# HP backplane yield & process?



## Mfe18 (Dec 7, 2018)

Hello 
I'm new to this and have come across these. Hi boards I have depoppulated them and. Have been peeling gold off as you can see in pics... What should I do? Has anyone processed these?


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## charlie2 (Dec 11, 2018)

AR, denox then so2 precipitate, then :G 

cheers


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## Dr.xyz (Dec 11, 2018)

Don't take advice from anyone who just joined the forum and who needs help with simple things.

If you have no experience, backplanes are not the material you want to start your long journey with.


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## butcher (Dec 11, 2018)

I agree with Dr.xyz, Being blind you would be better off taking advice from those which can see.

You are wasting your time, there is very little gold, peeling is just a waste of time.

My suggestion of what to do (study more) and stop wasting your time manually peeling solder mask and copper traces off of circuit boards.


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## Shark (Dec 11, 2018)

charlie2 said:


> AR, denox then so2 precipitate, then :G
> 
> cheers



:shock: I wish it were that easy!


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## silversaddle1 (Dec 11, 2018)

Sell the whole board on ebay, make more that way then if you were going to recover yourself.


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## Mfe18 (Dec 12, 2018)

butcher said:


> I agree with Dr.xyz, Being blind you would be better off taking advice from those which can see.
> 
> You are wasting your time, there is very little gold, peeling is just a waste of time.
> 
> My suggestion of what to do (study more) and stop wasting your time manually peeling solder mask and copper traces off of circuit boards.



I've read so much.... :!: and it's seems like "everything" Is right by one person's opinion and the next person says it's completely wrong..... I don't want to mess things up. I understand the safety parts of it all but damn... I've read to much perhaps...


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## butcher (Dec 13, 2018)

Mfe18,

I believe you think this should be simple to get gold from electronics or rocks, well it is not as simple as you now believe.

Recovery and refining is a large field of science and the arts, we are not a rocket scientist but just like the rocket scientist, we will not learn this overnight.
We as refiners have many obstacles to overcome that the rocket scientist does not have problems with, such as Gold Fever.

Most rocket scientists do not believe that they could have sent a rocket to the moon from watching a dozen youtube videos or reading a few hundred papers about the subject.

A rocket scientist cannot tell you in a few posts on some forum of how to get to Mars, and if they tried not all of this scientist will agree on the best option throughout the process, or even on the process, the type of rocket or how it is built or what is to be included...

Like the rocket scientist, we have to begin somewhere to learn this science and art, the trouble is with gold fever most refiners begin by trying to fly before they understand anything about the mechanics or the science of the whole field they wish to begin to learn, they will just strap the homemade rockets they learned about on Utube to the seat of their pants and try going for a ride to Saturn and then wonder what happened when it does not work and why their backside is so sore they cannot sit down anymore.
Then they come to the forum asking what went wrong, how do I fix it and get to Saturn tell me in a few Post on the science forum, where not all of the rocket scientist of the forum agree on the best method or course to help him understand.


Recovery and refining are similar to rocket science in that no one person will know everything about it, no one person can learn it all in their lifetime, the field is very broad and covers many aspects and details, the science can be simple to extremely complicated with many variables to be encountered...


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## Mfe18 (Dec 26, 2018)

I have finally started my first batch and it is looking very promising :G . :G Trial and error is the best way to learn. :idea: Thank you all for advice.... wrong and right.. God bless


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## niks neims (Dec 27, 2018)

Mfe18 said:


> I have finally started my first batch and it is looking very promising :G . :G Trial and error is the best way to learn. :idea: Thank you all for advice.... wrong and right.. God bless



People have died like that....

Just don't hurt and kill yourself or anyone else...


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## glorycloud (Dec 27, 2018)

I have read and heard the old adage that "a fool and his money are soon parted".
How so much more true regarding gold refining is this statement:

"A fool who thinks he can refine gold* and his health are soon parted."  

* (and refuses to heed the advice of well seasoned refiners of gold)


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## archeonist (Dec 27, 2018)

Mfe18 said:


> butcher said:
> 
> 
> > I agree with Dr.xyz, Being blind you would be better off taking advice from those which can see.
> ...



Ok well, peeling is not always a waste of time. It certainly is not a waste of time when you know what to peel and what not. And, of course, if your source material is free (or very very litlle payed for) and if you have a lot of it. For intstance motherboards I take of all the bigger chips like BGA and flatpacks. Gold pins I don't bother, too much work for very little gold. The plating on your boards looks like ENIG or flash plating, the gold layer is like a few atoms thick, don't get fooled by seeing gold is big gold, it mostly is not. So where is most of the gold? It is inside the chips and on gold fingers, like on RAM. Visible gold on older boards like 70's an d 80's can be pretty thick and interesting. So study what to go after and what not. 
One thing about safety, I see too many people dealing with escrap in a wrong way. I mean they take huge health risks by scrapping components or handling dust from incinerated chips. Take precautions and remember that dust is your worst enemy in scrapping computer parts. I always scrap in a self made dust free hood so I don't pollute my surrounding and my clothes/hair and so on.


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## anachronism (Dec 27, 2018)

I've bitten my lip so far on this thread however having refined those boards it's not a "little gold." HP sold those boards for over £30k each in their time. The equipment they came out of ran most of the banking/payroll software in the world in its hey day.

They didn't skimp for a a few bucks worth of gold per board.


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## charlie2 (Jan 8, 2019)

Shark said:


> charlie2 said:
> 
> 
> > AR, denox then so2 precipitate, then :G
> ...



could you tell us the difficulty in that ,please?

the chemical process itself is not a real big deal so we want to know the difficulty about that :wink: 

cheers


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## butcher (Jan 8, 2019)

charlie2,
Refining gold and the recovery of gold are two different processes.

Aqua regia is a good choice for refining gold but is a very poor choice for recovering gold.


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## g_axelsson (Jan 8, 2019)

charlie2, once I made the mistake of putting some circuit boards in a gold containing AR solution. Some of the gold did cement out onto the circuit board and probably also inside on any buried conductor.

Another reason you don't want to put circuit boards straight into AR is that the gold you try to precipitate from the huge amount of toxic soup will come down as a very fine black silt. Sometimes even as black ink and it can take a long time to settle.

The tin on the board can form metastannic acid and make it near impossible to filter.

If it was that easy then there wouldn't be a quarter of a million posts on this forum.

Göran


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## Shark (Jan 8, 2019)

For a while I ran fingers in AP (hydrochloric acid and peroxide) I did this for quite a long time (several years). I got to where I was getting larger batches of fingers and was hoping for a quicker way to get them done, so I used AR. On one pound lots I lost about .01 to .4 gram average over the AP method. I tried it many times and I always came out just slightly less than the AP method. I know that isn't much of a loss, but when all I had was small batches I didn't want to loose any of it. Just for my satisfaction I wanted better accountability of my investments. There are ways that might be better, but I do not class them in the hobby level and have not tried them myself. Because of the way I use the gold from fingers now, I am back to the AP method and run it cold and slow. If I want it faster, I use the crock pot method. For me a loss that can be explained leaves room for improvement.


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## nickvc (Jan 9, 2019)

Shark if you dissolved all the base metals from the fingers in AR you won’t have lost any gold, it will be in filter papers or in your stockpot, also if dissolving directly in AR you need to make sure to rinse the fingers really well to remove any pregnant solution, it’s also likely that as the solution was dirty the gold will take a lot longer to settle maybe even days, as I said check your stockpot and filters you may have a pleasant surprise :shock:


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## anachronism (Jan 9, 2019)

I'm with Nick on this Shark - I don't get losses if the AR is pushed through to completion. 

That given I modified the process somewhat- hope it helps. I pop the fingers in AP to remove the bulk of the copper and then chuck them in AR. They go a LOT faster. 

Jon


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## Shark (Jan 9, 2019)

For now the majority of the gold from fingers get used as is from the AP method. Once I have that settled, I may need to try it again. I am almost always open for some small testing,


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## Shark (Jan 9, 2019)

charlie2 said:


> AR, denox then so2 precipitate, then :G
> 
> cheers



To the original missed point in my first comment. I prefer a "washing" cycle between the "precipitate and that :G "

More the way I would do it from that standpoint:

AR, denox, precipitate, wash then :G

I just hate to skip a step, and find out I have to do it all over again due to some small contaminant that could have been easily dealt with by a good washing.


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## charlie2 (Jan 23, 2019)

Dr.xyz said:


> Don't take advice from anyone who just joined the forum and who needs help with simple things.
> 
> If you have no experience, backplanes are not the material you want to start your long journey with.



Dr xyz , i 've done that stuff for more than ten years now and result differ just a little for the gold recoverd after process for AR process (meaning putting the circuit board directly into AR )or using other chemical process,,

ahahaha, gfu DR naz :lol:


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## charlie2 (Jan 23, 2019)

butcher said:


> charlie2,
> Refining gold and the recovery of gold are two different processes.
> 
> Aqua regia is a good choice for refining gold but is a very poor choice for recovering gold.



i agree with you but what's the final point of all of this? it's to recover maximum amount gold from multiple types of materials ,and no leakage, :lol: 

chemical process is just a passage to the final point , 

for me you can take few hours as well as many weeks to recover good amount of gold ,

and if you ask " what type of process should you use to process and recover the gold this one or this other one material , it's good to back to school "

the main question is for me how to proceed , to recover as much gold as possible ?

the answer for me is AR,denox and precipitate to be quick and effective ,

but you can be slow and effective ,and you can be quick but stupid, and the summum, you can be slow and stupid,

go straight to the the point.


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## anachronism (Jan 23, 2019)

If you're talking about putting the gold that you've peeled off into AR then that's fair enough. If you're talking about putting the boards in AR then that's not going to work well for you.


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## charlie2 (Jan 23, 2019)

anachronism said:


> If you're talking about putting the gold that you've peeled off into AR then that's fair enough. If you're talking about putting the boards in AR then that's not going to work well for you.



that's what i did for years , and result was always correct according to the calculated amount of gold on the boards and the gold finally recovered ,assuming a very small amount of leak , the result is correct ,
tell me what's wrong in that?

should i double the amount of gold in the boards? :lol: :lol: :lol: 
maybe i'm a magician,, :lol: :lol: :lol:


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## anachronism (Jan 23, 2019)

charlie2 said:


> anachronism said:
> 
> 
> > If you're talking about putting the gold that you've peeled off into AR then that's fair enough. If you're talking about putting the boards in AR then that's not going to work well for you.
> ...



Dunking whole boards in AR involves loads more waste and effort than components. The type of board shown has between 7 and 12 layers of copper embedded. That's a lot of unneccessary work and gallons of waste liquids.


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## charlie2 (Jan 23, 2019)

anachronism said:


> charlie2 said:
> 
> 
> > anachronism said:
> ...




"unneccessary work and gallons of waste liquids" , that 's not the problem and of course safety has always to be first like wear the mask ,put gloves etc,,,,everytime you start the process , but to take all the gold in the boards ,
but if you don't know you can use also a small amount of AR but it's just going to take time but you can do it , i did it without injury and it's not your "unneccessary work and gallons of waste liquids" which is going to make me going back in my step , i tell u ,i repeat , u can use small amount of AR but it's going to take time and u can use big amaount of AR and it's going to be quicker,

u can use also other process like AP or the AC or the flower or whatever ,,don't just talk DO IT :lol: :lol: :lol: 

lots of stuff you have to experienced guys


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## anachronism (Jan 23, 2019)

charlie2 said:


> lots of stuff you have to experienced guys



Yeah I've got a small amount of experience with this stuff.


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## charlie2 (Jan 23, 2019)

anachronism said:


> charlie2 said:
> 
> 
> > lots of stuff you have to experienced guys
> ...



good , continue to experiment and never stop , rules are done to be learnt then applied then forget then learn again, be the gold with you :wink: :wink:


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## anachronism (Jan 23, 2019)

Righto.


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## Yggdrasil (Jan 23, 2019)

anachronism said:


> charlie2 said:
> 
> 
> > lots of stuff you have to experienced guys
> ...



Hehe Jon, Spot on  :lol: 

Charlie2 you would do good by following Jons advice, do a search on Jons posts, 
he knows what he is talking about, but as he has said more than once, even he has new tricks to learn.


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