# Getting there...albeit slowly!



## snoman701 (Mar 28, 2017)

Took some time to play today. Had beautiful powder, but I can't seem to find my new melting dishes. Stupid move.

Anyway, it gained .002 grams during the melt, so I'm assuming that was something in the dish.

This is still me processing everything in my bucket...actually, I can't even remember what this is made of...many failures. Though I still have the stock pot that I've decanted off. That aught to be really interesting.


----------



## snoman701 (Mar 28, 2017)

2.007 g

So this is the button...a little disappointed by the lack of pipe, but still not bad considering. Initially I just KNEW that I had screwed up, as the powder looked so much like copper...but then when I refined it again, it came out black. I had considered refining once more, just due to the color, but once I dried it it turned a nice golden.

Like I said, I have no clue what this is the result of. A bunch of chips, a couple plated parts, this, that, a golden turd I bought on Ebay, and others. This is only about half of it. Then comes the actual stock pot. Hopefully all of that can be done tomorrow, or this weekend.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## snoman701 (Mar 28, 2017)

Gotta love Hp!!






I have no clue what these are out of. I bought them like this at the scrap yard. Hoping for more to come in, but not as of yet. There are a total of 204 gold cap / leg 16 pin cdips. I think this is an occasion where I will use HCl to dissolve the solder so I can get the chips easily. 

I won't process these for a bit though. I've got LOTS of stuff in front. It's amazing how fast this stuff accumulates when you get a board here and a board there. I need to find myself a good storage system.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## glorycloud (Mar 28, 2017)

Turn the board over and use a heat gun to warm the solder and
the chips can be easily removed without chemicals. They can be boogers
though and a flat head screw driver can help coerce (pry) them up to
get them off the board once the solder is hot. 8)


----------



## snoman701 (Mar 28, 2017)

I tried that, as well as a solder pot...both had me breathing more fumes than I'd like. 

Seems like it should be quick...but it's like you said, the little guys are stuck pretty good. 

Man, I went and looked at other peoples buttons, now I want to inquart my button and start over. It's not nearly shiny enough.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Mar 28, 2017)

snoman701 said:


> I tried that, as well as a solder pot...both had me breathing more fumes than I'd like.
> 
> Seems like it should be quick...but it's like you said, the little guys are stuck pretty good.
> 
> Man, I went and looked at other peoples buttons, now I want to inquart my button and start over. It's not nearly shiny enough.



Don't necessarily need to inquart.
You can roll it out (or hammer it) and redissolve directly in AR.

What do you think the impurity is that it picked up from the dirty dish?

Whatever it is, I would think it would stay in solution while reprecipitating the gold (or could be cleaned up with washes after the drop), or, if it's silver, could be filtered off before dropping the gold.


----------



## snoman701 (Mar 28, 2017)

Best guess is a small amount of copper or nickel. But it could be silver. This melt dish really needs to be retired, but it's all I've got accessible. Somewhere there is an amazon prime box with two brand new 3" melt dishes....probably under all of the "other stuff".

Thanks for the note on hammering...I knew it, even thought "if I had a rolling mill I could run it through"...but never really thought "hammer it". Just, "this is going to take forever to dissolve with AR.


----------



## anachronism (Mar 28, 2017)

Sno

Do this outside in vented space, and take me seriously on this. 

Heat gun/blowtorch on the back and bash the board downwards. They pop out nicely. I've done lots of these and it works perfectly. 

You'll be stunned at the yields - enjoy.

Jon


----------



## snoman701 (Mar 28, 2017)

anachronism said:


> Sno
> 
> Do this outside in vented space, and take me seriously on this.
> 
> ...



Yeah, I don't even like soldering without fume control. I hate the smell of burning board! 

My heat gun must suck, I can't get a board to heat up enough. I've got a torch though.

I've been collecting gold cap chips like this as my primary objective. I'll probably never see this many of them again. 

Someone was clearing out the estate of a hoarder...They brought probably 250 lbs of vintage HP calculator / computer boards calculator in...I had to pay $5 / lb....but got to cherry pick the lot. Anything with a gold cap came home, then lots of them that were loaded on surface area gold trace....a lot of it before they put that godawful coating on.


----------



## upcyclist (Mar 29, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> snoman701 said:
> 
> 
> > Man, I went and looked at other peoples buttons, now I want to inquart my button and start over. It's not nearly shiny enough.
> ...


Inquartation is most commonly used for karat scrap, or more generally, it's one way to get around passivation. In karat scrap, especially 10-14K, there can be enough silver to passivate on the surface as AgCl, blocking your AR. Conversely, there's enough gold to block nitric acid from dissolving out base metals.

Even on karat scrap, once you inquart and refine the first time, you can go straight to AR the second time.


----------



## snoman701 (Mar 29, 2017)

upcyclist said:


> Topher_osAUrus said:
> 
> 
> > snoman701 said:
> ...



That makes so much more sense now! Thank you!


----------



## anachronism (Mar 29, 2017)

You don't inquart a button to improve its purity.


----------



## snoman701 (Mar 29, 2017)

anachronism said:


> You don't inquart a button to improve its purity.



I would have been inquarting it to make it possible to dissolve without taking forever because it's a big(er) chunk now. That's just how made sense in my head. Increasing surface area makes a lot more sense though, and I was aware of the option from reading, but for some reason it didn't present itself. My brain works biggly sometime, and not so great others. 

I'll redo it probably this weekend.


----------



## upcyclist (Mar 29, 2017)

If it's a big button, then shotting (aka cornflaking) is your buddy. Inquartation is adding enough other metal (traditionally silver) so that gold is one quarter of the total content by weight.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk


----------



## g_axelsson (Mar 29, 2017)

If you have problem with PGM contamination (more a problem if you use SMB instead of copperas for dropping gold) then inquarting is a good way to remove the PGM:s before dissolving the gold.

... at least that's my experience.

You select the best tool based on your problem, experience helps you select the best tool you have in your tool box.
If you want to try inquarting I recommend it, not because your button needs it to get shiny, but as a training exercise so you know what goes into that procedure. So the day when you is faced by a problem where you need it you have it in your tool box.

Göran


----------



## upcyclist (Mar 31, 2017)

g_axelsson said:


> If you want to try inquarting I recommend it, not because your button needs it to get shiny, but as a training exercise so you know what goes into that procedure. So the day when you is faced by a problem where you need it you have it in your tool box.


Excellent point.

Side note: when I'm inquarting karat scrap, I'll mix various karats together, but note the weight of each grouping. Then I calculate the gold weight based on that, and add enough silver to bring the total up. But if your math is a bit off, it's no deal-killer. If you're a bit north of 6K (up to 8K or so?), it should still work fine. If you're below 6K, you'll consume additional nitric acid but not really complicate/harm the process.


----------



## joekbit (Mar 31, 2017)

Snowman

Nice boards, I have a box full of them. Mine came from old NASA stuff made by Ge in the 1970s. I did 3 chips,,yup, just 3 for testing. I used Ar never weighed the powder but I think about .1 gram by visual, so that being said, say about 1/2 dollar per chip as a cushion. 

I can't see the numbers on the chips, but the size of them is the clue. Similar size gold top gold leg chips are about 300 dollars a pound. You could see 2 times that in gold. 

My boards are brown like yours, and brittle. Use of snips shatters the to board and the chip just falls off.


----------



## goldsilverpro (Mar 31, 2017)

I have literally run tons of those all-gold plated, ceramic, side-braze packages. It looks like the ones in the photo are 16 lead and are 3/8" wide. If they are 16 lead, I would guess their value would run about $400/pound, at a $1250 spot. The less the number of leads (legs), the higher the value/pound. The 14, 16, and 18 leads ones are 3/8" wide. The 24, 28, and 40 lead ones are 1/2" wide. The 40 lead all-gold ones run about $180/pound. I think there are even 8 lead ones, but I've only seen a few of them. In later years, there are 64 lead and even bigger. These are at the bottom as far as the value of these type parts go. We ran from 20,000 to 50,000 of those (mainly 40 lead) a week for 3 or 4 years. Especially on those parts with the least number of legs, I would guess that the gold plating is, at most, 35% of the total value. The gold brazes used to secure the lid (80/20, Au/Sn) and the chip (96/4, Au/Si) make up the bulk of the gold.


----------



## anachronism (Mar 31, 2017)

goldsilverpro said:


> I have literally run tons of those all-gold plated, ceramic, side-braze packages. It looks like the ones in the photo are 16 lead and are 3/8" wide. If they are 16 lead, I would guess their value would run about $400/pound, at a $1250 spot. The less the number of leads (legs), the higher the value/pound. The 14, 16, and 18 leads ones are 3/8" wide. The 24, 28, and 40 lead ones are 1/2" wide. The 40 lead all-gold ones run about $180/pound. I think there are even 8 lead ones, but I've only seen a few of them. In later years, there are 64 lead and even bigger. These are at the bottom as far as the value of these type parts go. We ran from 20,000 to 50,000 of those (mainly 40 lead) a week for 3 or 4 years. Especially on those parts with the least number of legs, I would guess that the gold plating is, at most, 35% of the total value. The gold brazes used to secure the lid (80/20, Au/Sn) and the chip (96/4, Au/Si) make up the bulk of the gold.



Whilst I cannot demonstrate the maths in the manner Chris has done I can agree with the yield figures from the ones I have run. 8)


----------



## snoman701 (Apr 1, 2017)

Worked last night, had a perfect pipe. 

Then when I picked it up out of the flux, I dropped it. It landed on the ground and picked up something that I couldn't clean off. I remelted, knowing what the outcome would likely be. Then when I remelted, I started the torch and didn't turn the oxy on until I was over the dish...covered it in soot. 

This is what I ended up with.

But, it's up to 3.8 grams.

Processed a laser mirror last night that I was hoping would be good...not even sure it's worth processing them. Milled off the copper reflecting surface and digested in nitric, then AR. The foil didn't even stick together. These are high wattage lasers too.


----------

