# cell phone board



## M-G-P

what you all think[/img]


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## lazersteve

They look good, but don't get your hopes up. Try this quick experiment and you will see what I'm talking about:


 Mix 2 cups of HCl (muriatic acid) to 1 Cup of H2O2 (3% peroixde)
 Pour it into a small shallow pyrex or tupperware dish.
 Find an old clean toothbrush. (Not to ever be used again)
 Lower one of the boards into the bath
 Wait 5-10 minutes, until the solution starts to turn green
 Lift the edge of the phone board with some tweezers
 Gently scrub the gold areas using the toothbrush
 Your gold layer will rapidly deplate as a fine powder in the solution
 Do all your boards like this before filtering
 Add peroxide if the solution turns a deep black
 Test the solution with Stannous Chloride for dissolved gold after filtering.
 Post your result here.

I've done several pounds of a variety of large unpopulated communication boards like this and decided they were not worth the price the seller was asking. The phone boards may be worth it if you can get them cheap enough.

Steve


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## M-G-P

ok thanks for the info 

I got this free as I do most all my boards I :roll: is poor trailer trash :wink: no money to spend on this hobey lol 

will take your advice . you say to do all boards this way or just the phone boards that look like this..??


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## M-G-P

this is off the second boad from the same cell-phone


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## lazersteve

MGP said:


> you say to do all boards this way or just the phone boards that look like this..??



Just the ones that have these gold borders and backs.

Steve


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## Anonymous

I get old cells for free all day long (except shipping cost) the pm isnt the only thing thry're good for if you're industrious, their are many parts people will buy...


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## viacin

could you elaborate? Can anyone quote a yeild on each phone?


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## butcher

dont know yield but seems to me to be worth processing, I do them in AP with the rest of my plated stuff. 
dont forget the keypads many have gold plated switches,


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## viacin

I just did ALOT of reading on cell phones. I would say that they are not worth the time. Depending on who you ask, there is between $.06-$.35 (someone mentioned $.50 but they were not sure at all) in each phone roughly. It seems like cell phones sounded promising to many members on the forum, since several have tried it. They (Alfacglobal, lazersteve, noxx, and about 20 others) all say that the yeild is incredibly small. If you had 1,000-2,000 to run, then you might make a few dollars for your trouble after you subtract the phone's price you paid, chemicals, and your most important resource, your time spent scrubbing each one of them. I put a order in for a few before I read all this, so I guess I'll go through with it and see for myself. It will probably end up costing me. But it's ok, I'm bored and at least I'll learn something.

And butcher is right, If you already had a pile to process, then you should throw them in. There is gold there, and a bit of PMG. But I don't think I will pursure them too much. I understand that there are other things to do with them that could raise their value, but I'm speaking of the refining process only. The other options have already been covered and I didn't feel like they needed to be repeated.


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## SilverFox

I guess it depends on the phone. I did about 15 of these cell boards. For my troubles I got about 1.5 grams.

I used AP/ Bleach Clorox for processing.

I still have preg solution to drop.

As soon as find the backing to the phone ill give you the model numbers.

Again I am sorry for the pictures, the only camera I own is contained in a large submersible housing It takes terrible up close pictures.

I am currently looking on ebay for a new camera.

Edit: Samsung SGH-X427


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## Palladium

8)


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## Gold Trail

silverfox, i most certainly hope your not complaining about 1.5 grams from 15 boards. it could have been ALOT worse. I know everything out side of fingers and ceramic processors seems to not only be a pain in every ones butt and a disaster to process. I have thousands of pounds of low grade wastes ive been toying around with. I'll defiantly keep every one well informed of any major break troughs. 

as of now it all just seems to be in the way

Ryan


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## 2002valkyrie

Hi all,
I let my 11year old son tear apart 2 old, I mean old cell phones and both boards were plated gold even under the green mess. I still haven't completed the recovery using AP but he is excited, I told him he could melt and have what it produced. Here is the pictures: http://s420.photobucket.com/albums/pp287/2002valkyrie/Phone Boards/?albumview=slideshow


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## glorycloud

WHat is your process for removing the components before you dunk
the cell phone boards into the AP? Or are you removing the components first?
I have parted out 20 or so cell phons and I was wondering whether to mess
with them or not.

I also have (600) or so mouse touch pads that I pulled from some POS keyboards.
When you peel back the touch resistive layer you see a nice shiny gold foil underneath.
How would you go after the gold on these boards? I assume I should try and get the
components off the otherside as well somehow.

View attachment 1


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## 2002valkyrie

Hey that 2nd picture is what I need to get into. That side that is all gold I would take a sharp straight edge to. Then the other side I would depopulate and use AP. That is just what I would do. Many people might see putting all that gold in AP till it falls apart the best way to go but not me and surely not if I had 600 of them.



glorycloud said:


> I also have (600) or so mouse touch pads that I pulled from some POS keyboards.
> When you peel back the touch resistive layer you see a nice shiny gold foil underneath.
> How would you go after the gold on these boards? I assume I should try and get the
> components off the otherside as well somehow.


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## patnor1011

That little board under touch pad is looking cool. I have found one in old toshiba laptop. When heated little bit with torch it will separate in two layers of fiber. I cut out plated parts /edges/ from green side and toss that with other shiny gold part into my AP bucket.


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## glorycloud

As GSP likes to remind us, that gold foil is probably so thin that it may
not be worth much. But then again, it is gold. 8) 

I may take a heat gun and heat up the component side of that board and
bang the board on my worktop to get the components to jump off so I won't goo
up the AP too bad and end up with a filtering mess. 

The adhesive that holds the touch pad to that pretty gold foil is way
sticky after you get the protective cover off. Any thoughts about whether
it may gum up the works? Should I use some of the glue remover that
I use when refurbing PC's first or will it matter much?


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## erogers36

M-G-P said:


> ok thanks for the info
> 
> I got this free as I do most all my boards I :roll: is poor trailer trash :wink: no money to spend on this hobey lol
> 
> will take your advice . you say to do all boards this way or just the phone boards that look like this..??


 


cool im not the only one here. lol


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## Smack

glorycloud said:


> The adhesive that holds the touch pad to that pretty gold foil is way
> sticky after you get the protective cover off. Any thoughts about whether
> it may gum up the works? Should I use some of the glue remover that
> I use when refurbing PC's first or will it matter much?



Just wipe it off with solvent (Lacquer thinner)


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## hciic

lazersteve said:


> They look good, but don't get your hopes up. Try this quick experiment and you will see what I'm talking about:
> 
> 
> Mix 2 cups of HCl (muriatic acid) to 1 Cup of H2O2 (3% peroixde)
> Pour it into a small shallow pyrex or tupperware dish.
> Find an old clean toothbrush. (Not to ever be used again)
> Lower one of the boards into the bath
> Wait 5-10 minutes, until the solution starts to turn green
> Lift the edge of the phone board with some tweezers
> Gently scrub the gold areas using the toothbrush
> Your gold layer will rapidly deplate as a fine powder in the solution
> Do all your boards like this before filtering
> Add peroxide if the solution turns a deep black
> Test the solution with Stannous Chloride for dissolved gold after filtering.
> Post your result here.
> 
> I've done several pounds of a variety of large unpopulated communication boards like this and decided they were not worth the price the seller was asking. The phone boards may be worth it if you can get them cheap enough.
> 
> Steve


This is the process from start to end or what will be the next step. In which form gold will be ? liquid or powder form If i did what you post ? Please sir i am confused. I have arrange all these things.


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## lazersteve

The process you quoted is merely a test version of the Acid Peroxide process. It was posted to demonstrate to the reader the low grade nature of the scrap first hand. It takes a lot of cell phone/communication boards to amount to any measureable amount of gold. 

The next steps are all filtering and refining as usual with any recovery process.

Steve


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## golddiggingdude

lazersteve said:


> The process you quoted is merely a test version of the Acid Peroxide process. It was posted to demonstrate to the reader the low grade nature of the scrap first hand. It takes a lot of cell phone/communication boards to amount to any measureable amount of gold.
> 
> The next steps are all filtering and refining as usual with any recovery process.
> 
> Steve



As a hobbyist and gold bug, I tried processing cellular phones and wasted a lot of time on it. I ended up with very little gold and a big filtering mess. When comparing pound for pound, gold fingers yielded me much more gold in the AP tank. The claim that cellulars have $.50 of gold inside seemed to be very true in my case. The only way I can see cellular phones being worth the effort is if you processed tons of them in a facility, and recovered all PMs-- not just gold. Correct me if I am wrong Steve, but didn't you develop the AP process specifically for fingers? 

I'm doing a garage test right now with misc. fingers from slot processors and cards only. Roughly 836gms of fingers. Then I'm doing RAM-only fingers to determine if RAM has more gold vs. slot processors/cards. I noticed clean-cut RAM fingers have less circuit board material in the weight, so hopefully that will yield more gold per pound. So far, I've been recovering about .004% from misc. fingers and I hope to see .005 - .007% with RAM-only fingers.


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## hciic

I am really dissapointed to hear that there is very low ratio of gold in the mobile sets circuits.Suppose If i will buy 1kg sets on 35$ just for gold refining is that ok or not.


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