# Processing Fingers in Acid Peroxide :Comments/Questions



## lazersteve (Jul 13, 2007)

Here's where you can post your comments to this tutorial:

Fingers in AP

Steve


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## jimdoc (Jul 13, 2007)

Steve, count me in on that it sounds like a great idea.
Its a coincidence that I just logged on to check out the
peroxide finger method because I just started to clean
up a medicine bottle full of flakes from when I tried CLS
with the bucket. The only thing that went to the plate was
copper, and the gold all floated or sank. It looks like the 
gold mash you ended up with, it was all from HP boards
that were covered in gold.I didn't check the solution after
I was done but saved the "mash". Live and learn, right.
I am going to watch the video and see if it answers my questions.
Thanks. Jim


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## jimdoc (Jul 13, 2007)

Steve,
I let the video buffer for an hour and it didn't
start to play. I have DSL, that isn't the fastest,
but not the slowest. Could you put larger videos
like this one up in two parts? 
Jim


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## aflacglobal (Jul 13, 2007)

Me to


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## lazersteve (Jul 13, 2007)

Jim,

Do the other videos with the MAC icon work?


Mine cable modem started playing the clip after 1 minute.

Steve


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## jimdoc (Jul 13, 2007)

When you started making the videos work for Mac, it made them alot slower, even ones I saw before took alot longer to buffer. All the videos seem to work now that I give them the time to buffer, but this one is
too long I guess.


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## aflacglobal (Jul 13, 2007)

got it took about 12 min


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## lazersteve (Jul 13, 2007)

Jim,

I just added a mini media player interface so you can monitor the download progress. The downloaded % will show at the bottom in cycles with the copyright info.

Let me know what you get.

Steve


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## jimdoc (Jul 13, 2007)

Steve,
I tried it again, and it looks like a windows media player
frame that I can pause and shows the pecentage of the
buffering, like it did when you first started with your videos.
It was at 38% and started playing, so it looks like it is working.
Thanks. Jim


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## lazersteve (Jul 13, 2007)

Who thinks I should add the controls to my videos?


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## jimdoc (Jul 13, 2007)

I think that would be a help when you can see the percentage that is buffered, and can pause it until it catches up.
Thanks. Jim


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## aflacglobal (Jul 13, 2007)

Yes. Pause and rewind would be great. Once you start it now if you miss something you have to watch the whole thing again. Or if the phone rings you miss it.

Ralph


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## aflacglobal (Jul 13, 2007)

Great video steve. All i needed was a tub of popcorn and that bucket of gold you had. lol

Imax would be awesome. :wink: 

What type of vide system you using to record them ? Dam good camera.

Ralph


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 13, 2007)

Good video, Steve.

One comment. I know that you would be much much happier if you had a real lab wash bottle. It would make it so much easier and faster to rinse with.
http://www.smallparts.com/products/storagesolutions/scienceware/washbottles.cfm

There are several different styles. I have used them all and the exact style pictured in the link is by far the best for our purposes. On some, the spout is bent downward. The near horizontal spouts, as in the top photo are the best. I prefer the 1000mL ones. Don't buy any smaller than 500mL. You'll spend all your time refilling them. When you first get them, the water comes out in a very small stream. I prefer just a little more volume, so I carefully cut off a very small portion of the tip. The inside of the hole is tapered. When cutting off the tip, only cut off only about 1/32" at a time, at the most. Otherwise, you'll end up with too much volume but not enough pressure. You can take it off but you can't put it back on.

One last comment. Great gloves. I prefer cuffing the gloves about an inch, or less. That way, if you get any chemicals on the gloves, they run into the cuff and not on your arm.


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## lazersteve (Jul 13, 2007)

GSP,

Thanks for the glove tip. I've been meaning to get a 'real' wash bottle, but time hasn't allowed me to order one. 

Steve


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 13, 2007)

Also, a progress slider would be nice - in your spare time. That way, when it is fully downloaded, you can move to any desired point in the video.

More about wash bottles. I usually have 3 bottles. Two with tap water and one labeled with distilled water.

Some people put acids in the wash bottles. From my experience, this is an accident waiting to happen. If you put the bottle near a hot plate or in the sun, the liquid warms up and the pressure causes it to dribble out of the tip. Also, strong acids can eventually degrade the plastic. 

In my previous post, I mentioned trimming the tip to get more volume. This is a personal preference and it also depends of the quantity of stuff you are running. I suggest that, before trimming, you use it as is for awhile to see how it works for you.

You might prefer the 500 mL bottles. They are slightly easier to handle. I liked the 1000 mL ones because I was running large amounts of stuff and used a lot of rinse water.


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## lazersteve (Jul 13, 2007)

All,

I've added the requested sliders and such.

Enjoy,

Steve


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## Noxx (Jul 13, 2007)

Nice long video 
Hey Steve, instead of using a spoon to get the foil, why not using a soft spatula ? I haven't tried it but...
Just my 2 cents.


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## lazersteve (Jul 13, 2007)

Noxx,

Actually, I tried a cake spatula once and it was difficult to get the gold to stay with the spatula. The gold would roll up under the edge of the spatula and break apart into smaller pieces as I tried to pull it out. The spoon forms a nice cup to hold the gold allowing me to scoop it out. 

I leave the gold in the water for two reasons:

1. The gold gets a final rinse as I squeeze out the water.

2. It doesn't get broken apart as I work with it. 

The very tiny gold flakes tend to float away with even a gentle air current. By keeping them wet they stay whole and are easy to herd... like tiny golden sheep. :lol: 

Water does an excellent job of controlling the delicate foils.

Steve


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 13, 2007)

How did the solution test for gold?


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## Noxx (Jul 13, 2007)

Alright... What's the final yield ?


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## lazersteve (Jul 13, 2007)

After the mash dried out it weighs just over 3 grams. So the yield for these ISA fingers is roughly 1 gram gold per 200 grams of fully plated double sided ISA fingers.

I'll update the ISA card yield post when I get the gold powder melted and weighed. I'll dissolve the foils in a little HCl-Cl and drop with SMB.

Steve


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## aflacglobal (Jul 13, 2007)

Yeah ,, I don't think i'll be doing all that squeezing. Your hand has got to get tired Steve

After the video last night i was thinking the same thing Chris.

Heres what i came up with. I have two of these already. Fill it up and pump it up and your good to go.

Then i thought use a 3 gal size, put a long hose on it ( 4-6 ft ).
Then on the end put a small water pic head or the like. Then you could set it under you bench and run the hose up to the counter top. Put you a tire valve stem in it and you wouldn't even have to pump it up. Just fill with water and air and your go to go for a long time.

Ralph


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 14, 2007)

You're a gadget guy, Ralph. I must admit that some of the gadgets you find are great. In this case, I would use the tried and true and cheap, lab wash bottles. They are the most controllable.

I have also used those cheap black spray nozzles, with a hose, that you find on kitchen sinks. They also work great, especially with large amounts. They can clean out a bucket in seconds. They can also be gentle.


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## aflacglobal (Jul 14, 2007)

You're a gadget guy, Ralph. :wink: :wink:

I'll try anything ( almost ) once just to see if i can. 
Necessity is the mother of invention :!: 
Just wait til i start making video's like Steve. 

You wouldn't believe What i am gathering parts for as my next X-Prize
project. I have dealt with high pressure systems that use to pump high viscosity materials like coal tar epoxies. We sometimes had to run several hundred feet of line from the pump to the receiving end. Pressures would reach 7 - 10,000 PSI. Now i also know that i can hit 600-700 degrees in this environment. The only problem is the reactor vessel. Think i got that solved for about $ 200.00. Bet you can't guess where this is going. :shock: :shock: 

I figure the worse that could happen is a rupture and depressurization. Hell it's only water. Just a few safety features and I'll feel safer though. That's right.

Were going Super critical Baby !!!!!! Or at least try. :wink: 
How about that ozone question on the super critical issue ?

Ralph


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## postmako (Jul 14, 2007)

lazersteve: Thanks for the video. I have one request that would benefit all of us including you. Any way you can enable the seeking controls? This would cut down on your bandwidth and it would also allow to continue the film from where we were cut off. For instance I am now rewatching the first 17 minutes because it didn't download all of the film and the only way to see the ending is to try and reload the whole thing again.
Thanks Steve,
Kory


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## Noxx (Jul 14, 2007)

Aflac, why do you need such high pressures and temp. ?

You'll start making some videos ? On what ?
And if you need any webspace to host your vids, I have 1Gb left on my server.


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## aflacglobal (Jul 14, 2007)

My holy grail. Uses nothing but water, pressure, and a little heat. It will dam near destroy anything that will oxidize. Throw 100 gals of Ar in this machine and all you get is the metals that were in the solution and nearly pure water. Once you get the system up to temp and pressure, it will generate it's own heat with very little heat imput at all. 5-6,000 watts.

Hell my heat pump pulls that. Read the Aqua cat article. Same thing just cheaper, smaller, and fixed some of their mistakes. lol

SCWO ( super critical water oxidization) is killer for many, many toxic situtations. think of the uses.

Ralph.


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## lazersteve (Jul 14, 2007)

Postmako said:


> Any way you can enable the seeking controls?



Kory,

The finger video has a slider which functions as a seeking control. Just pause the video, slide the slider to the point you are interested in and click play.


Steve


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## lazersteve (Jul 15, 2007)

GSP said:


> How did the solution test for gold?



I haven't tested it yet. I'll post that information as soon as I test it.

Steve


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## postmako (Jul 15, 2007)

lazersteve said:


> Postmako said:
> 
> 
> > Any way you can enable the seeking controls?
> ...



For some reason it wasn't working for me. Are you sure it works for you? Maybe I need to upgrade the windows media player.

Let me know,
Kory


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## lazersteve (Jul 15, 2007)

Kory,

You need to wait until the full file buffers before attempting to use the seek slider. After the video loads fully, hit pause, slide to the approximate area you want, and hit play. The video doesn't display while you move the slider. 

I have enabled the full arsenal of controls for the embedded media player files. If the seek doesn't work as you need it to, I can do no more on my end.

Steve


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 15, 2007)

On my system, the previous 29 min. video takes about 10 sec. to buffer. The new 5 min. video takes 5 minutes to buffer. ?? Is this due to present activity?


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## lazersteve (Jul 15, 2007)

GSP,

I took longer than that for me. I've been playing with the compression codecs for my videos and this one is was compressed using high quality film content codecs. I think I'll recompile it at the lower quality.

Steve


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## postmako (Jul 16, 2007)

LazerSteve: Isn't there usually a way to seek without having to load the entire video? My problem is that the video would stop loading and I couldn't seek even if I wanted to. This was the main problem.

Have you considered using XVid or Divx (low motion) and you can set the bitrate to something a bit lower to reduce the file size and the loading time.

Thanks for opening up the controls, it is quite helpful.

I may order the SS Anode from you, I can't seem to find anything here that would work...

Cheers,
Kory


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## lazersteve (Jul 16, 2007)

As previously mentioned I'm experimenting with the bit rates and codecs. I'm definitely sticking with the standard WMP front end. I'll recompile at my usual 700+ kb instead of the 1500+ kb.

I don't want to introduce any more variables by using the DivX codex. It's difficult to find the fine line between quality , compatibilty, and performance so please bear with me.

Steve


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## postmako (Jul 17, 2007)

Actually it may be best to convert everything to a low bitrate, then everything will load faster and the currently small screen size will not noticeably be affected. If you need help with testing just let me know, I would be more than happy to help you.
Cheers,
Kory


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## aflacglobal (Jul 17, 2007)

Small screen is alright. But i like mine in hi Def , full screen.
That way i can see even the smallest of things happening. I think this is what steve is talking about by finding the middle ground. The right system without degrading the video quality.

Ralph


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## lazersteve (Jul 17, 2007)

The videos are small to fit on the page in different screen resolutions with all the other info. The actual size of the original videos is 640x480. Ralph's right about the quality factor, the higher the bitrate the better the picture quality. :wink: Since I'm working towards a DVD of these videos I don't want to skimp on resolution and bitrates and lose all my high resolution when they all go to DVD. 

Steve


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## Dog Biscuit (Jul 21, 2007)

Steve,

Please put me on your DVD list. It takes about half a day to download this video and I can't seem to keep it on my computer. I've downloaded it four times - it's worth it!

Mike


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## macfixer01 (Aug 24, 2007)

Hi All,
This acid-peroxide process is new to me and looks like sheer genious! I'm wondering though if solder will affect the process? In the past I've stripped fingers and gold plated traces from circuit boards with a razor blade. That way I could eliminate carrying over solder, and also reduce the bulk of my scrap since the empty boards could then be trashed.

What would happen if the whole gold-trace circuit board (stripped of all components) was put in the acid-peroxide solution? Would much of the tin-lead solder go into solution? If I wasn't particularly interested in recovering the copper I suppose it wouldn't matter much since the object is just to release the gold plating from the copper. Maybe I answered my own question here?

I was also wondering though if it would create solids like maybe tin chloride that would cause me problems filtering or separating them from the gold foils?

Thanks,
macfixer01


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## aflacglobal (Aug 25, 2007)

I can't exactly answer that, But here is something that might help.

This is for plating but the chemistry is there.

Chemical Reactions
Alkaline etch is basically cupric chloride with the copper complexed with ammonia to keep it in solution at a higher pH. In the correct pH range the etchant will still attack copper but is much less aggressive towards tin, solder and nickel.

The etching reaction:
__2Cu0 + 2Cu+2(NH3)4Cl2 →4Cu+1(NH3)2Cl

The regeneration reaction:
__4Cu+1(NH3)2Cl + 4NH3 + 4NH4Cl + O2 →4Cu+2(NH3)4Cl2 + 2H2O

__The ammonia (NH3) and ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) are provided by the replenished solution. The oxygen comes from the air brought into the etch chamber by the ventilation system.


Example: How much air must be pulled into the etch chamber in the previous example to regenerate the etchant?

Solution: From the regeneration reaction it can be seen that each 4 moles of copper etched requires 1 mole of oxygen (O2) for regeneration (4 TO 1) ratio. From the prior example we know that the amount of copper etched per hour is 34119 grams. ( 1219 oz )
Moles Cu etched =
34119 gm 63.54 gm / mole Cu = 537 moles Cu
Moles oxygen needed for regeneration = 537 moles Cu
4 moles Cu /mole oxygen = 134.2 moles oxygen
134.2 moles O2 x 32 gm O2 / mole = 4294 gm O2 needed for regeneration
Air is 20% O2 so 4294 gm O2 x 5 = 21472 gm of air is needed to supply the necessary oxygen.
1 mole of air weighs approximately 30 gm and one mole of air occupies a volume of 22.4 liters
Air flow needed to supply enough oxygen for regeneration:
= 21472 gm air
30 gm air / mole x 22.4 liters / mole = 16032 liters / hr = 566 cubic ft / hr
If the system were airtight then 566 ft3 / hr would be all the flow needed

2.15 cubic feet of air per oz of copper. 
one of these can produce about 2 cfh. http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/iid/6509/cid/1785

Chemical Processing Parameters for Alkaline Etch
There are four chemical factors that contribute to etch rate and undercut. They are:
__pH
__Copper content
__Chloride concentration
__Temperature

All of these factors must be analyzed and controlled in order to find the best compromise between the fastest etch rate and the least amount of undercut. The effects of each are discussed in the following paragraphs.
pH

The pH of the etchant is a measure of the relative amount of free ammonia (NH3) that is available to the etching process. Most alkaline etch baths are designed to work in a pH range of 8.0 to 8.5 but there exist specific low pH alkaline etch formulations designed for fine line etching with pH as low as 7.8. The etch rate of the bath increases as the pH changes within these limits but the pH of the bath also has an important effect on the undercut. Under ideal etch conditions, the
diamine monovalent copper complex [Cu(NH3)2+] formed during the etching reaction forms a film on the sidewall. This film acts as a natural banking agent protecting the sidewall from lateral etch. At the upper end of the pH range, 


however, the film is rapidly dissolved away in the presence of free ammonia and dissolved air. Typically the undercut is 30% to 40% more at a pH of 8.5 than it is at a pH of 8.1. For this reason Chemcut recommends that the etch bath be run as close to the lower pH limit as possible for best undercut results. Operating below the
recommended range will cause the enchants to attack the tin in tin-lead resists. Even worse, running under the recommended pH minimizes the effectiveness of the buffering system and the etchant could enter a condition known as “sludge out” where the copper-ammonia complex precipitates out of solution. Once out of solution the copper-ammonia complex will not redissolve and
the etcher must be emptied and recharged with fresh etchant.

Chloride Concentration
The chloride concentration indicates the amount of ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) present in the system. As the chloride concentration increases, more copper metal can be held in solution, allowing a decrease in the amount of undercut. The chloride component also acts as a buffering agent in the etchant, permitting a narrow pH window. The ratio of chloride concentration to copper concentration is important in the etch bath. The etch solution will become more corrosive as the amount of chloride above the stoichiometric balance (2 moles of ammonium chloride per mole of copper) increases. In this condition the etch solution will readily dissolve away the protective film on the sidewalls formed by the diamine copper complex.


:arrow: :arrow: :arrow:


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