# gold plating recovery



## johnleivers15 (Feb 4, 2015)

Hello everyone

I have a question about reclaiming gold from plated items mainly gold plated plastics. The company i work for has recently scraped the idea of buying in plastic gold plated items because of the amount of failed items in QC misshapen etc instead we now plate our own stuff using stainless steel replicas of the plastic items. Last week we had a clear out of the stores area to revamp the rooms (boss hates clutter) any unused failed items got skipped including the gold plated items. Thinking there was money to be made i asked the main gaffer (company owner) if i could have the plated items that was destine for land fill and he agreed but said he doubted that they are worth the cost of reclaiming the gold and joked about cash for gold companies. Anyways I contacted a company about the items and they just wanted to know the weight of the items altogether, how many and not much more. The reply was they charge £100 to recover the gold and he said it may struggle to even cover the recovery cost ! he may well be right but........how can he accurately say without knowing the surface area of each item just by weight alone? When these items was sent to a company to be plated they charged 85p each to do them. my question is........ dose anyone know any better? will it be worth it? roughly what will it be worth? lots of questions i know.

Here are the important bits-

There are two different types of items

First item has a surface area of 26.21 cm² it has a thickness 1 micron mµ of gold. I have x 4,573 of these.

Second item has a surface area of 10.38 cm² it also has a thickness of 1 micron of gold. I have X 3332 of these.

They all fit into two bin bags and weigh 12.5 kg.

Some are over-plated but that cannot be taken into account.

Any help would be much appreciated even if you are just confirming what the company guy already told me and what my gaffer said :roll: 


Cheers John


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## goldsilverpro (Feb 4, 2015)

johnleivers15 said:


> Hello everyone
> 
> I have a question about reclaiming gold from plated items mainly gold plated plastics. The company i work for has recently scraped the idea of buying in plastic gold plated items because of the amount of failed items in QC misshapen etc instead we now plate our own stuff using stainless steel replicas of the plastic items. Last week we had a clear out of the stores area to revamp the rooms (boss hates clutter) any unused failed items got skipped including the gold plated items. Thinking there was money to be made i asked the main gaffer (company owner) if i could have the plated items that was destine for land fill and he agreed but said he doubted that they are worth the cost of reclaiming the gold and joked about cash for gold companies. Anyways I contacted a company about the items and they just wanted to know the weight of the items altogether, how many and not much more. The reply was they charge £100 to recover the gold and he said it may struggle to even cover the recovery cost ! he may well be right but........how can he accurately say without knowing the surface area of each item just by weight alone? When these items was sent to a company to be plated they charged 85p each to do them. my question is........ dose anyone know any better? will it be worth it? roughly what will it be worth? lots of questions i know.
> 
> ...



The 1st item, with a gold plated area of 26.21cm2 (4 in2) and a gold thickness of 1 micron (.000040"). I prefer using in2 and inches. 

The formula is:
grams of gold = (thickness in inches) X (316.3) X (sq.in. of gold/part) X (number of parts) 

or, in this case, (.000040) X (316.3) X (4) X (4573) = 231 grams of gold, or 7.44 troy oz of gold, or $9,405 at a $1264 gold market.

The 2nd item figures out to be a total of 2.14 tr oz, or $2,713

Assuming that your figures are correct and that I made no errors, that's a pretty good chunk of change. You'll never get that much but it gives you a place to start. If I still had a refinery, I would probably charge about 20% to refine them, if they were a job that only required stripping and your figures are correct. 

If you sell these, don't mix them together if possible. If you mix them, that will raise doubts (gray area) and allow the buyer or refiner to cheat you somewhat if he so desires. I would also have an independent lab, with fire assay capabilities, analyze both types separately before selling them or having them refined. Both types should be analyzed in duplicate (4 assays total).


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## eastky (Feb 4, 2015)

26.21 cm2 = 4.06in2 X 4573 = 18566.38
10.38 cm2 = 1.60 in2 X 3332 = 5331.2

23899 square inches X 1 micron thick the 7.55 grams $306.00 gold value

Believe I got micron confused with micro inch again Sorry

GSP is right. High return in gold recovery.


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## Lou (Feb 4, 2015)

If it's just plastic, dilute HCl and some oxidant (probably peroxide or even bleach) are best. Rinse the buggers off and precipitate the gold any ol' which way discussed on this forum.
Liquids probably have nickel/copper. That can be treated with simple lime and disposed of for cheap.


I presume you're in UK, so maybe just ask Mr. Spaceships (Jon) to run them for you.


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## johnleivers15 (Feb 4, 2015)

Thank you very much for your replys. I did get the same result when using a gold calculator I found http://www.goldnscrap.com/index.php/calculators/72-gold-plating-calculator <<<< found there had to covert stuff to in² I didn't find that calculator until tonight though. I just need to find the refiner to do the job now and get them properly Analise. I can Analise gold plating on stainless or circuit pcb board because I have access to an xlam x-rax machine but i do not have the program to x-ray gold on plastic which is a shame. Suppose i could get the program from the support people though.

Thanks very much again for everyone's help.


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## ssabovic (Feb 5, 2015)

even if you do not have program on x-ray gold you can read gold it comes as w(tungsten)and se(selenium) in combination to show to you presence of gold , and you can go on main manu highlite spectrum -go to highest pick and you can see gold .
good loock.


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## johnleivers15 (Feb 5, 2015)

Thanks, i am using a fiscerscope x-ray machine. I can pick up the 3 peaks for gold then another metal underneath and its nickel so plastic has been coated with nickel then plated with gold on top.


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## johnleivers15 (Feb 5, 2015)

johnleivers15 said:


> Thanks, i am using a fiscerscope x-ray machine. I can pick up the 3 peaks for gold then another metal underneath and its nickel so plastic has been coated with nickel then plated with gold on top.


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## goldsilverpro (Feb 5, 2015)

For actual real values, I would definitely go fire assay. I have no faith in xray for this sort of thing. Besides being more accurate, with fire assay you can actually hold the gold from the entire part in your hand .


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## johnleivers15 (Mar 9, 2015)

Sorry to revive my first ever post :lol: Today I took all the plastic gold plated housing and optics to a refiner in Birmingham fingers crossed might make a decent amount. All together they weighed in at 18.05 kg that's 14,070 pieces 8)


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