9g AMD brown base
347.6g P III metal top
209.7g P 4 large base
38.4g P 4 small base
76.2g P Xeon
33.7g mobil AMD Sempron
100.4g misc. green base
109.7g slot processor clean
1717.4g MMX black base
283.6g mixed ceramics
88.2g PPro
171.0g Eprom ceramic chips
109.0g mixed flatpacks
307.8g mixed fingers & misc.gold trace boards
52.0g clean pins
196.6g whole pci slot connectors with pins (milspec)
263.3g mixed pci & memory boards

12.69 pounds of material. ill post pictures here when im ready to start processing. im currently sweating pins from the fiber bases. theres so many. :lol: 

i want to thank you Rodthrower18 for the opportunity to show what i can do.


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## Rodthrower18 (Jul 27, 2012)

I'd just like to openly thank Geo for helping me out with this. I've been taking the advice of all of the long time members here on the board and holding my material until I have enough worth doing. Even then I don't have the capability to process safely (yet). Out of kindness Geo decided to help me out and chronicle the process for me so I can still feel part of the process and learn about safety and proper technique at the same time. I can't say it enough, Thank you Geo.


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## maynman1751 (Jul 27, 2012)

Geo's a good dude! :mrgreen:


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## Geo (Jul 28, 2012)

ok, the weather didnt cooperate with me today as we had rain most of the afternoon, so no processing yet. still getting material ready though.i did get the AP going on the fingers and boards. here's some pictures so far.im working alone and these processors are time consuming, i may have to conscript a family member and press them into service. :lol:





thats 474g of clean processor legs. just over a pound. im not sure on the yield but we should know by day after tomorrow. ill take a picture of the AP in the morning.as long as the rain holds off, ill be processing CPU's all day and part of the night tomorrow.


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## Geo (Jul 29, 2012)

heres a couple of clips from this material.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3O1cWpYCCY&feature=g-upl[/youtube] 

those legs are tough. i cant remember it taking so long, but it is a somewhat large quantity to dissolve all at once.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26q6ILMFe4k&feature=g-upl[/youtube]

preparing the black bases.


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## Geo (Aug 1, 2012)

a couple more clips. 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IebqPiWlMM&feature=plcp[/youtube] 

these are some tough legs, but they are just about complete.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MVGCmW1jnI&feature=plcp[/youtube] 

this was a good dissolution. im hoping for some yield data tomorrow.


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## Geo (Aug 1, 2012)

spent ceramics.


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## Geo (Aug 6, 2012)

this batch is complete. the total refined powder was 8.4g +/- .2g due to cheap scales. 

along those lines, i ran into a snag that i hope someone can help me with. there was 1.2g of gold in the green and brown fiber base CPU legs. i was hoping for at least a gram from the bases, but as of yet, i havent been able to recover any measurable gold from the bases.this is how i processed them.

incinerate.
separate the different layers and dislodge the silicon chip.
dissolve the copper foils with copper chloride and air.
rinse with water until the water stayed clear. 
filter and process all solids including chips in AR.

after the dissolution stannous chloride test was negative for gold but i did get a nice orange color.

i filtered and dried the solids and incinerated again. this time i ground the solids (all that was left was fiberglass and silicon chips) and tried another AR digestion which was still negative. 

ive never processed just bases before as i always included any i had in with my other chips. im not sure what to have expected. is there NO gold bonding wires in these bases or did i make a mistake somewhere?

i kept all the solutions and solids in the hopes that if there is something to reclaim, someone can point me in the right direction because to tell you the truth, ive spent so much time on these bases and put so much effort into trying to squeeze something out of them its gotten to the point that it turned personal for me.


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## mjgraham (Aug 6, 2012)

I am not 100% on this but it looked like to me the green thing is basically a multi-layer circuit board and the get all the traces over to the die and just bond it stright down on the thing, at least that is what it looked like on some other chips from a while back I looked at. I have not checked into any Pentium CPUs. I had noticed this with some video CPUs a while back. Of course I could be wrong. I am talking about the green ones, have no idea on the brown ones.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=13455&p=135006#p135006


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## samuel-a (Aug 6, 2012)

Geo

Are talking about the body of green/brown fiber cpu's?

If you do, mjgraham is right. Don't bother with them.


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## Geo (Aug 6, 2012)

samuel-a said:


> Geo
> 
> Are talking about the body of fiber cpu's?
> 
> If you do, mjgraham is right. Don't bother with them.



thanks Sam. its the green and brown fiber body CPU's. for some reason i thought they would have bonding wires like all other chips. after looking at mjgraham's pictures, i took one of my CPU's (green base PIII) and used a heat gun to remove the chip. its exactly the same as a BGA with no bonding wires. from now on i will only count the gold weight from the legs only.


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## lazersteve (Aug 6, 2012)

No bonding wires will be found in any cpu that is classified as a 'flip-chip' (upside core with contact pads under the die). This basically includes all cpus manufactured after the PII/PIII slotted cpus. The green and black fiber cpus with the silver solder dots all the way through them and an epoxy center, as well as the BGA North and South Bridges, plus Video drive cpus, will contain bonding wires.

As a rule of thumb:

If the fiber cpu has a separate plastic or epoxy area near the center, it has gold bonding wires. If the cpu is simply multilayered FC (flip chip) and you can see the core die with the naked eye, you will find no gold bonding wires.

Steve


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## Geo (Aug 6, 2012)

thanks Steve, i made a note in my notebook about those chips. i have always just thrown them in with my other chips that i was incinerating. its frustrating to think that all this time i was only adding fiberglass to my material making it harder to filter and not getting anything out of it.  from now on, thanks to you guys getting me straight on it, ill not be making that mistake again.

im just relieved that there was nothing there to reclaim because i really wanted to do a good job for Floyd and get as much out of the material as i could. now that i know there was nothing there, i can relax and quit stressing it.


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## samuel-a (Aug 6, 2012)

Geo, you are doing great.

Taking on a job and publically documenting every step of the way. I find it is very refreshing.


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## Rodthrower18 (Aug 6, 2012)

Geo is great!! He's not only taken on this job but he's also helped me compile some good data as well as being a good mentor to make sure I don't over complicate things while maintaining the best safety practice. Thanks a ton Geo


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## Harold_V (Aug 7, 2012)

samuel-a said:


> Geo, you are doing great.
> 
> Taking on a job and publically documenting every step of the way. I find it is very refreshing.


Not everyone is on this forum with the idea of making a buck. Some folks actually try to help others, even when it doesn't yield a profit for them. I find that damned refreshing. 

Harold


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## samuel-a (Aug 7, 2012)

Harold_V said:


> Not everyone is on this forum with the idea of making a buck. Some folks actually try to help others, even when it doesn't yield a profit for them. I find that damned refreshing.
> 
> Harold


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## Geo (Aug 7, 2012)

the end result was a 7.9g button. i didnt get a picture and its on its way to Floyd as i type this. this was a learning experience for me in that i haven't had the chance to process items in bulk before. it gave me a chance to see where resources need to be increased and amount of time needed to perform the process of large batches.hopefully this will be something that i can do to earn some extra income. after this first batch im hoping this will turn into a lasting partnership between Floyd and myself. when i get better equipped, i may try to take on another members project or two. i dont want to over extend my abilities by taking on too much at a time.


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## Rodthrower18 (Aug 8, 2012)

I must say I'm more than pleased with this experience. In typical Geo fashion, Jeff double package the button for protection to prevent any mishaps in shipping. We will definitely be doing this again as soon as I can get the materials together. Did I mention this whole process was fast on top of everything else? This thread was started the day the package was received and I should have a button before lunch! It doesnt get much better than this!


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## Geo (Aug 8, 2012)

by the way, i want to say Thank you to all you guys for the kind words as it really means alot to me. thank you Floyd for the chance to to refine this material for you. i hope you like the little nugget of reclaimed silver i sent. its from all the silver chloride ive collected and processed back to metal. its worthless to me but it might mean more to you than it does to me. it may be a good start for when you decide you want to do some processing.


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## Geo (Aug 8, 2012)

this may be the last post on this thread, unless Floyd post a picture of the button. the button was assayed at 98.5%. still scratching my head wondering where the silver came from. its not the first time silver showed up in my gold.  i can see there is still room for improvement even though i am normally very diligent about my processing. my goal now is to improve the quality of my refining by 1%. im not ashamed of 98.5% but i would have felt better if it had been 99.5% or better.


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## ericrm (Aug 8, 2012)

did you drop the silver with cold/waterdilution(if yes what kind of filter did you used) and did you refine/washed it with amonia 2 time?


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## glondor (Aug 8, 2012)

Hey Geo. I do all the right things to get 99+ gold and I still get bit by the silver bug on occasion. . In my case I think it is the fiber glass filter plugs I use. 3x dilution with cold water will knock out almost all the silver (re: GSP'S research) So filtering is the key from there.


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## Geo (Aug 8, 2012)

eric, yes i always dilute and wait to see what falls out. it helps with lead too.i honestly think what happened is i was trying to get yield data and was processing all these small batches of different things all at once. instead of combining all the powder at the end to wash, i was processing each one to the final wash and weighing the powder and then adding it to the rest. by the time i was ready to melt, i had added at least seven different times to the final weight. i was assuming that as i was washing each batch there was no need to do a final wash on all the powder at once when it was finished. some where in all the different batches the contamination slipped through and contaminated the entire batch. at least this is all i can come up with. im not going to spend a lot of time beating myself up over it. Floyd was happy and i think the final payout was only like $16 difference due to the 1%.


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## ericrm (Aug 8, 2012)

i dont like to clean small batch, i feel theyr arent worth the trouble, i think it is better to wait and rather than refine 10 small batch ,refine just one bigger batch ... but i understand why you have done it that way and i must say that it is pretty clever to use that oportunity to build your yield book 8)


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## samuel-a (Aug 9, 2012)

Geo said:


> i was assuming that as i was washing each batch there was no need to do a final wash on all the powder at once when it was finished.




Hi Geo, 

In the lab, assumptions is a bad habbit to have (as you now know).

I do alot of yield tests with clients material to get rough numbers about different stuff. Eventually all of the powders are collected, washed and re-dissolved.
Second cycle is very very inportant, especially what it comes from e-scrap. The second refining cycle is very easy and is not time consuming as would the recovery process.

Even with very poor lab techniques and equipment the results would be above 99%. 
I'm sure you have the discipline to maintain a tidy process and clean work environment, all you need is to do is to add a second refining step. After that, there's absolutly no reason why you could not produce 999+ gold.


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## Geo (Aug 9, 2012)

thanks Sam. its a safe bet that from now on, the last thing i do before melting is a final dissolution and wash and rinse. for right now the goal is to recover as much value as possible from the material so the turnaround will be maximized. i do understand that its just as easy to refine to 99.9% as it is to refine to 98.5% but it was a simple error that caused it this time. thankfully this time wasnt critical that purity wasnt as big an issue as quantity but i cant in all fairness just think its ok and let it go at that. i will probably ponder on it for quite some time and just try harder.


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## Rodthrower18 (Aug 9, 2012)

As stated I was more than pleased with the results of this test run. We will be doing it again soon. For what its worth I will attribute most of that contamination to my complicating matters on getting back data from everything (lots of good numbers). I will here and now openly admit that all of the seniors were right...green and brown fibers are NOT worth it if you can't get em for free or next to free, no reinventing the wheel here. 

On another note I took this button to Hi-Tech in Addision and to be quite honest the experience couldn't have been better. I spoke to Miguel on the phone before heading out, and was met by a very professional and courteous staff. I was able to keep my eyes on my gold at all times and was promptly given a check that I cashed 10mins later. I will be doing business with them in the future. Also a point of note they will deal with members of the forum sans business license. 

I understand the gold fever and the urge to hoard now. If it wasn't for demands of the household that baby would be tucked away waiting on a big brother or sister. It was hard to let it go so soon after getting it. It was so pretty and heavy to be that size. I'm officially hooked and will be attending bi weekly gold hoarders anonymous meetings. Anywho enough of my banter, here's a simple camera phone pic of my first:


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## MMFJ (Aug 9, 2012)

That picture reminded me of a boxing glove - POW, right in the kisser! - you got hit by the gold bug all right (not that it's a bad thing... 

Congrats on your learning - looks like you gained a lot of knowledge by DOING (which is the best stuff you can get!)

Keep on collecting and looking for the other stuff (that the 'old timers' tell you about...  - you'll soon have another one of those that hopefully you will be able to keep!


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## Rodthrower18 (Aug 9, 2012)

I never noticed it until you said it. It DOES look like a boxing glove hahaha. That dark spot at the bottom is me. The hunt is already on for new treasures. Hopefully i'll have a silver project soon, and I plan on keeping every last grain that I get back. Yup fiber processors are going to be my "i'm bored and need something to do" project. Sweating off all of those pins till I have at least a lb is going to take time, so back burner it is. The journey has now truly began and hopefully the start of something wonderful (529 for the boy). Thanks again to Geo and everyone that followed this thread and supported me up to this point.


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## ericrm (Aug 9, 2012)

nice work geo


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## Geo (Aug 9, 2012)

thanks eric.


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## mjgraham (Aug 9, 2012)

ericrm said:


> nice work geo


I agree, enjoyed folowing the process from start to finish.


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## rich_2137 (Aug 10, 2012)

Well done geo takes a lot of gutts to do what you did, well done!


Rich


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## Acid_Bath76 (Aug 12, 2012)

Geo, 

This post was fantastic. Thanks for taking the time to document all of it. Hat's off to you sir. 

-AB


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## poudouche (Aug 12, 2012)

Hi Geo ,
do you process cell phone boards, which quantity can you handle and what are your conditions
regards,
poudouche


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