# Stripping Motherboards



## Anonymous (Aug 24, 2008)

Purchased a cheap short stroke air chisel, resharpened a chisel to resemble the profile of a wood chisel. Works like a hot damn.

Also lowered the air pressure to 60 lbs, helps to keep all them gold pins from flying around the shop.


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## Harold_V (Aug 24, 2008)

Excellent choice, Gill. 

I used to use an air chisel to ram the refractory in the tilt furnace I'd built. Came in handy to chip it before ramming, too. They're a mighty handy tool.

Harold


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## Anonymous (Aug 24, 2008)

I use my air chisel for everything, a neighbor once installed a new engine in his Mazda truck then let it sit a year or more. The clutch rusted to flywheel and pressure plate and would not release. The trans shop wanted hundreds of dollars to remedy the problem so the truck sat until one day he offered me the job at $100.00

I went over, jacked up the truck, removed the dust cover from the bell housing, had my wife depress the clutch pedal while I hammered on the flywheel with a blunt chisel on a brass block so as not to mar the flywheel, turned the wheel striking a new area.

Started the engine, gave the clutch a quick slip to remove the rest of the rust then went for the money. Job took about 15 minutes - easy hundred.

Operated the air chisel from a 20 lb propane tank using propane as my propellant.

I have a wicked Ingersoll Rand chisel with a 2" stroke and it hits hard, the one I purchased to use on the mother boards is a putter with a very short stroke.


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## Absolutsecurity (Aug 24, 2008)

One good spark as an ignition point and you would have been in a ball of fire with propane as your propellant!!!!!!!! :shock: 

Wow thats gotta be the scariest thing I have heard in a while! 

Are you still using propane??

That has to be the most expensive propellant also!!!!!!!!
:roll: 
Just a tought!

Glynn


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## Anonymous (Aug 24, 2008)

One time I had a contract to repaint the large 500 / 1000 gallon propane thanks at Cultus Lake B.C, used propane as my compressed propellant.

Using propane as a propellant is nothing new.

Here is a link to Propane powered paint ball gun.
http://www.specialopspaintball.com/articles/tippmannc3.asp

Aerosol Propellant (propane/ butane) Fire - Spray Paint - Arizona
http://www.chemaxx.com/fire3.htm

Propane Refrigerant
http://home.earthlink.net/~lenyr/refrig.htm


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## Absolutsecurity (Aug 24, 2008)

Wouldnt it be extremely costly over compressed AIR???????????

What is the benefit of PROPANE over AIR???? :? 

Just doesnt seem safe or make financial sense!!!! :? 

You can run a generator anywhere and a compressor off that right!!

Glynn


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## Anonymous (Aug 24, 2008)

Much easier to lug round a 100 lb bottle of propane then a 5 hp compressor.

My scrap truck also ran on propane it had a 216 liter tank, we had to remove the tires from any hulks we brought in. 

I had tapped into the vapor port of that 216 liter tank and ran my impact from it to remove lug nuts.

Propane was selling at the pump at $0.19 or less per liter back then.


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## Anonymous (Aug 26, 2008)

Stripping Mother Boards and cards with the air chisel has revealed that there is more gold to be had other then fingers, pins and flat packs and cpu's.

The old ISA and PCI plus the long memory slots have a touch of gold on the contacts, under the 386 / 486 cpu socket the contacts are gold plated, the Pentium slots have gold, some of the IC's which are press fit into sockets have gold plated contacts. Dip switches, and the video, parallel and serial port plug ins have gold contacts.

Using the air chisel breaks a lot of the ic's there is gold in a lot of them. 

I have collected and disassembled electric word processors, these have gold under the keys, electric cash registers also have gold under the keys.

My hammer mill does a great job liberating the gold from those nasty metal clad video card ports and the like. I now have approximately 20 lbs of various pins and contacts, plus half a 45 gallon drum of pulverized chips and various boards which had gold traces.

I'm going to incinerate the pulverized material before processing, this should reduce it further making the lot more manageable.

After this has been processed, my rewards reaped I'm going to retire from e-scrap precious metals refining.

I do not envy anyone on the forum who claims to have truck loads or a garage full of e-scrap. It has taken me six months to get this far with the junk I have. I want my shop back.


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## Harold_V (Aug 26, 2008)

gustavus said:


> I do not envy anyone on the forum who claims to have truck loads or a garage full of e-scrap. It has taken me six months to get this far with the junk I have. I want my shop back.


You now likely understand why I avoided e scrap when I refined. The effort expended in recovering an ounce of gold would easily process 100 ounces of karat gold. 

Harold


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## goldsilverpro (Aug 26, 2008)

That's why the big guys just burn everything.


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## Harold_V (Aug 26, 2008)

Yep!

*Incineration* 

a refiner's best friend. 

Harold


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## Rag and Bone (Aug 26, 2008)

I wish there was a clean, small-scale method to incinerate e-scrap. It would be so nice to concentrate values from the mountain of low yield boards.


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## goldsilverpro (Aug 26, 2008)

Burning that stuff is so black, stinking, and toxic. In any sort of volume, you have to have the equipment (baghouse, etc) and a permit to do it.


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