# pins



## arthur kierski (Nov 22, 2008)

could anyone give me an idea of how many grams of gold per pound 1s in those headers in motherboards?


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## lazersteve (Nov 22, 2008)

Arthur,

The yields all depends on the age of the motherboards.

Motherboards manufactured between 1990 - 1995 tend to have approximately 0.5 to 0.75 grams per pound of pins without the plastic.

Pins from motherboard and card headers manufactured prior to 1990 yield progressively more gold per pound as they get older with 1 gram being a good average figure per pound.

Newer motherboards have extremely thin plated gold layers and yield very low amounts of gold per pound (<0.25 - 0.5 grams)

The best batch of header pins I ever processed was 3.5 pounds of raw header pins (all removed from the plastic) that yielded 13.25 grams of gold (~3.8 grams per pound+) for the lot. The pins were labeled 'Honeywell Gemini Project' on the sealed bag that I opened myself, plucked them from the plastic, and processed using Ferric Chloride.

You can look at the color of gold plating and sometimes determine a ballpark yield once you get used to looking at them. The deep rich gold colored ones with a hint of red tend to be the best. The butter yellow ones tend to mid grade and the extremely bright ones that are only partially plated tend to be the worst.

Steve


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## arthur kierski (Nov 22, 2008)

steve,thanks for the quick reply--now that pt,pd and rh plunged--i am beginning to extract gold from motherboards(i can get lots of pounds of motherboards here in brazil)
please steve could you give me the concentration of ferric chloride per litre that i have to use to extract gold from pins?


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## lazersteve (Nov 22, 2008)

Arthur,

I don't use ferric chloride any longer, I use either dilute nitric, hot hcl, AP, or modified poor man's AR depending on the base metal of the pins.

The ferric chloride mix I used was 40% concentration mixed with equal volume of 15% HCl. The mix worked best while warm (self heating at first) and stripped the pins in less than 1 hour (95-98% clean) with periodic agitation. The reason I stopped using it for pins is it's expense and the gold takes more washing to get it clean. I developed the AP method I demonstrate on my website after several batches of FeCl3. I still have 10+ pounds of dry ferric chloride on hand if you are interested in a sample let me know. I liked it's speed and the fact that there was no chance of dissolving your gold foils.

Steve


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## qst42know (Nov 22, 2008)

Hey Steve 

Have you tried ferric chloride on plated stainless watch bands? I have read ferric chloride is used to etch stainless. And was wondering how well it works.


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## arthur kierski (Nov 22, 2008)

thanks again for your immediate reply---i asked for ferric chloride to know another method of stripping gold----i am using (for pins)dilute hno3,and not ap because it takes a long time to strip the gold


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## dallasgoldbug (Sep 29, 2009)

Im finding Ferric Chloride to be an easy way to process your product. The only downfall is cost of the chem/ end product, that is unless you just make the FC yourself. Then it becomes cost effective. I pulled 2oz last night and will post photos when I run it throught final cleaning.


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## lala14 (Oct 28, 2009)

dallasgoldbug said:


> Im finding Ferric Chloride to be an easy way to process your product. The only downfall is cost of the chem/ end product, that is unless you just make the FC yourself. Then it becomes cost effective. I pulled 2oz last night and will post photos when I run it throught final cleaning.


 maybe you can help me i am using hydrocloride an nitri acid to get gold from prosesors but gues what this is the first time im a new be to this i need to know what ext do you need to do to get the gold because im not seen it an dont get me wrong i do have the right prosesor wer you have a gold plat on top all the pins an in side at the end when the proses is done i dont see a thing am i doing something wrong thank you


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## Anonymous (Oct 28, 2009)

Has anyone tried ammonium persulfate? I stumbled upon it as an etching agent for boards. I also remember reading on the shor(I know bad word) site they had a salt that they simply added to water to release fingers. White crystal powder, seems plausable.

Jim


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## lazersteve (Oct 28, 2009)

I've tried sodium persulfate for dissolving copper.

It works but it takes a lot of it and it's expensive.

Steve


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## ay_mickey (Oct 29, 2009)

hiya guys , 
im new at this but how do i get the pins out of the plastic , iv spent most evenings pulling the pins out, and realy thisnt worth the effort,
can you help ?


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## patnor1011 (Oct 29, 2009)

ay_mickey said:


> hiya guys ,
> im new at this but how do i get the pins out of the plastic , iv spent most evenings pulling the pins out, and realy thisnt worth the effort,
> can you help ?



might be this is one of the reasons why gold is so expensive :lol: 
some people smack them with hammer and collect pins, some use ball mill.


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## glorycloud (Oct 29, 2009)

You might consider reading up on AP (acid peroxide) for your pins or 
possibly soaking them in HCL (muratic acid). I have used cold nitric acid
as well which attacks the base metals and leaved the gold alone.

As always, spend a lot of time reading the SAFETY section of the forum
as the fumes from these processes can really mess with you! :shock:


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## ay_mickey (Oct 29, 2009)

thanks guys


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## lala14 (Oct 29, 2009)

ay_mickey said:


> thanks guys


if you use one part nitric acid an 3 parts hcl acid it works best it disolves the gold an any other metals you dont need but thirs a way to get your gold be carfull this acid are strong i learn the hard way


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## nigthmare_2002 (Jan 5, 2010)

on mainboard and cards the pins have 0,063% gold from pin weight.

have anybody information how much is on cpu pins ??? (keramic)


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## Barren Realms 007 (Jan 5, 2010)

lala14 said:


> if you use one part nitric acid an 3 parts hcl acid it works best it disolves the gold an any other metals you dont need but thirs a way to get your gold be carfull this acid are strong i learn the hard way



Bad idea. Disolve your base metals and then disolve your gold are it is cleaned.


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## Richard36 (Feb 4, 2010)

Why not use a sulfuric stripping cell for the pins?
It seems to work well enough for gold plated jewelry,
wouldn't it work the same way for the pins?

Sincerely; Rick. "The Rock Man".


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## Scott2357 (Feb 4, 2010)

I came across several thousand female connector pins on a reel all attached by a metal strip. I plan to cut the strip into segments and roll into cell sized bundles for cell processing. I'll take pics and post yields when done.


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## pinman (Feb 4, 2010)

I processed a pound of unused header pins in the plastic using a crockpot and got very dissapointing results. While my scale only reads to one decimal place, the resulting gold did not even register as .1 grams.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 4, 2010)

Richard36 said:


> Why not use a sulfuric stripping cell for the pins?
> It seems to work well enough for gold plated jewelry,
> wouldn't it work the same way for the pins?
> 
> Sincerely; Rick. "The Rock Man".



If there is no solder on the pins the cell should work fine.


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## Chumbawamba (Mar 8, 2010)

I have a whole mess of pins that I'd finally like to get around to processing. It's from a variety of sources, different base metals, lots of solder, some bits of plastic and ceramic and other materials. The lot weighs maybe a total of two pounds.

I plan to go through it and clean them up, cut away large sections of base metal and then I was thinking an appropriate procedure might be to pour in some 50/50 nitric and put it on the hot plate and agitate occasionally (or with a bubbler), then decant and wash the left over stuff a couple times to get rid of the nitric, then hot HCl to finish the job (or maybe I should use AP?), decant and filter, wash, then HCl + Bleach to get the remaining gold into solution.

Did I do my homework correctly?


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## Harold_V (Mar 8, 2010)

Chumbawamba said:


> Did I do my homework correctly?



Not in my opinion. I didn't read anything about incineration, even when going from nitric to HCl. That can prove to be a mistake. 

Harold


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