# Silver bearing components and parts



## patnor1011 (Jul 10, 2009)

While we have plenty of pictures of different gold bearing parts and componenets here I noticed that there is not much of them with silver. I am sure that members here have few pictures each in their computers so I am thinking....i want to put as much of these pictures with small description, pointers into some .doc or .pdf file for all members for download and reference when looking for silver. if there is anyone who want to participate you can send me those photos to my email. ill be happy for as much of them as you can find... 

what do you think about that?


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## lazersteve (Jul 10, 2009)

I've posted several sources of silver and GSP has posted a very comprehensive list himself.

The obvious ones are silver flatware and jewelry.

In e-scrap look for silver mica capacitors, monolithics, keyboard and other mylars, and sometimes even solder. Another major source of silver is contact points in reed switches, relays, and slide/push buttons.

It would be a shame to forget the photography sources also.

Steve


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## patnor1011 (Jul 10, 2009)

thanks steve.
that was it... I just preparing that sort of list with pictures and want as many as possible. dont want to post them on site, want to keep costs for noxx as low as possible and to put them into file which can be downloaded from some outside source... all pictures received will be marked with source...


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## Anonymous (Jul 11, 2009)

Hello Pat I'll send you some pictures tomorrow afternoon, charging up the camera.

I'm not sure to many would take the time to salvage the silver I collect, some of my sources are , electric range oven and element rheostat, washing machine and dryer timers, rheostat from hot water tanks, electric furnace have sequencers, magnetic motor start switches,circuit breakers from old buildings, miscellaneous cube relays.

Another source I have recently started collecting from is from discarded refrigerators and freezers, the motor has a start relay, inside there is a rheostat then all the silver soldered copper joints.

Commercial produce coolers and air conditioners have large condensers and evaporator coils, the copper tube is formed on one end then passed through the aluminum fins, at the one end an elbow has been silver soldered to complete to radiator as it were ( evaporator - condenser ).

To process the refrigeration silver, I'm going to build a copper cell, collecting the silver/cadmium alloy in an anode bag, then process this in a silver cell.

Collecting and processing silver contacts a big chore, especially liberating the contact from the bus. I"m going to do a test with half a five gallon bucket of raw contacts ( unprocessed ). I'm going to feed them through my hammer mill, then into a vibrating column to settle the heavies, drawing them off the bottom as they settle.

If the vibrating column does not work effectively then I'm going to build a wave table to separate the values.


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## patnor1011 (Jul 11, 2009)

jaysus... its seems to be hell lot of a work but nothing comes free and easy. but the end is just so exciting - shiny gold or silver. that is why we are doing it. Ill be happy for your pictures, my mailbox is empty and can take thousands pics 
thanks gustavus


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## Anonymous (Jul 11, 2009)

patnor1011 said:


> While we have plenty of pictures of different gold bearing parts and componenets here I noticed that there is not much of them with silver. I am sure that members here have few pictures each in their computers so I am thinking....i want to put as much of these pictures with small description, pointers into some .doc or .pdf file for all members for download and reference when looking for silver. if there is anyone who want to participate you can send me those photos to my email. ill be happy for as much of them as you can find... my email is [email protected]
> 
> what do you think about that?



May I suggest a gmail account!

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

[email protected]

Technical details of permanent failure: 
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 552 552 5.3.4 Error writing message - a message size of 4003 kilobytes exceeds the size limit of 4000 kilobytes computed for this transaction (state 18).


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## patnor1011 (Jul 11, 2009)

thanks gill... i did not expect so big pictures. they are very good quality but in that document ill need to resize them anyway so you can send me smaller pics. i used to have about 6-7 email accounts but i have cut that down to two as I kept on forgeting passwords and checking them properly. i have got 3 emails from you so far and two of them with pictures. thanks very much it is very good job you are doing and my goal is to show that while nearly everyone here is after gold and yellow colour in cpu`s, ram`s there are money on other places too and considerably "loads of them" altough not for free - some hard work is involved too...


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## Anonymous (Jul 11, 2009)

gustavus said:


> Hello Pat I'll send you some pictures tomorrow afternoon, charging up the camera.
> 
> Collecting and processing silver contacts a big chore, especially liberating the contact from the bus. I"m going to do a test with half a five gallon bucket of raw contacts ( unprocessed ). I'm going to feed them through my hammer mill, then into a vibrating column to settle the heavies, drawing them off the bottom as they settle.
> 
> .




A mapp torch liberates them easily, and you will not have all the steel, plastic, copper, etc to process. Also you can look at the back if it is checkered, they are tungsten or something and just a real pain to get silver out of. I have them, but do not bother processing.

Jim


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## Anonymous (Jul 11, 2009)

james122964 said:


> gustavus said:
> 
> 
> > Hello Pat I'll send you some pictures tomorrow afternoon, charging up the camera.
> ...



I have three 20 liter buckets full of contacts to remove, there has to be an easier way than heating each contact free.I think my idea of feeding this stock through the hammer mill will work. Then either settle the heavies out on a vibrating colomn or a wave table - gravity and water mans best friend..


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## Anonymous (Jul 11, 2009)

Most of my silver contacts come from electric range, washing machine and dryer timers plus electric hot water tanks..


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## Anonymous (Jul 11, 2009)

Some more sources of silver.


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## Anonymous (Jul 11, 2009)

Some more silver.


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## Anonymous (Jul 11, 2009)

Some interesting silver facts from " Silver Economics Metallurgy and Use " by Allison Butts and Charles D. Coxe

The zip file is Silver Contact Manufacturing, you'll need DJVU to read it.


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## Anonymous (Jul 12, 2009)

Not that ball milling or grinding would not allow you to seperate, I just think you would be loosing all of the copper value, it seems you have a good bit.
Also you would have to process all of the powdered metal to seperate the silver from the rest of the iron, copper, cd, w, and whatever else is mixed in.
I seperate the contacts, for larger pads with thicker copper I use the torch, for the thin reed type contacts from timers and stuff, I just cut the copper as close to the pad as possible.

The above will save you lots of acid, and a BFM (big freaking mess) from all the different metal powders mixed.

I also, try and seperate the contacts as I go, seems you may be in a business similiar to me, electric, hvac, refrigeration, cooking equip, take the minute to seperate the contacts as you get them, really works for me. 

Jim


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## Anonymous (Jul 12, 2009)

james122964 said:


> Not that ball milling or grinding would not allow you to separate, I just think you would be loosing all of the copper value, it seems you have a good bit.
> Also you would have to process all of the powdered metal to separate the silver from the rest of the iron, copper, cd, w, and whatever else is mixed in.
> I separate the contacts, for larger pads with thicker copper I use the torch, for the thin reed type contacts from timers and stuff, I just cut the copper as close to the pad as possible.
> 
> ...



Jim I"m retired from a scrap business we had in Hope B.C. trying to keep my sanity decided to give precious metals a go as a hobby. Since it is precious metals I'm after any copper I find becomes a concern if I find it in roll or discarded pipe otherwise it is a nuisance. Unless there is a market for Barium Copper which the majority of silver contacts are affixed to.

I have 10 landfill sites and a scrap yard that I visit once a week. The amount of appliances and HVAC that get discarded is incredible.

My main tools in the field are a claw hammer, side cutters and an old wood chisel, using the claw of the hammer I can open any can that comes across my path be it stove or dryer to extract the goods. Using the claw I can shear the copper joints from an evaporator in seconds.

When choosing a claw hammer you want the large framing hammer, the claw has very little curve to it and it makes an ideal striking tool for removing screws.

My hammer mill came with various screens, the finer the mesh of the screen the finner the material coming out, I'm not looking for powder so I'll use a coarser screen to liberate the silver contacts. It maybe even that I find no screen is needed for what I'm trying to achieve.

Now that my ball mill is near completion, mill drum is direct drive by means of a drive shaft connected to a 60-1 angle reduction, the reduction box is being driven by an old furnace blower motor complete with pulleys and belt.

Belts on the blower motor can be adjusted via opening or closing the sheaves on the pulley, I fully opened the sheaves allowing for the greatest distance before welding the motor in place, just in case anyone noticed that the motor was welded permanently in place and would make comment.

By having the mill drum direct drive eliminated the problem of keep the drum from wandering had I used belts or chain to drive it.


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## Anonymous (Jul 12, 2009)

My hammer mill is a 3 hp commercially manufactured unit, it came with a good selection of screens. By changing a screen to one with larger holes the output of your material becomes coarser.

In the case of feeding my silver contact bearing material through the mill I'm hoping that the shock will dislodge the contacts be it they maybe mutilated. Once I have the output material separate by gravity.

I have a large funnel with two magnetic vibrators which I'm going to try out for selective separation, if that does not work then build a wave table which I know will work to separate the values for the material obtained from the hammer mill output.

Of course I will high grade the feedstock being feed into the hammer mill, I suspect copper and silver to be the majority of my output.

The jugs you see in the background are waste canola oil that I use for fuel in my Mitsubishi diesel, if it were not for cheap fuel this hobby would be impossible from rural Manitoba.


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## Anonymous (Jul 12, 2009)

patnor1011 said:


> thanks steve.
> that was it... I just preparing that sort of list with pictures and want as many as possible. dont want to post them on site, want to keep costs for noxx as low as possible and to put them into file which can be downloaded from some outside source... all pictures received will be marked with source...




Concerned with keeping costs down for the forum, make a donation. Another trick would be to enlarge your browser cache, that way your not downloading the entire content of a previously previewed page every time you make a hit on that page.

Tweaking your browser cache for dial up users really speeds up pages previously viewed, as you now only download new content.

I have no privacy concerns and I use 100meg for cache.


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## teabone (Jul 12, 2009)

Nice pictures Gus !!!!

Forklifts have some nice silver contacts in the relays. Some of the relays from forklifts and heavy construction equipment can have ounces of silver in the contacts.


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## big red 211 (Oct 25, 2009)

Has there been any progress on making a picture archive? I'd be intersted to see what everyone is using so I'm not throwing any pms away.


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## Anonymous (Jan 10, 2010)

big red 211 said:


> Has there been any progress on making a picture archive? I'd be interested to see what everyone is using so I'm not throwing any pms away.



The pictures your looking for have been and gone - history amigo.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Jan 10, 2010)

gustavus said:


> Most of my silver contacts come from electric range, washing machine and dryer timers plus electric hot water tanks..



I take it on the hot water heater tanks you are going after the upper & lower thermostats for this.

Don't get hopes up on this but I have been looking at the newer gas gas water heaters with the push button spark ignighter where it attaches to the gas vavlve there is a metal ring there that might be brass or gold plated. I'm trying to get a few together to test. When I find out I will post a reply.


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## golddie (Jan 10, 2010)

I remember a list made by GSP and it was posted on another forum recycle biz or soemthing like that.
I tried to find this and I couldnt I am sure Chris would know where it is


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## goldsilverpro (Jan 10, 2010)

http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=95&p=1485#p1485

Is that the one you're thinking of? Although I didn't post the list, I was the one who made it. Some of the names of the items are different than what you are used to. I could probably add 100, or more, items if I ever got around to it. My post further down on that thread was the first post I ever made on this forum. I was not a happy camper at the time - I felt plagiarized.

Every month or so, I used to run a search for gold forums (actually, I still do). When GRF popped up, it was a breath of fresh air. Thanks, Noxx. For a long time, recyclebiz was about the only decent one. There used to be a lot of refining activity on there, even though Scott was pretty much against hobby refining. When GRF started, there was another one that started up shortly after. Harold and I made a lot of posts on it but I can't remember the name. Most people on there migrated to GRF and it finally died out.


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## golddie (Jan 10, 2010)

Hi Chris
Thanks 
That exactly the one
I think it would be a good idea to add to this list
Whoever has something to add


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## Anonymous (Jan 10, 2010)

Barren Realms 007 said:


> gustavus said:
> 
> 
> > Most of my silver contacts come from electric range, washing machine and dryer timers plus electric hot water tanks..
> ...



Yes it's the thermostats on the water tanks your after, an old claw hammer and a pair of side cutters make removal a snap, same on the electric ranges and washing machine and dryer timers.

Inside the dryer you will find thermo disks, you cant miss em they're little round Bakelite packages with wires attached to them, these disks have silver contacts inside along with a snap disk.When the dryer is operational these disks control the temperature inside the dryer. 

These thermo disks can also be found inside electric motors, refrigeration compressors, coffee pots, hot water kettles, microwave ovens to name a few places where to find them.

I use the claw to strike the screws out, appliance manufactures have a habit of using different screw types, the claw makes short work of any type used.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Jan 10, 2010)

gustavus said:


> Yes it's the thermostats on the water tanks your after, an old claw hammer and a pair of side cutters make removal a snap, same on the electric ranges and washing machine and dryer timers.
> 
> Inside the dryer you will find thermo disks, you cant miss em they're little round Bakelite packages with wires attached to them, these disks have silver contacts inside along with a snap disk.When the dryer is operational these disks control the temperature inside the dryer.
> 
> ...



I didn't think about those. I guess I will need to start saveing the thermodisk out of central air gas heaters and electric heaters. 

I need to go thru my shop and do some cleaning. I'v even got some old single pole light switches with the poreclain bodies still in original boxes too. I'v got stuff they don't even make anymore. Controls, relays. Man could I post some pictures on that stuff.


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## goldsilverpro (Jan 10, 2010)

golddie said:


> I think it would be a good idea to add to this list
> Whoever has something to add


That's a good idea. As a moderator, I can edit any post but the rest of you can't. Therefore, if anyone has an item to add to this list, *post it only on the following thread*. Try to keep the items as general as possible, especially the electronic scrap. If it has merit, I'll edit the list and add it. Eventually, we'll make a sticky out of it.

BTW. If you read over the present list, you'll see things that haven't been discussed. In the future, maybe we can get into these things.

http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=6329


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## Barren Realms 007 (Jan 10, 2010)

goldsilverpro said:


> golddie said:
> 
> 
> > I think it would be a good idea to add to this list
> ...



GSP, 
Could I get you to add Plumbing, Heating, Air conditioning, Vetilation & Controls, as seperate items with future sub items to be added. 

Ok you are going to laugh at me on the Plumbing but tell me where will you list "Gold Plated Faucets" at?


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## goldsilverpro (Jan 10, 2010)

> Could I get you to add Plumbing, Heating, Air conditioning, Vetilation & Controls, as seperate items with future sub items to be added.


That's a little too vague. Be more specific.



> Ok you are going to laugh at me on the Plumbing but tell me where will you list "Gold Plated Faucets" at?


Consumer Items. I'll add it right now.

In the future, please make these suggestions on the following thread.

http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=6329


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