# Military Pins



## kmk422 (Oct 16, 2012)

Hi guys I was wonder if someone could tell me how much gold might be on these pins. There is one ounce and they are 24k plated from military equipment.


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## etack (Oct 16, 2012)

$6.87ish

Eric


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## kmk422 (Oct 16, 2012)

lol wouldn't be surprised.


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## etack (Oct 16, 2012)

nope thats a real number gold @ 55g two grams a pound(might be a little generous they look chunky.)and thats your answer.

just math

Eric


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## kmk422 (Oct 16, 2012)

They are hollow with gold plating on the inside also. so maybe 13.74ish lol


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## Smack (Oct 16, 2012)

$80 to $100 per pound


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## etack (Oct 16, 2012)

the smaller the pin the more gold per pound.

Eric


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## etack (Oct 16, 2012)

Smack said:


> $80 to $100 per pound



you numbers are even less than mine :lol: 
Eric


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## mls26cwru (Oct 16, 2012)

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=14728&p=148543&hilit=amphenol#p148543

here is a link to a thread I had a couple months ago... the estimates I was given ranged between 0.5 to 1.0 grams/lb...


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 16, 2012)

You'll know once you process them.


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## Palladium (Oct 16, 2012)

Funny you should say that Chris. I have a saying when it comes to customers asking " How much will i get from this or that?"
If i have done my job correctly i always tell them " What comes out the beaker, comes out the beaker".
The yield don't lie.


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## gold4mike (Oct 16, 2012)

I did two test runs on pins that appeared identical to those. I got almost exactly .5 grams per pound on both runs. I did the second because they looked so nicely plated that I wanted to double check my work.

I concluded, as was mentioned above, that smaller pins of the same thickness plating would yield more gold per pound due to the difference in surface area.


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## NobleMetalWorks (Oct 16, 2012)

I would like to point out a few things...

Gold plating for electronics is usually right around 22k, even for military spec items. Mil-Spec does not mean 24k plate.

There is really not much difference when talking 22k or 24k on one ounce of pins. It seems like a lot of people worry about the karat of the gold plating, and not the material or how much Au they actually have. Smaller pins yield more gold. I would prefer to have small pins at 22k rather than big fat pins at 24k.

Mil-Spec has 6 grades. How "thick" the gold plating is depends on what mil-spec they are. Saying something is mil-spec is too suggestive unless you are also including which military spec it is you are talking about.

If I were you, I would wait until I had more pins to process. I find it far easier to process several lbs, it makes the Au easier to recover rather than tiny amounts that will be difficult to see with the naked eye.

Just my two cents.


Scott


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## kmk422 (Oct 16, 2012)

Thanks guys for the input.


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 16, 2012)

SBrown said:


> I would like to point out a few things...
> 
> Gold plating for electronics is usually right around 22k, even for military spec items. Mil-Spec does not mean 24k plate.
> 
> ...



I don't agree about the karat thing. Why would you deposit 22K, which is much, much more difficult to deposit and has a much poorer electrical conductivity, than just simply deposit 24K or something very close to it? You'll never find 22K gold plating on electronics. Never, ever. For hard durable gold on wear components, it's ALL very close to 24K - between 23.75K and 23.9K and most is closer to the latter. For components that must be heated, it's 99.99%.


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## samuel-a (Oct 17, 2012)

goldsilverpro said:


> I don't agree about the karat thing. Why would you deposit 22K, which is much, much more difficult to deposit and has a much poorer electrical conductivity, than just simply deposit 24K or something very close to it? You'll never find 22K gold plating on electronics. Never, ever. For hard durable gold on wear components, it's ALL very close to 24K - between 23.75K and 23.9K and most is closer to the latter. For components that must be heated, it's 99.99%.



I'd like to strengthen your point on this Chris.

As far as i know, the most common element that is co-plated with the gold is cobalt which serves to add more mechanical strength against physical wear.
Logically, i see no point in plating alloyed gold for electrical contacts.


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 17, 2012)

The term "karat" is primarily a jewelry or decorative (e.g., gold leaf) term and I have NEVER seen or heard it used inside the electronics industry in reference to the gold purity, at least as far as plating is concerned. The purity of gold plating on electronics is always given as a percentage and most all you've ever seen, whether new or old, ranges from 99.7% (hard gold) to 99.99% pure (soft gold), depending on the application. In electronics gold baths, small amounts of Co or Ni are added to increase the hardness of the deposit and, thus, it's wear properties. If more alloying were used, it could severely affect the solderability, electrical conductivity, and other electrical properties.

For jewelry gold plating, you will see the terms, 22K, 18K, 14K, etc., used. However, these most always refer to the COLOR of the deposit and not the purity. For example, most 14K jewelry color gold deposits are actually about 20-21K in purity.

Any two metal gold alloy plating bath containing more than about 1% of an alloying metal is much more difficult to control than a one metal bath. By control, I mean maintaining consistency in the exact alloy deposited. In jewelry plating of color golds, which contain large amounts of alloying metals, Al Weisberg (see below) says that a pH change of only 0.25 units or a temperature change of only 3 degrees F in a plating bath will affect the deposit color and, any change in color is also a change in the gold purity of the deposit. Also, the current density and the amounts of the other constituents in the bath, which are ever-changing, can affect the alloy. Three metal plating baths are virtually impossible to control.

Here's a good paper on gold plating written by Al Weisberg, the founder of Technic, which is probably the world leader in providing gold plating solutions to industry. I think it's about 30 years old but nothing much has changed since then. Al also wrote the article on gold plating in all of the more recent issues of the Metal Finishing Guidebook, which comes out annually and is the Bible for the plating industry. The Guidebook article is nearly identical to the one in the link below. In the older issues, the gold plating Guidebook article was written by Bob Duva, my mentor at Sel-Rex, where we both worked.
http://66.192.79.183/articles/079702.html 

The common electronic gold plating solutions used when I worked at Sel-Rex (late '60s, early '70s) were virtually the same as those used today. The main changes today are in some of the equipment used to apply the gold (called selective plating, zone plating, spot plating, etc.), on what parts the gold is applied, and the thickness that is applied on certain non-wear surfaces. For common wear surfaces, such as fingers, you needed the same 30 micro" of hard, nearly pure gold back then, that is needed today.


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