# Scrap ceramic chips



## Pumice (Feb 12, 2013)

Hi guys just wondereing if there is any real use for chips like this other than scrap, even in large quantities? I have alot of gold bearing chips. But also at least hundreds of pounds if not more of these types brand new in boxes and trays. I added a couple photos with examples of the more common ones I have. I can analyze tomorrow with a Niton if anyone is interested in knowing what is in them. Garbage? Or do they have any value? Just looking for some input thank you.


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## glondor (Feb 13, 2013)

Have you broken any open to see whats inside?


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## tek4g63 (Feb 13, 2013)

Its likely that they do contain values. But they are not ceramic. They appear to be the poly/resin type.

I think that a member named patnor, has the best method for processing that type. I believe that its ever referred to as the patnor method. :mrgreen:


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## ilikesilver (Feb 14, 2013)

yeah he crush's them up and filters the goods out. he has a cool method that i will be using. downloadable .

tim


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## mjgraham (Feb 14, 2013)

I am not sure anyone would want them , the Altera one is a FPGA and fetches about $170 each, however there like 15 years old so no would even use them anymore.

edit: I did not mean they were worthless, just meant that they were no good for their main purpose, I'd say there pretty decent scrap, at least you don't have to remove them from anything there ready to go.


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## hank hettinger (Feb 15, 2013)

Please Niton them and let's see what values they have and we can work out a price that's fair or determine they aren't worth the trouble to refine.
Thanks
Hank


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## patnor1011 (Feb 15, 2013)

Niton will not help.
If you really want to get appropriate reading with handheld X/ray you need to take say 100g of them, incinerate, carefully wash out ash, thoroughly melt all metallic parts, pour in small bar and take few readings from all sides. Then you will have idea of what values they contain. You will find all kinds of metals there.


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## Pumice (Feb 16, 2013)

Hey guys been busy sorry. I realize the Niton will not give me accurate readings shooting a chip as far as % of metals. But I have played with it enough to know it will tell me whats in them at least and give you a fairly good idea of what we are dealing with.

I have other types of chips too. I will try to post pics of more chips with the test results I get tomorrow. And once again I do know the results could be misleading. But if it tells me there platinum in them, then there is platinum in them.

Thanks guys.


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## Palladium (Feb 17, 2013)

I know you know your equipment and such and this really doesn't matter in this situation here, but.... Just because that instrument says it one thing don't just come to rely on that as the gospel. I know a man who up until two weeks ago would have argued that point with me. Today he's $20,000 less and i know he knows his job better than that. The weak link was his faith. He's an old scrap dog and knew better. This was in the secondary scrap metals business and not precious metals.


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## patnor1011 (Feb 17, 2013)

I would not bet on platinum in them. Palladium in form of AgPd alloy yes, I have seen this quite often but I have my doubts about Pt. Unless you run some old military russian made IC.


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## GOLDbuyerCA (Feb 17, 2013)

*i am processing Altera Max, * there is recoverable gold, , my percentum is one tenth of one percent by weight, Chips crushed, acid wash nitric first, washed, hcl, washed nitiric, / hcl, washed , dried fired, but i am doing 140 oz. for decimel, one four oz. i am using minimum cheap acids, and quick process, to save time. i have kept the slag, but i just don't see more value, the newer programable chips, i even see less value, as gold is used sparingly and only for engineering value purposes, , i don't have a list yet of which chips are of more value, but i will be keeping one, and sharing. , i am in Vancouver Metro area. i have say near a hundred pounds i am processing, i purchased near Chicago area, all costs, 85 to my door. i am doing 486 chips, which are another 200 lbs, which cost me 250 landed, , in all of this, is a labour intensive effort. careful work, and a realization, of not to be to optomistic . , i wish you luck, Thomas in metro Vancouver


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## GOLDbuyerCA (Feb 19, 2013)

*Altera Gold* Circa 2000, i am in the process of rendering these down :>


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## GOLDbuyerCA (Feb 19, 2013)

*Pumice and I* have the chips, , i think that is the hard part, the second is getting a good extraction, out of each and every one, with a minimum of effort, expense, n the whole long process. one more photo of my Altera Chips :> i opened a lid by using a scissor locking tool. putting the top on a hot plate. and quenching the chip in cold water. second time it worked, you can see the split top in the photo, when you click on the plus magnification. A note of caution, some of the chips in this series, and newer, have NO Gold at all, more like a sparing amount of Palladium .


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## cableman (Feb 20, 2013)

Dear Sir,
I know I am still a newbie but I am a serious minded person and read a lot of these posts to learn what I can. Now I have read a lot about these chips or flat caps I think they call them and one thing they have in common is the tiny miniscule strands of gold running inside them. Now I have heard arguments on both sides but I believe the est idea I ever heard of was taking two lead pipes. One that just fit inside the other. The bigger one was capped off and the other one was too but it was filled with melted lead and allowed to harden. They made the one pipe longer so you could drop chips in the empty pipe and crush em with the other. I'm sure there are other ways but I like that one.

I sent some pictures but my old digital camera need replacing bad but I think you can see well enough to know what I want you to see. It seems that most all flat packs have some gold in them but be on the look out for the ones that have the little gold mark in the corner. They are the ones that have the most gold but I still collect em all so when I get a lot I will crush them and work em all up at once to see what kind of recovery I get.




I hope I got the picture in right. Everything should be self explanatory except for those on the bottom right. I have broken one open and was hoping you could identify the metal inside before I have to go to a little trouble testing what it is for sure. If you know what it is offhand I'd appreciate the knowledge so I know whether to save em or not.


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## Geo (Feb 20, 2013)

cableman, for identification purposes, the two top chips are BGA's (ball grid arrays "general") or VGA chips (video graphics acceleration chips "specific") and the bottom left is a DIP chip (dual inline processor chip) of the same family of ROM from memory sticks and the bottom right is either a transistor or a thryristor. all of which should contain gold bonding wires and a PD/Ag alloy under the microchip.

i would like to make an Edit. DIP refers to "dual inline package". "dual inline processor" is a misnomer passed on to me from a 70+ year old electronics engineer that called things what it was called before the true descriptive names were even known. 

thank you FrugalRefiner for letting me know.


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## lazersteve (Feb 21, 2013)

Geo,

I would call the one in the lower left a 'flat pack quad', 'quad pack', or simply 'quad' for short, meaning it has a low profile and pins around all four edges of the package. DIPs (dual in line package) only have two rows of legs, one on either side of the package, SIP (single in line package ) only have one row of legs. The one on the lower right would be termed a TO-220 package style, or '220' by 'techie' types. If the 220 where the surface mounted variety we would call it a 'D2PAK' or 'DPAK' for short.

Many of these terms are slang used in the electronics repair industry and some are used interchangeability depending on how specific one wants to be when discussing board design and component replacement with ones colleagues. As the sizes of the components get smaller, the terms get more muddled and lead many techs to use the wrong term for specific package designs due to the numerous variations in packages/nomenclature. I personally toss an 'SMD' on the front of my package slang for any package names that I don't yet know, but is a 'shrunk down' version of a similarly shaped/pinned package that I already know the designation for. As time goes on and you work with the newer types, you tend to learn a new slang term for the smaller parts and develop a new word in your parts package lexicon. In my circle of techie friends, we call this 'tech talk', not to be confused with computer lingo slang loosely known as 'geek speak'.

Steve


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## Geo (Feb 21, 2013)

thanks Steve. the picture is very blurry. from my perspective it looked like it only had two rows of legs. after looking at it magnified, i think i can make out the silvery look of the other sides.


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## cejohnsonsr (Feb 24, 2013)

Hello everyone. I had a question similar to this one, so I thought I'd jump in here as opposed to starting a new thread. If anyone thinks that's the wrong thing to do just let me know & I'll repost an original thread.

I got a bunch of old Apple/Macs a while back. After disassembling as much as I could I got to the point of finally trying out my sandbath (thanks Geo) to depopulate the motherboards. Some of the boards had CPUs that could be removed, but several had CPUs that were soldered like quads. In the picture below the chips in positions 1,1 & 2,1 are the CPUs. The rest of the 1st 2 rows are some sort of com chips (I think) except the chip at position 2,4. It's quad, but I have no idea what it is. The 3rd row is only 1 chip. It was on the back of the motherboard. The back of it (the part with the circuits showing) is made of plastic.

My questions are:

1. Would you process these CPUs with the other ceramic CPUs or keep them with the quads?

2. Would you process the quads along with the DIPs or separately?

3. What about that odd chip with the plastic back? How would you guys process it?

Thanks for any help.

Ed


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## Geo (Feb 24, 2013)

cejohnsonsr,its always best to process like materials together whenever possible. it would almost be impossible to process flatpak chips with ceramic processors because it calls for two totally separate processes.the chips you have pictured needs to be incinerated to release the encased gold bonding wires. Patnor1011 has pioneered a process to deal with those and if you follow the links in his signature line you will find more information on how they are done. 

the bottom chip is (in general) called a BGA, ball grid array. it is also a VGA (video graphics acceleration) processor chip. there's a tiny bit of gold on the green base but the real gold content is in the black resin top in the form of gold bonding wires. these chips (in my opinion) is the second greatest gold producing component on a computer motherboard second only to the CPU in precious metal content. no other single component on a motherboard contains more precious metal.


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## cejohnsonsr (Feb 24, 2013)

Thank you, Geo. Again! That was exactly what I needed to know. I thought all of these chips except maybe the bottom one were ceramic. Now I know better. Looks like I need to start focusing my study on incineration & the Patnor process.

Thanks again,

Ed


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## Trinity358 (Aug 13, 2020)

Hellow Gentleman, 
Does anyone know how much gold contain per Cmputer BGA Chip.. Let me inform please.. 
Thanks. 
My lab test I found per BGA Chip contain gold = 0.013 gram something like that.. Is it...?

Image link bellow... 


https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQN6DoytLCGifKIZQmGi8ZIIHTieFtgT8LX6A&usqp=CAU


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## niks neims (Aug 13, 2020)

Sounds about right, in vaguest possible terms... For example I've heard there is some with no gold at all....


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## kurtak (Aug 13, 2020)

Trinity358 said:


> Hellow Gentleman,
> Dose anyone know how much gold contain per Cmputer BGA Chip.. Let me inform please..
> Thanks.
> My lab test I found per BGA Chip contain gold = 0.013 gram something like that.. Is it...?
> ...



You should take a look at this thread - it will give you an "idea" of expected yields of different types of chips

:arrow: My results of specific types of IC chips, flatpacks and BGA

when it comes to processing chips there is no absolute but the above thread gives you a "ball park Idea"

Kurt


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## Trinity358 (Feb 28, 2021)

Dear Kurt,
Is My gold recovery process perfect, please advice me.. Thanks 

Bellowe my channel link

https://youtu.be/Xwoq7T3yE1A


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## kurtak (Feb 28, 2021)

Trinity

Nice video & nice set up :mrgreen: :G 

There is room for improvement - but then there always is

There are a number of things I can see to improve your process &/or improve your end product

Right now I don't have time to respond with some pointers but will try to do so later (it may take a couple weeks before I get to it) --- other may respond in the mean time

All in all - not bad considering your starting material  

Kurt


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## Trinity358 (Feb 28, 2021)

Kurt,

Lot of thanks dear Kurt your informative reply


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