# First Time with e-scrap



## kjavanb123 (Oct 25, 2011)

Dear All,

I have learned the recovery and refining of PGMs from cats thank to great helps from awesome people in this forum. I like to start computer scrap refining. Here is my first test kits.




same board i think it's the front.



Also are these fingers?



Thanks
Kev


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## jimdoc (Oct 25, 2011)

Those are pins, not fingers. Are those boards from a CD Drive? They are not a higher end item.
Fingers are on the flat ends of boards that plug into a connector like on a motherboard.
They will be on video and other add-on cards and memory.

Jim


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## philddreamer (Oct 25, 2011)

Hi Kev!
Go here http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=11814#p115736 ,
another fellow member had a question on fingers. 

Take care!

Phil


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## joem (Oct 25, 2011)

I would sell those by the pound, you will make more money. As stated above get started on fingers first, it's not hard at all.


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## kjavanb123 (Oct 25, 2011)

Thanks for your quick respond. These items were only few I picked from a bag containing other parts. I will go ahead and take photos of each different types of e-scrap in that bag, and try to look for fingers in them. Also for maybe new commers it would be good to have a photo of different parts with highlighted parts that have values in them.

Also on these items in photos, anything valuable? Is there any link that show individual parts of board and its PM content? 

Thnx
Kevin


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## philddreamer (Oct 25, 2011)

Sound like a good idea! In "TUTORIALS", http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827,
Patnor has some information on how to recover the PM's by incineration & panning from other parts, like mobos, video, network, sound cards, top - black parts...


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## kjavanb123 (Oct 27, 2011)

I went through the entire bag that contained the e-scraps and most of them are CD-ROM drive I guess, but could find the following cards which seem to be audio and graphic cards, which seem to have the fingers you mentioned in your post here. Please advise




and the following items



and




Also these 2 main boards which the CPU seems like being taken apart, any valuble items?



and




Thanks in advance
Kj


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## kjavanb123 (Oct 27, 2011)

I went ahead and google-ed some of the items off the list provided by http://www.boardsort.com under their payout section and came up with pictures for these items. I noticed most of them have that golden color fingers. Any of the pro members like to take a shot and post the possible PMs inside each of these?

1. Connector Types (male/female)



2.memory RAM



3. RAMBUS RAM ( metallic cover )



4. ISA Card



5. IC Chips



Thanks
Kevin


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## kuma (Oct 27, 2011)

kjavanb123 said:


> I went ahead and google-ed some of the items off the list provided by http://www.boardsort.com under their payout section and came up with pictures for these items. I noticed most of them have that golden color fingers. Any of the pro members like to take a shot and post the possible PMs inside each of these?Thanks
> Kevin



Hi Kevin , how are things ?
I hope all is well!
I'm a noob and as such I'm no pro in any way , but I feel that I can help you just a little here, :mrgreen: 
In my experience , all of the connectors in your first image should contain gold plated pins. Some may only be partly plated , but it all adds up!
In your second image , apart from the obvious gold plating on the edge connector fingers , in my experience there will be microscopic gold wires running through the IC's. 

Magnified IC gold wire image ; http://tinyurl.com/6f722q5

Your rambus ram sticks again have the obvious gold plated edge connectors , but have no IC's , only exposed silicon chips under the metal plate. I'm not too familiar with this kind of ram yet so someone else should be able to advise more on these.
Both types of ram should also have soldered onto them some monolithic capacitors. These can contain PGM's (platinum group metals).
Again , I'm not overly famimiar with the type of IC's in your last two images , although I can say that as hard as I've looked at this type through a microscope I have yet to find any gold wore running through them.
They could contain some silver , or even some PGM's , but I really don't know.
Again someone else with more experience with these should be able to advise.
I hope that this can give you an idea ,
All the best with it and kind regards ,
Chris

(Edited to include link to image)


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## samuel-a (Oct 27, 2011)

kuma said:


> Again , I'm not overly famimiar with the type of IC's in your last two images , although I can say that as hard as I've looked at this type through a microscope I have yet to find any gold wore running through them.
> They could contain some silver , or even some PGM's , but I really don't know.



Iv'e looked at dozens of types and sizes of them... never found any gold wires.


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## philddreamer (Oct 27, 2011)

I have some of these older type MC830P, they are gold plated. Are they IC's?

Phil


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## Barren Realms 007 (Oct 27, 2011)

philddreamer said:


> I have some of these older type MC830P, they are gold plated. Are they IC's?
> 
> Phil



Yes they are and if you break them apart you should find that most of them have gold inside the chip's as well.


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## philddreamer (Oct 27, 2011)

Thank you Frank!


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## Palladium (Oct 27, 2011)

Has anybody heard from Chris at Boardsort? I have a client i have been trying to direct to him for two days now and can't get him to reply by email or pm. Somebody got his phone# ? I can't believe it's not listed on his website. :shock:


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## Claudie (Oct 27, 2011)

Chris said that they had some problems awhile back with someone spamming their e-mail. Maybe that has happened again. Keep trying, I'm sure he will reply.


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## Acid_Bath76 (Oct 27, 2011)

I never heard from Chris last week, but Bruce sent the payment for my last shipment. Chris must be swamped, or on vacation.


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## jmdlcar (Oct 27, 2011)

The pins on the back of floppy, CD-ROM and hard drive have much gold on them? If I would get about 1lbs of pins would I get much gold foil?


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## philddreamer (Oct 27, 2011)

JM, check in this thread:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=9943&p=95944&hilit=pin+yield#p95944

Phil


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## kjavanb123 (Oct 28, 2011)

All,

Thanks for your informative responds. I found this interesting site that might be usefull determining the ICs or parts on any boards

here is the link
http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/

And for monolithic capacitors which are tiny and time-consuming to remove from the boards, would be practical to just shred the entire boards with resistors and capacitors, then remove the base metals, and proceed with dissolving the Pd/Ag alloy in the monolithic?

Thanks
Kevin


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## patnor1011 (Oct 28, 2011)

kjavanb123 said:


> All,
> 
> Thanks for your informative responds. I found this interesting site that might be usefull determining the ICs or parts on any boards
> 
> ...




Kevin, this whole forum is mainly about recovering metals from electronics. All you need to do is take some time and read through. Most of what you asked and what you might ask was answered and is here already. 
To your last question - it is possible but not practical. Not economical for backyard refining in any way. Pd/Ag in monolithic caps on one motherboard is tiny fraction of a weight of board - that small you probably cant measure that without some hi tech scales.


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## tlcarrig (Oct 28, 2011)

jm, I'm in the middle of stripping down 48 CD drives and around 18 old 3 1/2 inch floppy drives. The only Au I have found on the floppys are the pins in the cable connector. What's nice is that over half ov them are plated right on through the header to the solder connections on the board.


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## Geo (Oct 28, 2011)

tlcarrig said:


> jm, I'm in the middle of stripping down 48 CD drives and around 18 old 3 1/2 inch floppy drives. The only Au I have found on the floppys are the pins in the cable connector. What's nice is that over half ov them are plated right on through the header to the solder connections on the board.



also each board should have a couple of small flatpacks, do not forget to remove these and store away for later processing.


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## patnor1011 (Oct 29, 2011)

Geo said:


> tlcarrig said:
> 
> 
> > jm, I'm in the middle of stripping down 48 CD drives and around 18 old 3 1/2 inch floppy drives. The only Au I have found on the floppys are the pins in the cable connector. What's nice is that over half ov them are plated right on through the header to the solder connections on the board.
> ...



Yes, they add up quite fast and gold in them is nice. I sometimes wonder that there may be probably more gold inside them on ram stick with 16 of them then plated on contact area aka finger. Well I try do do few more tests.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 7, 2011)

kjavanb123 said:


> I went through the entire bag that contained the e-scraps and most of them are CD-ROM drive I guess, but could find the following cards which seem to be audio and graphic cards, which seem to have the fingers you mentioned in your post here. Please advise
> 
> View attachment 4
> 
> ...



I also messed around with the copper coils in this board, and It weighed around 2.75 grams what seems to be pure copper from on that board. So by doing the math here;

150 gram board has 2.75 grams of pure copper coil
100 grams is 100 x 2.75 / 150 = 1.82% copper. which is pretty good for mining world to have this grade copper. Just a thought.

Thanks
Kevin


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## Geo (Nov 7, 2011)

kjavanb123 said:


> kjavanb123 said:
> 
> 
> > I went through the entire bag that contained the e-scraps and most of them are CD-ROM drive I guess, but could find the following cards which seem to be audio and graphic cards, which seem to have the fingers you mentioned in your post here. Please advise
> ...


actually the copper content is much higher than that.most boards have multi-layer leads which means there is copper inside the board itself.the entire board would have to be processed to retrieve all the copper and that is a bare board,remember that all the components on the board will most likely have copper legs.with my meager math skills ive estimated the copper yield from the average mother board to be between 1.5 to 2 pounds of copper per board.


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## Claudie (Nov 7, 2011)

Geo said:


> kjavanb123 said:
> 
> 
> > kjavanb123 said:
> ...




I think the average motherboard from a common desktop computer only weighs about one pound, so there cannot be more Copper than the whole board weighs. :|


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## Geo (Nov 7, 2011)

im sorry about the misprint,it was late.i meant that weight in a PC,after reading it i realize i said mother board and didnt add the whole PC.


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