# Grinding IC's, the Rednecks way LOL



## Anonymous

I tried this old meat grinder for breaking up IC Chips. For the plastic ones, it works great. Also for the ceramic processors and chips, it is a bit harder, but still works great. For the demo pics, I ground full chips at once, but did find it easier to break the chips with a hammer before grinding. I got the old grinder at a garage sale for 50 cents.


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## Anonymous

Great idea, I would think that incinerating your feedstock would greatly improve the the finished product.

You may encounter some zinc scrapings from the galvanized coating from the grinder being introduced into the equation.


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## Anonymous

Ok, ya got me for a new-be. Incenerate before or after the grinding? Also would that be before any acid usage? Jack


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## ChucknC

I was introduced to using one of those old grinders by a man named Wally Koz. He showed me about grinding my blacksands concentrates to liberate more fine and extra fine gold. It works well for prospecting and should work well for your application.

Oh, have you ever thought about building a jig so you can use a powerdrill to turn it rather than turning the grinder by hand?

Chuck


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## pilotdan

That's great. I bet your hand would be tired after grinding up a few pounds. :shock:


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## Rag and Bone

I'm still perfecting CPUs in AP. I had a few test batches that went poorly. The best results were with larger ceramic pieces. (Gold caps, small shards and dust withheld from the reaction bucket). Hit the pins and cores, save the stripped ceramic. All that dust and detritus seems to 
cob-up the process.


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## Scott2357

I'm new here so I don't have any proven methods yet, but I think a hydraulic press might do a better job.
You could make a steel containment pan for the press plate to fit into so flying chip bits would not be lost.
The press plate and the pan plate would need to have irregular or grooved surfaces to aid in concentrating
pressure points for efficient use of crushing force. Preferably plates would be inverse patterns of each other.
I can't give a good reason, but I would probably process chip pins and lid plates first then crush packages.

Check out http://www.harborfreight.com and word search for 'ton press'.
You can get up to a 20 ton model for less than $200. Much less if you only plan to crush plastic chips.


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## Anonymous

Hmmmm, $200.00 vs 50 cents? LOL


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## Scott2357

Well, I guess it is a little pricey compared to a 50 cent meat grinder but I was thinking long term here. Besides, it has a lot more uses than cracking chips.

To name a few..

Prospectors could use it to crush gold/platinum ore.

If you're into catalytic converters and hate cutting them open (as I do), you could partially crush the bodies :twisted: so the fractured honeycomb pieces would just pour out the end.

... and no blistered hands!


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## Anonymous

Long hours, blistered hands and sore backs. 

Mother Nature does not give up her treasures easily, the ore must be ground to the consistency of flour. 

Your hydraulic press will at most crush the ore.


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## Anonymous

Just kidding about the $$. Bu tyou can also grind meat with this thing, I guess you could make hamburger pattys with the press. Just kidding, the press is a good idea. Gustavous, does that mean I should run the grind through again for a smaller result (Newbee question again)?


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## Gotrek

Fashion yourself a box out of metal. Fill it with goodies to crush. Turn on 2-3 angle grinders and throw them in. Cover and wait. Good times...


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## Irons

It's a bit of troble sifting the road bed, though.


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## overneo

Crushing CPU's, okay. But what to do next with the powder : directly chemical process (HCL + H2O2) or something between?


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## Anonymous

Hi Jack and nice to see you here.First I know that redneck comment is directed towards me (lol) and second you need to shave.Hope your doing well and cant wait to see pics from those pins.
Johnny


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## Anonymous

What about using a ball mill tumbler to tumble everything down to dust?

On the side, would roasting the dust be necessary then? One could tumble anything, ore, sand, IC's/CPU and honeycomb matrix from a cat converter.

I find frequent references to roasting such materials, what does this step do?

Thanks


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## Bernie Foley

Hi all,
Thought i would put in my 2 cents. I found an International Harvester
shredder at the dump..I put an electric motor on it. The 4hp engine was
junk. It won't do much more than leaves twigs but it works great for small stones/ore and ic's and plastic connectors. Have to change the output screen for the size particals wanted. You don't want copper wire int though
unless you like a birdsnest of it!!!.. It has flails that rotate. The boss lady
would have a fit if i used the $6,000.00 MaCissick chipper/shredder we have!!......Good luck....Bernie


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## Scott2357

I found an interesting gadget...

http://cgi.ebay.com/11-Inch-IMPACT-...oryZ3360QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

It says it crushes CPUs to 400 mesh!


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## istari9

Why in the world would you want to spend $700+ dollars for that gizmo?
I bought a small ball mill for under $100.00 works just fine.. I bought more gold with the balance of my savings. Just a thought...

Ray


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## istari9

Figure out what you need to make your own. Ball mills are a simple item,
all that is needed is a motor a tub some shot and rollers. I have seen several nice units on this forum with all the info needed to build one. 
Sorry another thought...

Ray


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## Harold_V

Yes, Ray, they are simple, but they are also critical of a few factors.

The principle involved in a ball mill is that the charge of balls, which must be heavy enough to destroy the feed, is taken to the apex of the curvature of the cylinder, then dropped. It's the dropping balls that do the work, therefore two factors are important. One is that the diameter of the cylinder must be great enough to allow the balls to accelerate, and the balls must be large enough to impact the feed with enough energy to break it. Otherwise the balls don't hammer, but simply rub the material intended to be crushed. 

Assuming those two criteria are not met, there's as much wear on the charge and mill as there is on the objects intended to be crushed, making what has the potential to be a fast operation one that is painfully slow. 

Harold

edit: corrected typo


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## Bernie Foley

Harold is absolutely right! Again!
The amount of the balls(or media) is another factor. size and weight also
are important. As Harold said if done right it can be a relativlely fast operation. Or it will wear the media as much as the work!!
Speed adjustment can get the media to fall properly if size and weight are close and the same product is always run!!...
The machine you were looking at is one type of a hammermill like the IHC
Machine i have..That type usually is run wet. I would like to build a small
sample hammermill. I don't always have a lot of material to run but want to sample different semiconductors..NEVER pay $700.00 for a simple machine like that.It is way overpriced!.A hammermill shredder is very fast and the IHC will take a 2"diameter piece of granite and make dust out of it in about 2 seconds!! Send me a pm and i'll see what i can do.The IHC will chew up plastic connectors fairly fast also!
Good luck and email is [email protected] Bernie


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## Scott2357

I said it was *interesting*, not practical.


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## Bernie Foley

Scott2357,
Please accept my appology for offering too much knowledge on the subject of the hammermills.After 30yrs of repairing and fixing like equipment i just don't even like talking about them so much for my two cents...I was an maintenance engineer for 40yrs..I'm also a retired jeweler and tool and die manufacturing engineer....Now lets talk about something more pleasent!........mrfixit39...How about gold refining!


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## Anonymous

Hmmmm, as Harold said "balls don't hammer, but simply rub the material...." Sorry, better get my mind back on the gold...ROFL


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## Scott2357

Bernie,

No need to apologize. Information is what we're all here for, the more the better. That gizmo seemed way overpriced to me too but very interesting since I had not seen one before.


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## n3vrs0br

Firewalker,
Have you thought about motorizing that meat grinder? saw off the clunky handle, adapt a pully to it, maybe even a hopper and a chute? possibly a patent? (lol!) It is definitely a better mouse trap!


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## LeftyTheBandit

I bet you could use a garbage disposal unit from an old kitchen sink. 

I think they are mini hammer-mills.


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## Harold_V

I'd be inclined to agree with you, although the expected lifespan would be short. They aren't intended to grind abrasive materials, so they'd degrade rapidly. Those I've seen have hammers that pivot on large rivets. Wouldn't take too long to wear them to the point of failure. Such a unit would, however, be far better suited to crushing than a blender. 

Harold


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## viacin

firewalker! Wait a second...that last chip in your pics looks like a rare one that I've seen before! You would have to check the numbers, but it seems identical to one that has sold for $1,200 working! I hope you haven't ground it up....

Check this site. http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/68000/

All of those on that site are rare and very much sought after by collectors. It is not a completed list by no means, so even if the munbers are different but they are styled the same, you can probably sell them for much more than the gold content!


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## Anonymous

Ooops, guess what? Thanks for the info. I should have more l;ike that somewhere....JAck


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## LeftyTheBandit

Rednecks dont sell cpu's! We grind em up reeeal good! :wink:


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## rainmaker

Check out page 21 of the catalog from Action Mining in Sandy Or. 

http://www.actionmining.com/index.html


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## bmgold

Check out the back cover (of the Action Mining Catalog) and you can see the ore pulverizer is a grain, corn, cereal mill. They also state that it is not for production use and they sell replacement plates and replacement auger so they obviously wear out. 

I'm not trying to discourage anyone from trying it but expect it to wear out. I almost bought one once but they talked me out of it. I still might get one someday but would try to find it locally to avoid the shipping cost or at least check the price. 

If anyone has one and tried it, how does it work on ore or chips? I saw a video years ago from action mining and they turned the handle back and forth and not just one direction. I expect the rocks were jamming up. It was obviously not for pounds at a time but looked quicker than a mortar and pestle.


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## wetwillie

imsg171s-35 made by Minmus A

looks like the 8086 by motorolia, all prices said call, checked out several places this early pm. The largest lot from the manufactuors was like 15. They all said call for price, whereas the insg171s-35 goes for $200 this looks like it will go for way more.
would take a pic but havent figured out my new digital camera yet.


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## hoardpm

WOW!!!! Never thought of that. When my grandparents sold there house they had an auction. I bought 4 of these for some reason . Now I retire them from there curant roll as gigantic paper weights.


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## goldsilverpro

The best piece of equipment I've ever used for crushing ceramic ICs was a sort of slow motorized rolling mill. We bought it for a song at some used equipment place in L.A. It was said to have been used for manufacturing paint. It consisted mainly of two adjustable steel rolls, about 6" dia. and maybe 12" long, set side-by-side at the top. The parts were dropped down between the rolls. A removable hopper, which was handy for certain items, came with it. I think it even worked well for plastic parts. The entire unit wasn't very large - much smaller than you'd expect.


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## bmgold

Just going through some old messages and realized that this post started out using a Meat Grinder and what I seen was a grain mill. I have an old meat grinder somewhere and will have to dig it up and give this a shot. I don't expect it would crush chips to a fine powder but should break them up. Worth a shot,


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## DNIndustry

I picked up an electric ice crusher from the 70's for 2 bucks. Ill have to give it a shot.

Shames less plug, It took me 10 months to hit 100 posts.


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## Fournines

What about the "Will It Blend" blender? :lol: 

http://www.willitblend.com/

That seems to chop up everything...


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## darshevo

I caught where the press wouldn't be a great unit for doing ore, but didn't see much regarding its use for ceramic IC's. My brother has an industrial/commercial 60 ton unit that we've crushed all kinds of stuff with for fun (his main purpose for it is in the rebuilding of heavy truck differentials and transmissions). I can't imagine it would be efficient from a time standpoint to use it to crush up CPU's but could be a good way to spend an hour or 2 once in a while over an ice cold beer or 3

-Lance


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