# Keyboards



## Tankman (May 29, 2011)

Hi all.

First time I have posted on here. I have just started collecting keyboards and have found most of the small pcbs in them have gold plating. Is it worth while processing these?. Or are most of them just flash plated?. Thanks.


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## Claudie (May 29, 2011)

Some pictures of what you have would be helpful. Many keyboards have two sheets of Plastic/Mylar in them that contain silver. The wire can be sold as copper, some of the connector ends may contain gold, and then there is the plastic case and keys to recycle also.


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## rmi2416 (May 29, 2011)

I actually work for a custom industrial keyboard maker and some of the really expensive industrial keyboards do have gold. As for the plastic keyboards I have a small lot of them in the garage maybe I will crack a few of them open and take a look. I am really interested in the silver mentioned above.

Pics would help I will go take a pic of an industrial PCB real fast and post it on this thread.

Regards.
Ross


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## rmi2416 (May 29, 2011)

Here are some pics of industrial kyb PCb's. If you take a look the traces are gold plated at least I believe they are and I am pretty sure. 
As far as the internal Ground plan I believe it is copper. Not 100% sure

Hope this helps a little bit.

Regards,
Ross


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## Tankman (May 29, 2011)

Claudie said:


> Some pictures of what you have would be helpful. Many keyboards have two sheets of Plastic/Mylar in them that contain silver. The wire can be sold as copper, some of the connector ends may contain gold, and then there is the plastic case and keys to recycle also.




I have put the mylars aside for now until I get a few more kilos. Cannot take photos at the moment, so have supplied a link to better explain the pcbs.
Hope this helps.

http://www.craxor.com/foftar/


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## jimdoc (May 29, 2011)

If you search keyboard mylars you will find a lot of info on the silver.

Jim


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## qst42know (May 29, 2011)

The silver looks like grey ink on plastic and may be tarnished black.


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## Claudie (May 29, 2011)

What brand of keyboards are those in the pictures rmi2416?


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## rmi2416 (May 29, 2011)

I believe they came from a brand called econokeys sold by ikey I think http://www.ikey.com will take you to there site.

Regards,
Ross

Edited for more clarity:

Click on the econo-keys tab that is what the PCB's are from


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## Tankman (May 29, 2011)

Read a few posts about the mylars, but its the controller boards from the keyboards and the gold content in them. I have found nothing on here so far that tells me if they are worth processing. 

About 98% of them that I have collected have gold plating on them, with the silver/black dells (model SK-8135) having plating on both sides. I will post some photos in the next day or so.


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## Claudie (May 29, 2011)

rmi2416 said:


> I believe they came from a brand called econokeys sold by ikey I think http://www.ikey.com will take you to there site.
> 
> Regards,
> Ross
> ...



Thank you for the link to that site. I haven't ran across any of those....yet


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## jimdoc (May 29, 2011)

Tankman said:


> Read a few posts about the mylars, but its the controller boards from the keyboards and the gold content in them. I have found nothing on here so far that tells me if they are worth processing.
> 
> About 98% of them that I have collected have gold plating on them, with the silver/black dells (model SK-8135) having plating on both sides. I will post some photos in the next day or so.




The ones I have seen have the very light gold coating, like in some cellphones and cheap sound cards. I save all my boards to sell, they all go in a big box. I don't know if they are worth processing unless you are processing all your boards, and not cherry picking just the best ones like I do.

Jim


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## manorman (May 30, 2011)

I have found some like the third picture in 1980's adding machines, 
Mike


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## Tankman (May 31, 2011)

The ones I have seen have the very light gold coating, like in some cellphones and cheap sound cards. I save all my boards to sell, they all go in a big box. I don't know if they are worth processing unless you are processing all your boards, and not cherry picking just the best ones like I do.

Jim[/quote]

I am planning to do them all as a mixed lot. The photo shows some types collected so far. Make and models from top left, Compaq Kb-0133, top right IBM SK-8820 and bottom Dell SK-8135.


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## g_opolis (Jun 10, 2011)

Here's a few pics of some keyboard stuff, quite old. Obviously there are some that have more PM's than others.


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## oldgoldman (Jun 13, 2011)

Another old keybord version that survived


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## stihl88 (Jun 13, 2011)

Nice old boards indeed, keep an eye out for a tiny gold ball under each key tab. Some of the older manual switch type keyboards have what i believe to be a small gold ball stamped into the spring tab much like a small contact point.


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## vovikk (Jun 30, 2011)

Hey!
Got a pretty Keyboard board with gold-plated contacts
It is an "Olivetti" one.
Here are the pics:




View attachment 2


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## joem (Jul 3, 2011)

Along with the silver on mylars, wires, ferrite core, cable ends, some keytronic keyboards also have a gold strip on the printed circuit boards.
Some from Mexico have this but I have not all. I have not found any in the Chinese versions.


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