# Gold Filled Scrap Findings



## gold_desire (Mar 4, 2012)

Hello, I am new to the forum... I have looked through some posts and can find some opinions on where to find gold filled scrap, but are there any recent places to find it. I have found it all over eBay but the prices are crazy. I am a begginer to refining gold filled and am looking for a good source. I have access to pritty much an infinite supply (slowly) to gold plated e-scrap, but don't have the time to strip everything down. I can get computer scrap and laptop/cell phone scrap whenever I want. Any help to good sources of gold filled would be great. Thank you all, and hope to learn alot from the site.


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## Claudie (Mar 4, 2012)

If you don't have the time to strip electronics down to get the better stuff, where will you get the time to refine Golf filled? I think some people get karat Gold and Gold filled items at flea markets and garage sales, but that is a time consuming process too. If you do figure out a way to make money from refining Gold without putting time into it, please let the rest of us know so we can do it too. :|


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## gold_desire (Mar 4, 2012)

I have been refining the gold filled. Just for the e-scrap I guess I just havn't read enough about it. Taking the pins and such out of it takes alot of time for me, maybe if I keep practicing I will get better at it. Does anybody have alot of luck getting profit from the e-scrap just as a hobby? I can only devote enough time as a hobby, I have loved learning everything I have up to this point so maybe I will just keep learning and do the e-scrap, I'm sure there are some pointers on this site? Thanks to all for the help so far.


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## Claudie (Mar 4, 2012)

You don't need to pull the pins from the plastic holders in order to get the Gold. For example, the ribbon end connectors contain some Gold and you can just remove the plastic ends from the cable and put them in AP. That saves a lot of time. :|


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## ericrm (Mar 4, 2012)

to make it economicaly profitable forget the hobby....escrap are the pain in paincovery... YOU as a hobbyist will not put a systeme efficient enuf to have an pleasant recovery.
do you have somewhere to work with chemical ,including a fume hood(i you dont care for your healt ,i bet you will care about the fact that everyting that can oxide will oxide)this WILL cost money
do you have a way to have reagent grade chemical ,if not, you will have to invest in equipment to make your own ,that will cost money
do you have equipment to make your basic systeme for ap(witch is very usefull since it is the only chemical to deal with tin) a couple hdpe container, air bubler, plastic tube.$$
do you have something to burn down chip or cpu,if not forget about treating those in fiber 
do you have something to gring to powder ceramic, (some think theyr is gold inside some dont but what i know is ceramic cpu hold value even with all the base metal removei have a theory to be tested but im pretty sure) ,if not forget about ceramic cpu
beaker,hotplate,glass rod,melting equipment,melting dish...............just the basic will need a few 100$

now memory,and slot 1, hard drive board ,you will have more money selling them complete than just removing the yellow gold on them

what you are left with is golden pin and theyr isnt a lot on a motherboard ,and forget about putting the white or black plastic that hold pins (except for those for ata cable)in ap ,this plastic form jelly.....

escrap need to be taken seriously ,PROFESSIONNALY, 

maybe i sound alarmist or extremist but i have finaly an occasion to tell what is think about this game

you could do finger and plated gold ,if you buy them by the pound ,
if you deal with complete computer as in: i have 8 computer in the garage and i want to recover gold from them, you will actualy loose money vs what you would receive selling them to guy like me...


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## goldsilverpro (Mar 4, 2012)

We used to get tons of excellent gold filled scrap sheet after objects have been stamped from it. Check manufacturers of badges, lodge pins, company pins, etc.


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## artart47 (Mar 5, 2012)

Hi!
ericrm... you mensioned the plastic pin-holders turning to jelly. I run ap batches of plastic pin holders and small cable ends. The ones I have now, just started filtering the tonite, have been in the bucket for a month. mew ones are added, floaters are scimmed and examined to see if they are empty yet. I get consistent filters of gold flecks and pwder and have had no melting of plastic or jelling. when I had the idea of doing these I did test batches and found that when I got the peroxide to about 30% of the solution by volume, the melting would happen ( using 3% peroxide).
I started it with 90% HCl(32%) and 10% peroxide and I only run air once in a while for 3-4hrs. 
It's slow but it's a nice little supply of gold

artart47


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## Claudie (Mar 5, 2012)

Some of them will get mushy, it depends on the type of plastic they are made from. The black ones have never given me any problems in the past, but the white ones can sometimes get soft. I have never tried putting the rubbery connectors, like the ones you see on the ends of some older keyboards or monitors, in a solution. Ya know, my bucket is white but it doesn't get soft.... :|


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## ericrm (Mar 5, 2012)

the white one that old isa card ,the black one for memory,those for slot1 ,when put them in presence of HCl will become slimmy and trap they golden pins
the black one from ata usualy dont make probleme
i haven tested everyone of them since it is a dead end for me to deal with these in acid...
anyway if you manage to deal with 10 lbs of those problematic (for me)connector and dont have any probleme feel free to share your result :mrgreen:


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## ericrm (Mar 5, 2012)

with the downing of the price for p4 and recent motherboard,i was looking to find way around ,and end up with this


dont tel me that it work for you ,it obviously wont , this is no h202 ,just COLD HCl.


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## Claudie (Mar 5, 2012)

I have never tried throwing a whole motherboard into solution before. I usually separate the pins, back planes, CPU seats, or whatever else I am wanting to process and just put the parts into solution. Here are 2 photographs showing a sample of some material I have processed this way. You can clearly see a back plane, CPU seat, some white pin holders, some black ones, and more. I think it must be the different types of plastics. Some will dissolve in solution but some do not. I have had some of the white ones that DO dissolve, I try not to put them in solution anymore. 












EDIT: These were in HCL/H2O2 for over a week.


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## artart47 (Mar 5, 2012)

Hi! 
I'm not the kind to B>S> people. I like to try to report my results the best I can so that per-haps it can help someone! I feel bad seeing the results of your attempt. there could be somethingelse that would make cold HCl do that? I haven't done any of those kind of pieces,but had planned on doing more experimenting when I have time. I remember a movie where they were trying to save a flower from the rainforest...the cure was in the ants that visited the flower.
It would be interesting to pull the same unit from boards of different ages. may-be they started using chinese parts made from gram crackers or something!
I pick up stacks of the pieces in my hand and blast a spreybottle thru them and little gold flecks wash out. Most of them look as though you couldstick new pins in them and reuse them.
The ultimate would be if they stand up to HCl/Cl so I can forget the spreying!


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## ericrm (Mar 5, 2012)

artart47 said:


> Hi!
> I remember a movie where they were trying to save a flower from the rainforest...the cure was in the ants that visited the flower.


one of my best 20 film ever



artart47 said:


> I get consistent filters of gold flecks and pwder and have had no melting of plastic or jelling. when I had the idea of doing these I did test batches and found that when I got the peroxide to about 30% of the solution by volume, the melting would happen ( using 3% peroxide).


the probleme is ,your telling that you treat all plastic without probleme since you use only 3% peroxide... BUT THIS IS WRONG 
first it isnt h2o2 but hcl that atack those plastic and two the reason why that plastic didnt form goo is because you DONT have those particular plastic in your bucket....


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## Claudie (Mar 5, 2012)

I agree about not having that type of connector in my bucket. I think there may be a communication problem, language barrier thing going on here. I am not disagreeing with what you are saying.


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## artart47 (Mar 5, 2012)

same here! I diden't run into those plastics yet. I just began thinking that may-be some board makers started changing to cheaper or different plastics for some parts. Almost all the stuff I get is quite old or is from factories. If I start doing newer stuff I may have the same problem.

artart47


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## Geo (Mar 6, 2012)

ive ran into these problems early on and had a thread about it. from what i learned, hcl acts as a solvent for some pvc plastics. plasticized pvc is vulnerable to break down in concentrated hcl. the more flexible or soft the plastic is, the easier it is to break down. you can refer to the socket manufacturer for content of the plastic to see which ones are plasticized.


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## ericrm (Mar 6, 2012)

thank Geo 
i didnt know what kind of plastic that was.
did you find a way to treat them other than incineration(if it is not a commercial secret of course)dont laught, we are all in the same business and must protect our intrest...... :|


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## lazersteve (Mar 16, 2012)

This thread demonstrates the importance of knowing the axiom: *GIGO* (Garbage In Garbage Out).

The point is, know your scrap types and use the best method for processing that one type of scrap. Keep good notes on what works with each type of scrap and mix similarly reactive scrap in the same batch, but don't mix types of scrap that react differently to the solvents you choose.

Personally I would never try processing a whole motherboard directly in *any* solvent for more reasons than just plastics that don't play nice with acids.

Save yourself a lot of headaches and quit trying to cut corners. Harvest the valuable parts and process them without all the other garbage that is causing you so much grief. If you manage to get your hands on a load of manufacturers scrap that is homogenus then do some up front small scale tests with the various solvents and find a solvent that works best for that type of scrap. There are way too many variables involved to successfully process whole boards right out of the unit.

Steve


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