# Gold in touchpads!



## glorycloud (May 7, 2009)

I was taking apart some keyboards that I sell that have a touch pad on them and I noticed that they have some hidden gold foil on them.

These came from Cherry POS keyboards but I would think most touch pads would operate the same way. The first photo shows what the touch pad looks like while still installed in the keyboard. The dark "touch" part is actually a thin film that peels off and underneath is the gold foil that upon contact tells the PC where the cursor should go on the computer screen.

The second picture shows the foil when the touch film is peeled back and the other side shows some gold foil around the edge of the card as well.

GSP or someone will probably know the approximate gold content. It is probably not worth the effort to remove them but I thought it was cool to find it. Anybody else have any experience with gold in touch pads like you see on notebooks??

I have about 1,000 of these keyboards and when they won't sell anymore as replacements, I am thinking of scrapping them for the internal logic boards and the heavy keyboard cables. 8)


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## ck (May 8, 2009)

deleted


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## glorycloud (May 8, 2009)

what kind of solvent do you use to remove the glue CK? (I assume you mean the residual glue leftover after you have peeled back the dark touch film.)


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## ck (May 9, 2009)

deleted


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## glorycloud (May 9, 2009)

Good idea. I use denatured alcohol to get ink marks off of plastic, so I already have it hanging around the shop.

thanks!


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