# Non-gold plated pins



## Cricket (Oct 5, 2015)

In my scrapping of various internal computer cable ends here lately as a new e-scrapper... I've noticed that not all USB (and similar), ribbon cable, etc., motherboard connector ends are gold plated but rather a bright silvery finish. Would these be silver tipped of a sort? If the answer is maybe... if one is into silver recovery, what's the likelihood of processing those non-gold plated pins in nitric acid (or another recommended process?) and recovering silver vs. wasting chemicals in case some aren't silver and just tin or some other metal? If the answer is no to silver plated... are the pins worth processing for any other reason? Thanks!


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## patnor1011 (Oct 5, 2015)

Zillion of posts about this on forum, try to use search function and you will be amazed how many hits you get.

As for silver colored pins it is tin what you see. No silver at all.


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## johnny309 (Oct 9, 2015)

The plating is an alloy of Ni and Pd.... but the tricky part is the brass (to assure the "spring" capabilities.... from numerous insertion is added Be. Other alloys may be involved,as follow:

http://www.technic.com/applications/electronics-connectors/eclc-chemistry/connectors?t=1&s=small#tab1
http://www.technic.com/applications/electronics-connectors/eclc-chemistry/connectors?t=2&s=small#tab2
http://www.technic.com/applications/electronics-connectors/eclc-chemistry/connectors?t=3&s=small#tab3
http://www.technic.com/applications/electronics-connectors/eclc-chemistry/connectors?t=4#tab4
http://www.technic.com/applications/electronics-connectors/eclc-chemistry/connectors?t=5&s=small#tab5


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## kurtak (Oct 9, 2015)

johnny309 said:


> The plating is an alloy of Ni and Pd.... but the tricky part is the brass (to assure the "spring" capabilities.... from numerous insertion is added Be. Other alloys may be involved,as follow:
> 
> http://www.technic.com/applications/electronics-connectors/eclc-chemistry/connectors?t=1&s=small#tab1
> http://www.technic.com/applications/electronics-connectors/eclc-chemistry/connectors?t=2&s=small#tab2
> ...



Interesting links - thanks for posting

(& you beat me to posting Ni as well as tin) :mrgreen: 

Kurt


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