# Seperating and Classifying Ore & E-Scrap



## rusty (Oct 5, 2010)

Seems we started from the top working our way down the ladder.


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## dtectr (Oct 5, 2010)

i had some thoughts a while back about your cone design seperator - would it be easier, possibly, to seperate the lighter "dross"/junk from the top, leaving the heavies concentrated in the bottom, until such a time as they reached a predetermined level, such as indicated in a inspection window or something similar? then a baffle could be opened, the cone turned at a lower rpm & heavies dropped & moved to next step of seperation, & the cone fired back up again?
just an idea ...


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## rusty (Oct 5, 2010)

dtectr said:


> i had some thoughts a while back about your cone design seperator - would it be easier, possibly, to seperate the lighter "dross"/junk from the top, leaving the heavies concentrated in the bottom, until such a time as they reached a predetermined level, such as indicated in a inspection window or something similar? then a baffle could be opened, the cone turned at a lower rpm & heavies dropped & moved to next step of seperation, & the cone fired back up again?
> just an idea ...



Right on the money, run your pulp wet with just a dab of soap to avoid loss of values. The heavy cons pack hard as cement.


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## rusty (Oct 6, 2010)

I think this test batch of silver should be run through the mill again using a smaller screen, then I think a vibrating table along the lines of a shaker table will sort the silver from the rest of the garbage.

I'll use the linear vibrating magnet to power a small table with riffles, an electric pump from a washing machine to re-circulate the water.

Do you think this would work - ideas anyone.


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## qst42know (Oct 6, 2010)

I think if anyone is going to get it to work, you will. 8)


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## rusty (Oct 6, 2010)

qst42know said:


> I think if anyone is going to get it to work, you will. 8)



Thanks for the encouraging words, th science of classifying metals that you need a magnifying glass to see is all very new to me.

We know the wilfley table aka shaker table is an excellent choice to recover fine gold. it's been done before, just giving a new twist to old technology.


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## rusty (Oct 8, 2010)

Acquired the materials needed for my drum magnet this afternoon, should prove to be an interesting and useful project.

The intended construction, I'm going to remove the magnets from the flywheels from lawnmower engines then insert these into either a PVC or stainless steel pipe fitted onto bearings and a pulley to drive the drum then have a scraper to remove the magnetics as the drum is turning so cleaning will be constant,

To fill the void inside the pipe and hold the magnets in place I will blow in some expanding foam.

You could also salvage fridge door magnets, they are soft and pliable you can roll them up small enough to fit inside a 3 inch diameter PVC pipe to make a cheap drum magnet. Just be sure to use thin wall PVC as these magnets are not very strong.

The pictures below give an example of what you can do with a fridge magnet.


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## Chumbawamba (Oct 9, 2010)

I'll give this more thought as I share your enthusiasm for separating silver contacts from relay reeds. I think you're on the right track with gravity separation.

I've heard of "gold magnets" before. Just did a little research and found this cat:

http://www.thelostdutchmangoldmine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1343

Seems he "broke the rules" of physics and created an "electrostatic induction" magnet that can pick up not only non-ferrous metals such as gold, silver, copper, etc., but also wood, stone, and bugs(!) He began exhibiting it earlier this year. It sounds like maybe it induces a static charge in the item it is near and then produces an opposite charge to attract the item to the magnet? I'm trying to find out more as this could revolutionize our little hobby.

In the meantime, what lead me to him was an idea that if one could induce a current in a solid (such as gold), then tune some sort of "magnet" that would only attract at that frequency, then one might be able to make a magnet that could pick out, say, silver bits from a bunch of copper bits. Perhaps casting an electromagnetic field at some frequency of oscillating current will "tune" to particular metals, each having its own "response" frequency.

The more simple solution for the present task, however, seems to be to simply cut the silver buttons from the reeds, leaving very little of the mounting material, then dissolve in acid and recover in pure form.


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## rusty (Oct 9, 2010)

Chumbawamba said:


> I'll give this more thought as I share your enthusiasm for separating silver contacts from relay reeds. I think you're on the right track with gravity separation.
> 
> I've heard of "gold magnets" before. Just did a little research and found this cat:
> 
> http://www.thelostdutchmangoldmine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1343



I'll be sure to check that thread latter in the evening, thanks for the link.



Chumbawamba said:


> The more simple solution for the present task, however, seems to be to simply cut the silver buttons from the reeds, leaving very little of the mounting material, then dissolve in acid and recover in pure form.



I don;'t have the patience for this type of monotonous work sitting for hours snipping contacts. The pile below is what I acquired from the several landfill sites we visited this afternoon.

These come from the timers from washing machine, cloths dryer and dish washer timers, also the rheostats from electric ranges and hot water tanks.


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## Chumbawamba (Oct 9, 2010)

rusty said:


> I don;'t have the patience for this type of monotonous work sitting for hours snipping contacts. The pile below is what I acquired from the several landfill sites we visited this afternoon.



Point taken. That's quite a nice pile of potential silver


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## rusty (Oct 9, 2010)

:twisted:


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## Chumbawamba (Oct 10, 2010)

Gil,

I have you to thank for knowing where to look for the silver 

You should really go after circuit breakers, if you can find them. Especially the industrial, high amperage, three phase stuff. I have some Westinghouse 3-phase breakers that have several nice big silver-tungsten contacts each. They each weigh a couple grams. I'm not sure what the alloy ratio is but I'm guessing 80/20? Anyway, you probably know this already 

One note on the big breakers that tend to have lots of silver: they also can have good resale value. This place called Relectric in Sacramento, California, sells used and/or discontinued breakers and other electrical parts. I called them to see if they had any interest in my Westinghouse breakers and also a batch of Cutler-Hammer relays but they were too old to be of use to them, so they are going to be raped for their silver contacts. But I would definitely call them if you get a large lot of used breakers before tearing into them. Would probably be worth much more than the silver content.

http://www.relectric.com/Home/Purchasing


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## Harold_V (Oct 10, 2010)

Chumbawamba said:


> I'm not sure what the alloy ratio is but I'm guessing 80/20?


Trusting to memory, I recall that yield was less than, but near 50%. 

Harold


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## rusty (Oct 10, 2010)

acid to leach out the silver.


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## rusty (Oct 10, 2010)

Chumbawamba I hand sorted the reeds then feed the whole lot through the hammer mill using a 1/8" minus screen. 

If you look closely at the picture you will see the silver laying on the bottom of the pan as powder. Since the silver is much softer than the berry copper it is abraded off the reeds inside the harsh environment of the hammer mill.


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## Chumbawamba (Oct 10, 2010)

Very interesting. So now we need to figure out how to separate the silver from the copper.

There still seem to be some reeds with their buttons intact. Perhaps you need to turn up the speed and let the hammer mill really shred those things into granules that can then be either gravity separated or run through eddy currents or something.

How did you end up getting rid of the plastic?


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## rusty (Oct 10, 2010)

I think the shaker table would work perfect, the specif gravity between beryllium copper and silver is great enough to have good effect in separation better still if your silver has been alloyed with cadmium, palladium or gold as some miniature contacts are.

Better yet is the reeds that the contacts are attached too are beryllium copper which is far lighter than pure copper making it easier to separate from the silver by means of gravity separation.


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## Chumbawamba (Oct 11, 2010)

Aha, so that's what you meant by "berry copper"  I read up on it before so I know it has special applications for electrical stuff, but I forget the specifics.

And you're correct, the S.G. of beryllium copper would be far less, making table separation feasible.

But again, how did you get rid of the plastic? Did you float it off in a tank or burn it off?

On a semi-related note, I took apart one of those micro-switches last night and it had really tiny contacts, which usually means they're made of something good. I looked up the part and found it:

http://www.omron.com/ecb/products/sw/11/vx.html

Here's the data sheet:

http://www.omron.com/ecb/products/pdf/en-vx.pdf

Note on page 3, the box "Contact Specifications". The one I took apart was the VX-01 series, making the contacts a gold alloy. Don't get excited, they were tiny...puny is more like it. You'd need to collect hundreds to get any appreciable amount. I noticed they were attracted pretty readily to my NdFeB magnet. Would the alloy perhaps be gold-nickel? Gold-cobolt?


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## rusty (Oct 11, 2010)

Don't wait on me.


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## rusty (Oct 13, 2010)

I have abandoned all my other crazy ideas


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## rusty (Oct 14, 2010)

A big step forward, I knew from last year that the gold was abrading off going into the ash while in the ball mill.

This year learned how to use this to my advantage, yesterday I loaded a bunch of pins, gold plated cpu tops into the mill along with some IC's this morning sure enough the gold has abraded off.

I did run the mill for an extended time of 24 hours, the job may have been completed in less time but wanted to be sure the gold had abraded off of the pins.

The next load is going to be all pins with a handful of sandblasting media to assist with abrading the gold off, once the milled pins have been removed from the mill and the pins screened out working with a handful of gold bearing dust will be much easier to process.

To assure that I collect all the values from the spent pins I do my screening with my screen submerged under water.

I think this method is going to be a great success in concentrating the gold values off of this large lot of pins I have to process, just thought I would share my discovery with our forum members.


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## joem (Oct 14, 2010)

rusty said:


> A big step forward, I knew from last year that the gold was abrading off going into the ash while in the ball mill.
> 
> This year learned how to use this to my advantage, yesterday I loaded a bunch of pins, gold plated cpu tops into the mill along with some IC's this morning sure enough the gold has abraded off.
> 
> ...



You definatly got my attention and woke my brain up. What size of screen do you use? How would I process the powder without nitric ( It's hard to get here), Just HCL to dissolve other metals but not gold or HCL+Clorox to dissolve thin particles then drop? 
And Mechanical wise: If I have small amounts of pins at a time (say 1/2 a cup) could I buy a rock tumbler (like kids use to polish stones)?


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## rusty (Oct 14, 2010)

joem said:


> rusty said:
> 
> 
> > A big step forward, I knew from last year that the gold was abrading off going into the ash while in the ball mill.
> ...



I think that one of the 2 gallon tumblers maybe large enough to abrade the gold off. and don't think that adding an abrasive is actually needed for large lots.

You could probably throw in some fingers along with your pins to wear the gold off, fingers alone would not abrade well. No balls necessary.

For small lots you may have to add some sort of a collector, like I'm using the dust from the milled IC's. Back when I was in school the janitor used sawdust on the floor while sweeping to contain the dust.

You could build a tumbler from an old tire like this one, http://www.acc.umu.se/~widmark/lwtrumla.html

Might be wise to rum a tire tumbler with a bit of water to keep your dust where you want it. To empty the tire tumbler use a damp filter paper then incinerate to collect the values.

I stole the screen from my wifes kitchen.

Credits for the large tire tumbler pdf file belong to Alan Silverstein, [email protected]


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## rusty (Oct 15, 2010)

Twenty liters of Gold pins abrading in the ball mill, run time 14 hours, grinding media - plastic.

Observation, the thinly plated newer pins the gold has worn off, the older pins some gold has diminished but still needs another 12 - 14 hours of run time. 

The nickel layer under the gold plating is much better than the gold and is staying attached to the pins.

October 16/2010 emptied the ball mill, observations. The pins and gold plated cpu tops you would get from PC scrap have all the gold abraded off, some of the pins I loaded into the mill were from another source and the gold is plated much heavier these have approximately 80 percent of the gold abraded from them.

The nickel plating underlay is staying affixed very nicely to the pins.

All I used for grinding media was the shredded plastic perhaps a more aggressive media would have removed the gold quicker.

Screening out the powder, and another four 20 liter pails of pins left to mill. this lot has some shredded iron which will help to abrade the gold off.

October 16 2010 9:57 PM put the plastic and pins from the original load back into the mill, this time running wet.

October 17 2010 10:00 am Success running the pins wet removed all the gold, loaded a fresh 30 liters of pins - wet.
October 17 2010 8:15 pm emptied ball mill, gold has abraded off the low grade pins with great success.

After screening the pins the plastic are damp to the feel, but still has plenty of liquids clinging on. A short video and some pictures showing the liquids being extracted from the pulp. About 2 liters I would think.

In the last picture you will notice the water has a brown muddy look to it, this is the gold which has been abraded from the pins.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hpHG4HK_nI[/youtube]

View attachment 3


View attachment 2




View attachment 1


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## rusty (Oct 18, 2010)

If you had a lot of pins to process, you could use an apartment size washing machine that has a spin dryer. The last Hitachi I wrecked out had a plastic spin drum along with plastic tubs. So you really don;t need any fancy equipment to run this process. 

Once the plugs have been shredded from the hammer mill, I add everything into the ball mill for abrading and run this wet with a bit of soap added to my water. 

For 30 liters of pins and mixed plastic I add 20 liters of water for my second batch of pins I recycled the water from my first batch after the powder had mostly settled out.

Once you unload the pulp and screen it if you don't want to build a centrifuge just give your pulp an extra rinse to wash off any excess gold powder.let this settle overnight then siphon off the top liquid and filter out the powder for further processing.

Hope this is of some help to our members. I know it saved me a lot of time and grief worrying how to deal with all that shredded metal and plastic from the plugs with the pins mixed in.


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## rusty (Oct 18, 2010)

Finished milling and abrading the pins from a total of 230 liters shredded cable end plugs, now I've got 40 liters of liquids to filter out, heavy with brown mud and I suspect some other impurities but this is what refining precious metals is all about - elimination. 

The fine gold does not settle well at all, and I do not have the patience to wait out 40 liters to settle out.

Some of you may be old enough to remember the felt hats men wore back in the 1950's early 60's, I have removed the head band and liner from one then inverted the hat into the centrifuge opening only to hold the felt in place while filtering.

Plenty of surface area on the felt hat and the filtering is going fairly quick, the liquids coming off are so clear you would think it were spring water. 

Of course I'll have to incinerate the hat to reclaim the values, which is not bad since everything needed incinerating anyhow before refining.

Well I think that about wraps up this thread for me.


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## samuel-a (Oct 18, 2010)

rusty said:


> Well I think that about wraps up this thread for me.



Gil
That's good info.
I think you should call it once you finish the refining stage of the filtered matirial.
The whole process is very interesting aswell as the final outcome and your investment in that project is amazing, it's very interesting to know the yields out of thous pins using that mathod.

Thanks
Sam


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## rusty (Oct 18, 2010)

A another discovery which requires a reply from one of our chemists on board, if only to keep this post truthful.

I have two twenty liter pails full of brown liquid recovered from abrading the gold plated pins in the ball mill. 

The one pail was filled last evening and this morning the powder had still refused to settle out, here is where is gets interesting.

This afternoon I emptied out the ball mill adding the liquid form the mill to another pail, then started filtering the first pail through a felt hat plus using my 4 liter buchner filter with coffee filters.

The gallon jar I"m using with the buchner was half full of copper chloride from another job which I left in, anyhow the gold is so finely divided from milling the coffee filters tripled allow the gold to pass. So I dumped the waste from the gallon jar back into the 20 liter bucket with the brown powder that has escaped the filter.. 

This was just before the wife called me in for supper. Later this evening I went out to attend to my filters refilling them.

The first pail from last evening still has the brown powder not settled out, what struck me funny is the pail I added the copper chloride too, the powder is settling fast with a nice clear layer of water on top.

I have now transfered the clear liquids over the the muddy pail and we shall see what the morning brings.

I might add that the copper chloride in the gallon jar was only rinse water from a previous filtering job, just enough to give some color. I was not concerned about adding the copper chloride as part of my refining process will be to incinerate the powder.

Question is why has this happened, I'm rather pleased with the situation, especially when the contaminate is added during the first phases of my refining.


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## Platdigger (Oct 18, 2010)

Is there any chance that copper chloride was even a little bit acidic?


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## rusty (Oct 19, 2010)

Platdigger said:


> Is there any chance that copper chloride was even a little bit acidic?



Yes, I just went out to the shop then added half a cup of HCL to another small batch I had, same thing the mud has started to settle out already.

When you have gallons of this stuff to filter this is helpful to know. Hopefully there will some mud left behind.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Oct 19, 2010)

rusty said:


> Platdigger said:
> 
> 
> > Is there any chance that copper chloride was even a little bit acidic?
> ...




Hopefully gold mud. 8)


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## samuel-a (Oct 19, 2010)

Gil

Take a small sample of the settled mud and put in new clean HCL. 
if color change is visible within the first cuple of minutes to green/yellow at room temp, that mean that what's suspended in your water buckets is impurities mostly, but they can trap some gold with them.
what ever left is gold.


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## rusty (Oct 20, 2010)

A brief description of the process outlined in this thread.

I started with one 45 gallon barrel plus 1 pail of plastic cable end connectors with gold plated pins. To liberate the pins feed the plugs through a hammer mill using a screen with 3/8" holes which gives you and industry standard of 3/8" minus coming from the mill. 

Theoretically nothing larger than 3/8 inch will escape the mill.

The pulp discharged form the hammer mill now 3/8" - consisted of shredded plastic, bits of iron , the pulp was now screened by hand using a screen of 1/4 inch holes to extract the larger bits of plastic and iron.

This screen material now consisting of mostly pins and some smaller pieces of plastic was feed directly into a ball mill running in water to assist in abrading the gold from the pins, the shredded plastic was the only other grinding media. Run time 12 / 14 hours.

Once this material is removed from the ball mill, the pulp was feed directly into a centrifuge to extract the liquids from the pulp which carried with it the fine powders containing the gold we're chasing.

Further processing of the powders, the lot was put into HCL then heated over a Coleman, then filtered, washed and filtered before going to AR.

About the mud processed in AR the filtered liquids are green - tested with stannous using a q-tip swab the color leans towards brown. 

Diluted solution on filter paper gives a large blotch of purple with green in the center that looks like someone smudged the green color in. But very visible just the same - suggesting there is palladium present.

Observing the stannous on the filter paper after it has sat several minutes have now noted there is more green showing up on the perimeter of the purple.

FYI the volume of liquids recovered from AR is so far is almost 1 full Canadian gallon =160 fluid oz. I still have 10 liters of liquids to filter out then incinerate the felt hat which has now become so clogged that only a drip comes from it every minute or so.

The felt hat is working very well at capturing the very finest of fines, the filtrate is coming off nice and clear with no sediment in the waste water after two days of being undisturbed.

The felt hat holds one gallon of liquids and would hold much more if the rim were not folded over to secure the hat in place.

The only change I would make is that next time I would add HCL to each pail of liquid before filtering.

To finalize this experiment I'm going to hand screen the waste pulp to see if the centrifuge left any values attached.

Cheers from
Rusty


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## Barren Realms 007 (Oct 20, 2010)

Have you considered turning the hat inside out and washing the material out of it?


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