# Pins



## nmlfreitas (Jan 9, 2012)

Hello once again.
I have been visiting the forum and reading the recommended documents and books and i can say i have learned a lot from you and from the books.
I think i'm ready to test my knowledge and give it a try on gold refining . 
I'm still collecting computer parts to make enough material in order to work.
I have been working mostly with motherboards, and i have collected pins from agp,pci and Isa slots as well as the ram slots and ide connectors.
I have a question that i've looked for an answer and i couldn't find it. How many pins like those mentioned above do you guys think i need to make about 1 to 2g of gold? 
800g is it ok? Once i have the amount that i need, i will process the pins in AP and then use the hcl-cl as usual.
Thanks in advance


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## Photobacterium (Jan 9, 2012)

there are pins, often a .025 inch square on .100 inch centers, often 'in-line' or straight, like in the upper left of this picture, at about "10 o'clock". often known as a "dual-row header" - when there are 2 rows of them.








and there are edge card connectors. PCI, ISA, EISA, PCI-E, & PCI-X all being examples. basically, the edge of the circuit card has copper traces that are gold-plated. These are what are cut off & processed in Steve's Acid Peroxide video. there the yield is - 600 grams of edge-card connectors, 3 grams of gold yielded.






the connector on the upper left in this picture is an edge-card connector.


BUT - PCI, ISA, EISA, PCI-E, & PCI-X often have pins also, and those pins are usually gold-plated.

by 'pins', do you mean the dual-row headers on the circuit board, or the gold-plated copper traces that are used to make an edge card connector ?


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## nmlfreitas (Jan 9, 2012)

thanks for the reply.
i mean the dual-row headers on the circuit board not the fingers, and the place where you can connect the flat cable.




like this one


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## Geo (Jan 9, 2012)

it really depends on the area that is plated.are they plated to the ends or just the tips.very high quality pins that are 100% plated yield about 1.5 -2.0 grams per pound.military grade goes to about 4.0 grams per pound based on my own experiences.


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## butcher (Jan 9, 2012)

I think it may be hard for members to give you numbers, I find some pins to have a thicker plating than others or some of the newer pins.


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## Smack (Jan 9, 2012)

The last low grade pins I did, I got .88g per pound. But those are not low grade pins, I like those pins. You should get about 2g per pound on those.


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## nmlfreitas (Jan 10, 2012)

Maybe its best for me to separate the pins according with the type. Like this
Ide connectors (motherboard)
memory slots (motherboard)
Agp slots (motherboard)
pci slots (motherboard)
...
...
...
And them try to work them separately and post the results... 
Do you think that Ap works ok for pins (base metal separation), or its better to try heated nitric acid ??

Thanks


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## butcher (Jan 10, 2012)

nmlfreitas,
Separating material type and processing is always a good idea, even if your not considering yields.

Acid peroxide works for pins but is very time consuming, and create's a lot of used solutions, nitric is fast and is best to use, if cost or availability of nitric is not of concern.


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## nmlfreitas (Jan 10, 2012)

Butcher
Thanks for the advice,i will use nitric when i have some good weight of pins.


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## butcher (Jan 10, 2012)

nmlfreitas,
just when you made up your mind let me add another note:

If using nitric acid make sure you do Not to add solder, the tin will make a gel solution and give much troubles. The solder can be broken down and washed loose with HCl, hot water will rinse away lead chloride powders, an incineration would be needed after to rid HCl, and would help eliminate other trash, before nitric treatment;


The HCl/ peroxide method will also remove solder (but you will have lead salts (white powder, to wash from gold flakes (boiling hot water dissolves lead chloride), tin will go into solution with difficulty (some gel but not as bad as nitric acid), (the higher the acidity of this HCl solution the less trouble tin is in this solution), in the acid peroxide the pins will dissolve out of the black plastic case if they are too much trouble to remove by other mechanical means.

Both processes have their advantages and disadvantages.


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## nmlfreitas (Jan 11, 2012)

Hello, 
and once again thank you for your advice butcher.
I don't have any plastic on those pins i remove any traces of it. It means more work in my separation, but i think i will get ride of some troubles when it comes 
to processing. I think i will make two experiences one using nitric and other with hcl peroxide to see what it the best for me. When i have the foils i'll send some pictures.

Thanks


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## zenophryk (Jan 23, 2012)

So I have a bunch of header pins. I'm finding that the ones in PHOTO's first picture tend to be plated all the way down, but the ones in the next picture with the plastic surrounding the pins (usually for IDE cable connection or FDD connection) tend to be only 1/3 of the way plated.
also, I'm guessing, if these pins come of a regular, consumer grade motherboard, they are probably flash plated. 
So my question is, wouldn't it be better to process these in a sulfuric cell and remove the plating, rather than process them as foils? Is the plating even thick enough to stay together if processed with AP ?

For the edge card pins (PCI, RAM, ISA) I have only found them to have a tiny bit of plating where it connects to the card. I have only pulled apart about 10-20 connectors. maybe these are just newer boards, are others finding those pins to have more plating on older stuff?


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## butcher (Jan 24, 2012)

zenophryk, 

You are very correct .

(as far as I know)

I have not used the concentrated sulfuric cell yet (embarrassed to say), but from what I have read about it would be great to de-plate the gold, for all of these pins, when de-plating the gold in the cell, the copper being dissolved is minimal, and is limited by cells running condition (water content and so on), 

Nitric would also work well, and fast, even if gold ended up as powders from less dense gold plating, although nitric is expensive, it takes a lot of nitric to dissolve copper, and nitric acid is hard to get for many of us, as long as there was no solder or tin to give trouble.

The HCl acid/peroxide method (copper chloride method) will also work but is slow (even with heating), to dissolve copper in mass, creates lots of solutions, (and fine powder or if solder is involved can make recovering the fine powders very difficult without losing gold).


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## zenophryk (Jan 24, 2012)

The first thing (ok, only thing so far) I did was build a sulfuric cell. it's just soo easy and cheap, and kinda fun. I havn't really tried to get nitric yet, but it does seem to be a pain.
I'm extracting my header pins with a torch. A little smokey, but effective and fast. So therefore the ends have solder on them.

the nice thing with AP, even though it's slow, is that it dosn't need much babysitting, where the cell does.


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## butcher (Jan 24, 2012)

I like to make nitric acid with pins, that are heavily plated, basically removing foils, dissolving copper into a copper sulfate solution, and make nitric acid (all in one reaction at the same time), I call it killing two birds one rock, if your interested I have written how I do the procedure).

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=killing+two+birds+one+rock+&num=1000&ft=i&as_sitesearch=goldrefiningforum.com%2Fphpbb3&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any

I do have a concentrated sulfuric cell I have fixed up, just have not gotten around to using it.


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## kjavanb123 (Oct 7, 2012)

Just curios as how do u remove these pins from the board? Any simple methods?

Regards,
Kevin


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## butcher (Oct 7, 2012)

De-solder or cut them off, hot air gun, propane torch, heated sand bath, soldering iron with tip made for multiple pins, are a few ways to de-solder.

I have cut integrated circuits from circuit boards and reused them, basically cutting the fiberglass circuit board around the IC to remove the IC still attached to the small piece of circuit board then cut the circuit board off from around the IC's pins or legs, using tools like diagonal pliers (side cutters for wire).


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