# Ballpark yield



## bomer (Oct 17, 2013)

Any ideas of Ballpark yield or guesstimate on how much silver would yield from 100 lbs of motherboards, 50 lbs RAM.Any info would be great.


----------



## niteliteone (Oct 17, 2013)

This reply is not meant to sound as asinine as it does so bare that in mind.
A well experienced refiner will be able to recover between 95 and 100% of all values contained in the material you ask about.
Where a rookie refiner will struggle to recover 50% of the values in the same material. 
This is due to the lack of knowledge of the various refining processes needed to recover each different PM contained in the material.

The question you need to ask is;
"what different processes should I learn to recover each PM contained in this material" :shock: 
Their is NO "one process fits all" material process available other than collect and sell the raw material.


----------



## Anonymous (Oct 17, 2013)

Hi Bomer

In addition to my learned colleague's post above you need to consider that the yield will depend, and vary greatly upon the age and type of RAM and board. Pre and post ROHS (lead free) equipment varies greatly, as does PC/server/Telecoms equipment. It's extremely difficult to quantify at the best of times, and even more difficult without knowing the actual product you are trying to process.


----------



## solar_plasma (Oct 17, 2013)

...beside the category and the age of the boards,it would also help, if you could describe the context. What refining methods do you think of? I think, though I have no experience with that, that it makes a great difference if the whole boards are used as fuel in a large copper winning and refining plant or if a backyard scapper scrapes off what he can process. Since most of the silver will be found in some solders, your question makes onlysense to me, if you think of gathering all the tin solder from the boards. As far as I know, there is still no economical process, which could be used in small scale refining, since even silver solder only contains one or a few percents of silver.

If you are thinking big, then you can use the many studies and patents on the net, which have average numbers of contained metals in e-scrap, just search for recycling pcb patents etc.

Beside silver solder, silver will be found in resitors and mlcc's. An average board yields 2,6 g mlcc and much less resistors. The mlcc's are said to contain about 5% silver if I remember right and this can also be recovered from any hobbyist. You can also search for threads about solder balls and their respective yields. Then weigh all solder balls from some pcb's of yours.


----------



## bomer (Oct 17, 2013)

I understand there would be huge differences if I was to try to recover the material as compared to a pro.I processed the fingers because it was fairly simple and saved the waste,I've even saved the filters I used to poor the AP thru. Since there's so much material I have just been focusing on seperating everything here's a few pix. I have 20 lbs of flatpacks,icc,etc.I have collected 1 lb of mcc,1lb of yellow tantalum caps,1/2 lb of silver cased ,and I have 100 lbs of RAM sticks no fingers. I still have50 lbs of cpu ,and 50 lbs mobo any ideas of yield if a pro were to do it.


----------



## ericrm (Oct 17, 2013)

is is realy hard to guess even with picture... even in the same chip they are diffrent number/years/country, you work habit and how much your dedicated to what you do, your experience. i could tell exact number and you would not get the same return than me(high or low). my best guess would be to sell as is


----------



## Pantherlikher (Oct 17, 2013)

You are looking at your question totally the wrong way.
You are seperating and gathering different materieals from these boards. What are your visions for ending up with what ever will come from them?

Do you plan on doing everything yourself in a perfect lab environment? Probably not so some where lower then what is actually there.

What can you expect to get out of all this material?
Probably alot of time & money spent but you should end up with a very nice learning experience which is worth more then any PM you have to show for your efforts.

This is the pot ole gold at the end of any rainbow.

B.S.
...Realizing that it's not the goal which makes happyness, but the journey...


----------



## bomer (Oct 17, 2013)

Oh to hell with a learning experience ,Im in this for the return .I have already recovered my cost and that was from the trimmed fingers, and 1 Mcdonnel Douglas Space Systems Motherboard which yielded 9 grams.I recovered 26 grams from the fingers and Im hoping there is some more that I left in solution because I didnt wait long enough between hcl/cl and smb.I still have all the waste from filters to acid. My work habit is 2nd to none as far as sorting and cleaning the different components. I plan on sell the Tantalum ,I barely learned about that or else I would of seperated the silver cased,and foil ,caps etc. The MCC I have collected so far are flawless.1lb total of brown MCC,I still more to clean of the mobos.I use a chipper gun air tool with a very fine tip razor sharp. I have gathered all flatpacks off the mobos besides the last ones in the picture and I still have the flatpacks on RAM. The mcc ive gathered are 1 lb of non magnetic and I have around 1lb of magnetic.I just want to get an Idea of a guesstimate if a pro were to refine these materials .Any Ideas or guesses would be great.I know there are variables ,Im not worried about exact % I just want to know a ballpark figure based on industry avg. I also have alot of the round caps is there anything valuable in those or can I just take to e waste drop off. thanks ..


----------



## ericrm (Oct 17, 2013)

bomer said:


> Oh to hell with a learning experience ,Im in this for the return


 so you mean your not here to learn? i would change hobby and start selling your stuff as is....


----------



## goldsilverpro (Oct 17, 2013)

I think I've had it with bomer. He's too "needy" and he's totally full of s**t. Most of all, I just don't like the man. He's Gone with the Wind.


----------



## chlaurite (Oct 17, 2013)

Though it might hurt the ego a bit, "I don't know" makes a much, much better answer than asking questions that wouldn't help you give a more accurate answer.

Or more to the point - I have a handful of 9 year old (pre-RoHS) Chaintech socket 939(AMD Winchester) VNF4 motherboards in my to-do pile. If I had them toll-refined by experts for 95+% of their silver - Can you *now* give a more accurate answer than "it depends"? :roll:


----------



## niteliteone (Oct 17, 2013)

bomer said:


> (snip)
> I just want to get an Idea of a guesstimate if a pro were to refine these materials .Any Ideas or guesses would be great.I know there are variables ,Im not worried about exact % I just want to know a ballpark figure based on industry avg. I also have alot of the round caps is there anything valuable in those or can I just take to e waste drop off. thanks ..


You are asking for information that "does not exist". :shock: 
Do you actually think someone that has spent years gathering data from what they have personally worked on would actually freely hand that information to everybody that asked for it :?: 
Everything "WE" know is posted here on this forum, free to anyone willing to look for it :roll: except for propriety knowledge some don't feel like sharing.

It took me 25 minutes to search and read several posts on MLCC's (not mcc) to discover that 2.5% was a reported return of palladium. The person didn't recover the silver from them. I guess he didn't research enough to realize it was also in the MLCC's :shock: ( his general reply as to why not )
With MLCC's their is no way of knowing what you will get unless you process the exact product that was done by the person reporting what they got. Their is no industry standard that says they must contain specific amounts of any PM's. So each manufacturer makes their own decisions on how to reach the desired results they desire.

Burger King makes burgers. So does McDonald's. But they each do it their own way with different spices and seasonings that make the "burger" specifically unique to the particular business. How much of McDonald's "secret sauce" do you expect to find on a whopper :?: :roll: 
Yet they are both Hamburgers. Same applies to the majority of electrical components. It only has to produce the desired result to get the same label as one made by someone else.

Now the kicker :shock: 
While you are researching the forum learning how to process each type of material you have, you will also find information on what each person has recovered, which will answer your question better than we can. 8) 

PS. I am glad to see that you are separating the different components into their respective groups. Some of those electrolytic capacitors you asked about will contain silver foils. That too has been talked about here with pictures too, I just don't know the link.


----------



## Smack (Oct 17, 2013)

His sorting and cleaning habits are 2nd to mine I guarantee it, as well as his typing/grammar.


----------



## niteliteone (Oct 17, 2013)

goldsilverpro said:


> I think I've had it with bomer. He's too "needy" and he's totally full of s**t. Most of all, I just don't like the man. He's Gone with the Wind.


I guess you posted this while I was writing my last reply. Usually it tells me about new posts before accepting my reply, but this time it didn't.


----------



## Harold_V (Oct 18, 2013)

bomer said:


> Oh to hell with a learning experience ,Im in this for the return .


I stated in one of my previous posts that you had been less than a pleasant experience since your signing on to the board. You have now confirmed my hunch, that you are a user, one who gladly takes from others with no consideration for their hard work and effort. From your comments, I get the idea you want to give a live performance, but you can't get too interested in learning to play the piano---you just want to make some music. Well, deadbeat, you're not going to do it here, at least not on my watch. 

The very idea that you don't care to do any learning, you are just in this for the "return" isn't acceptable. Not to me, not to other moderators, and certainly not to the readers you have continually inconvenienced. You have truly worn out your welcome here. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that GSP has saved me the trouble of banning you, which I would have gladly done myself. 

Harold 

Oh, yeah! Good luck with your trying to live off the efforts of others. We're not all stupid, in spite of your assumption.


----------



## Pantherlikher (Oct 18, 2013)

I've even gotten bad vibes from Bomer.
The fact that he stated no interested in the learning part takes the cake.
Also makes me think there are more PMs in the waste then has in hand.

And....big kicker...
What's happening to the dangerous waste produced?
Why spend the money properly disposing of it when it can just be dumped?

Typical of the Want it Now people

B.S.


----------



## Anonymous (Oct 18, 2013)

chlaurite said:


> Or more to the point - I have a handful of 9 year old (pre-RoHS) Chaintech socket 939(AMD Winchester) VNF4 motherboards in my to-do pile. If I had them toll-refined by experts for 95+% of their silver - Can you *now* give a more accurate answer than "it depends"? :roll:



Sure, provided we had refined a good sample of these and had the data on file. The problem is, that most large scale refiners don't keep data "per part number" on motherboards. Unless of course it's something they get in batches of tonnes plus. Most of their product comes in mixed batches from the "pc world" perspective.


----------



## Anonymous (Oct 18, 2013)

solar_plasma said:


> Beside silver solder, silver will be found in resitors and mlcc's. *An average board yields 2,6 g mlcc *and much less resistors. The mlcc's are said to contain about 5% silver if I remember right and this can also be recovered from any hobbyist. You can also search for threads about solder balls and their respective yields. Then weigh all solder balls from some pcb's of yours.



Solar just as an FYI mate, I regularly get motherboards with 200G of MLCC on EACH.

If I could just hook up with somebody who really wanted to work with me on them.... :twisted:


----------



## solar_plasma (Oct 18, 2013)

spaceships said:


> solar_plasma said:
> 
> 
> > Beside silver solder, silver will be found in resitors and mlcc's. *An average board yields 2,6 g mlcc *and much less resistors. The mlcc's are said to contain about 5% silver if I remember right and this can also be recovered from any hobbyist. You can also search for threads about solder balls and their respective yields. Then weigh all solder balls from some pcb's of yours.
> ...



In nowadays (5 year old) typical cheap personal computer motherboards there are 2,6 g, all in all there may be 7 g in a cheap pc. Sure there are other kind of boards, - I'd like to get the electronics of some spaceshuttles. Could not find any here around. :lol:


----------



## JHS (Oct 18, 2013)

Solar,
You are just not looking in the right place.
I read a article where a guy bought a sealed container from a gov.auction,and it contained a portable nucular reactor.
he paid $20,000.00 for the container,had it shipped to his yard,and as soon as he figured out what he had,agents showed up.
it was legally his and they bought it back from him for $5,000,000.00
imagine the boards in that thing.
john


----------



## solar_plasma (Oct 18, 2013)

JHS said:


> Solar,
> You are just not looking in the right place.
> I read a article where a guy bought a sealed container from a gov.auction,and it contained a portable nucular reactor.
> he paid $20,000.00 for the container,had it shipped to his yard,and as soon as he figured out what he had,agents showed up.
> ...



:lol: ....then I am very happy I am looking the wrong place


----------

