# Sulfuric Cell



## colibri (Apr 2, 2011)

I'm nearly ready to have a go with a reverse plating bath on some low grade gold pins and a few military type plated pins. I've got a dish like the one on Steve's Video with the plastic lid.

As sulfuric loves to absorb moisture from the air and its fairly damp here how long well will the lid keep out the moisture?
Would it be ok for a couple of days or could I leave it like that for months?

I think its going to take quite a while to get enough to be worth emptying the cell, so its whether to save it all up and have one good run or do bits as and when I get them.



-anthony


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## Barren Realms 007 (Apr 2, 2011)

Collect your material till you have something substantial to run in the cell so your losses will be less.


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## colibri (Apr 2, 2011)

I was thinking of not emptying the cell between batches until the cell was full. By cell losses you mean whats lost when you collect and start washing the black powder?


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## Barren Realms 007 (Apr 2, 2011)

colibri said:


> I was thinking of not emptying the cell between batches until the cell was full. By cell losses you mean whats lost when you collect and start washing the black powder?



It's not going to hurt anything if you run the cell every once in a while if you can keep it from collecting water. However when you look at the powder in the bottom of the container you are going to be drawn to removing the powder. By losses , yes I mean when washing your residues


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## dtectr (Apr 3, 2011)

IMHO & FWIW
I was amazed recently at how long it took powder to actually settle, due to the viscosity of concentrated sulfuric. Therefore, I run four cells in rotation, allowing cathode to cool somewhat between batches. The difference between 1 day of settling to 3 days can, in my limited experience, result in a decrease of almost 2:1 (does that make sense? 0.5g/1 day & 1.4g/3 day). Gold's not gone, but you waste SOME concentrated acid each time you harvest, cost of which must be subtracted from profits.


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## colibri (Apr 6, 2011)

Thanks for the responses, 

Ive ran the cell and had great fun stripping all the scrap I'd collected. Im off to find more to strip now.

Im also looking into stripping fingers in the cell, I can report back if I have any success. Is anyone else interested in this?

cheers


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## glondor (Apr 6, 2011)

I am not an expert by any means but i don't think it it a good idea to do fingers in a cell. I think you will get copper contamination very fast and saturate your cell.

Another huge indication that it is not advised is that none of the experts here do it that way. 

I can picture a sweet set up with all the memory stacked together with the contact areas submerged in 1/4 inch of sulphuric acid . Hit the power and POW they are stripped. Sounds easy. I don't think it will work tho.

Maybe in a shallow bath of iodine, but I think there are a lot of unanswered questions with iodine stripping at this point.

Chances if someone here is not doing a process here with regularity, it will not work for the home refining

Cheers Mike


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## colibri (Apr 7, 2011)

Cell contamination is something I'd like to know more about, if the sulfuric is kept concentrated and not allowed to get too hot it should be ok?

From what Ive read the problem seems to be getting a good contact on every finger, and that can be done away from the cell. Unless of course, I'm missing something a bit more fundamental, which I wouldn't put past myself at the moment  

cheers


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## lazersteve (Apr 7, 2011)

The problem with making contact with every trace on the finger is that the finger boards are seldom perfectly flat. This makes it very difficult to sandwich them between two flat plates to contact all of the traces on the finger. 

If you are considering using some sort of multi-clip you'll find that the various types of finger board traces are not all spaced the same. Additionally, all of the finger boards are no the same length.

There are other physical problems like solder mask insulation and other unforeseen alignment and contact issues.

Steve


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