# Are these MLCC's?



## bemate (Oct 21, 2016)

I came across a card in my pile and found some SMD's that look like MLCC's, but they are curious colours. Do these others contain Pd/Ag as well?

In the pictures they are blue and black with silvery edges alongside the usual beige ones...


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## upcyclist (Oct 21, 2016)

The ones you're after are the capacitors, shades of beige usually, and designated with C_xxx_ (C followed by a number). 

Note that the blues and blacks are marked with an R for Resistor. You also generally don't want them other letters. You can do a web search on identifying electronic components--there's lots of good primers out there.

_Edited for clarity_


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## bemate (Oct 21, 2016)

Thanks, I had an inkling that was the situation. Guess that makes my plan of using a chisel to depopulate the boards semi-selectively a bit less easy, but I do love a good pile of assorted stuff to sort through.

What can I say, I love to sort stuff, it makes me relax and forget the stress of two kids, two horses and wife with less than optimal health.


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## upcyclist (Oct 21, 2016)

I hear ya--I live in a sorted mess for similar reasons. I'll sort things but not put them away 

I only occasionally do depopulating, but when I do I try to pick off what I want first (try a 1/2" wood chisel), then just scrape the rest clean. I remember one of the guys here talking recently about how he did something similar, and the scraped stuff just went in the same bin as his brown boards.


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## anachronism (Oct 21, 2016)

upcyclist said:


> The ones you're after are the capacitors, shades of beige usually, and designated with C_xxx_ (C followed by a number).
> 
> *Note that the blues and blacks are marked with an R for Resistor. You also generally don't want them other letters. *You can do a web search on identifying electronic components--there's lots of good primers out there.
> 
> _Edited for clarity_



You'd be incorrect there. Sorry an' all.


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## patnor1011 (Oct 21, 2016)

It pays to study forum. 
You will then find some nice threads where people processed resistors and recovered bricks of silver from them.


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## upcyclist (Oct 21, 2016)

I stand corrected. Bemate asked about silver & palladium, but I had specifically the Pd/Ag capacitors in mind. 

Sorry if I led a fellow Norwegian astray, if only for a few hours  

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk


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## bemate (Oct 22, 2016)

And all the while I was sleeping, blissfully unaware of the fact... :wink: 

Well, now that I'm awake, at 07:30 on a Saturday since my youngest woke up to her nose bleeding, that made my morning quite a bit better. I think I'll just group them together, primarily for the silver (not 'Agency' as my autocorrect calls it when I try to write Ag and don't proofread...). I have nowhere near enough to process, just didn't make sense to throw them out with the boards.

One of the problems here in Norway is that there is no proper aftermarket for electronic parts, so the only money I'll potentially see is from pure metals, and only the PM's are worth the effort on a tiny scale.

Good thing I'm not in it for the money. :roll: 

Thanks for the clarification guys!


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## anachronism (Oct 22, 2016)

upcyclist said:


> I stand corrected. Bemate asked about silver & palladium, but I had specifically the Pd/Ag capacitors in mind.
> 
> Sorry if I led a fellow Norwegian astray, if only for a few hours
> 
> Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk



Absolutely no drama upcyclist. None of us can be expected to know everything and I learn something new every day I do this.


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## markk (Oct 29, 2016)

Someone should write a paper with " ALL " the tricks in it . There is so much information that is not given easily. If you read or watch videos you get the basics but not the whole story . I have spent many hours on this matter and constantly find new info . Just now I find out that some MLCC are magnetic and resistors contain silver. This info should have been in every "how to " post on chips. There is also lots of info that should be put in every post on gold.
Just as another example, I just found out a couple days ago that you should not do IC chips and gold fingers, or other good gold bearing items in the same batch and also that you should not drop gold from solution with every batch but wait till it is fully saturated with gold. This would have been nice to know from the beginning.


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## butcher (Oct 29, 2016)

Someone should write a paper with " ALL " the tricks in it .

I want a copy.
I could spend a couple of lifetimes studying it.


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## anachronism (Oct 29, 2016)

markk said:


> Just as another example, I just found out a couple days ago that you should not do IC chips and gold fingers, or other good gold bearing items in the same batch and also that you should not drop gold from solution with every batch but wait till it is fully saturated with gold. This would have been nice to know from the beginning.



Well whoever told you that isn't someone you need to be listening to very much.


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## Shark (Oct 29, 2016)

butcher said:


> Someone should write a paper with " ALL " the tricks in it .
> 
> I want a copy.
> I could spend a couple of lifetimes studying it.



Make mine a digital copy. I don't have room for the 10,000 plus pages of paper it would take.


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## FrugalRefiner (Oct 29, 2016)

markk said:


> Someone should write a paper with " ALL " the tricks in it .


Someone did, and the best thing is they're giving it away for free! All the Tricks. And it's digital Shark. 8) 

Dave


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## Shark (Oct 29, 2016)

FrugalRefiner said:


> markk said:
> 
> 
> > Someone should write a paper with " ALL " the tricks in it .
> ...



:lol: 



> Someone should write a paper with " ALL " the tricks in it . There is so much information that is not given easily. If you read or watch videos you get the basics but not the whole story . I have spent many hours on this matter and constantly find new info . Just now I find out that some MLCC are magnetic and resistors contain silver. This info should have been in every "how to " post on chips. There is also lots of info that should be put in every post on gold.
> Just as another example, I just found out a couple days ago that you should not do IC chips and gold fingers, or other good gold bearing items in the same batch and also that you should not drop gold from solution with every batch but wait till it is fully saturated with gold. This would have been nice to know from the beginning.



Take Dave's post serious, the information is here, you just have to work at it. If all that information was available the way your asking, would you really understand it all the first time around. I have been reading this forum for several years now along with the various PDF files posted on here as well. The more I read the more I realize just how little I know. There are members here who have been refining for years, some most of their lives, and you will find posts made by many of them where they learn something new quite often. Learning is the cake, the results of the learning is icing on that cake. Stay after it, you will learn a lot if you don't let it overwhelm you.


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## FrugalRefiner (Oct 29, 2016)

Shark said:


> Take Dave's post serious, the information is here, you just have to work at it. If all that information was available the way your asking, would you really understand it all the first time around. I have been reading this forum for several years now along with the various PDF files posted on here as well. The more I read the more I realize just how little I know. There are members here who have been refining for years, some most of their lives, and you will find posts made by many of them where they learn something new quite often. Learning is the cake, the results of the learning is icing on that cake. Stay after it, you will learn a lot if you don't let it overwhelm you.


I'm not sure if I've posted this before, but I remember jotting down some notes of the "Stages of Learning" one evening.

At first, you read a little and it seems to be simple and make sense.

As you read more, you start to see other processes, and conflicting information. There's so much new information, it can get very confusing. 

As you continue, you're able to sort out the conflicting information, and it starts to make sense. 

After much study you'll start to feel like you're really getting a handle on it all. You can answer most questions on the forum.

Then you read a post from Lou, and you realize how much you still don't know.

Dave


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## Salburr (Mar 7, 2017)

HI all, this is my first post even though I've been reading piles of this material ( you can see I signed up a few months back....)
Frugal, I just wanted to say you are bang on with the above post.... At first it seems simple then as you read more, you get conflicting ideas and you get confused ( I'm there right now, I read most of Hoke and thought " ok, take the pins, start with AR and go from there... Then I read about AP on here, ummm maybe that's better, then I read about some HCL treatment first.. Arrgghhh). 
Hoping to reach the next step in your "learning steps post soon....)

Just wanted to +1 your post for any newbies out there that are starting out....
Thanks to everyone that is sharing their know,edge so freely.


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## patnor1011 (Mar 7, 2017)

And then you get to crock pot and sulfuric cell. And that is nothing compared to easiness and complexity of cyanide process..... :mrgreen:


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## PlainsScrapper (Mar 12, 2017)

Yes, any components beige-colored are MLCCs, provided they are marked with a C, followed by numbers.
The question I have is that some of the components have letters before C, like BC for example. Are these still good to pick?


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## patnor1011 (Mar 12, 2017)

PlainsScrapper said:


> Yes, any components beige-colored are MLCCs, provided they are marked with a C, followed by numbers.
> The question I have is that some of the components have letters before C, like BC for example. Are these still good to pick?



To make it easier I marked on picture posted stuff which I do not collect. All other stuff there which is not marked with red X is what I will save when I see it. 
You can then try to process them as they are or you may want to try to separate them with weak magnet. Those which will be magnetic will most likely have very little of value if any and those which are not attracted to weak magnet will be the most valuable.


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## bemate (Mar 13, 2017)

Just to comment on the results: I collected a few of each type to test, and they were without exception magnetic. In fact, After having spent hours and hours sorting out MLCC's from my pile after depopulating all kinds of various boards, I ended up with less than 1% of the MLCC's being non-magnetic. In the interest of saving my time for something more worthwhile, I have since stopped collecting them...


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## anachronism (Mar 13, 2017)

Just being magnetic doesn't mean there are no PMs there. It's not mutually exclusive.

Strongly magnetic ones are less likely to have PMs than either non magnetic or slightly magnetic.


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## bemate (Mar 13, 2017)

anachronism said:


> Just being magnetic doesn't mean there are no PMs there. It's not mutually exclusive.
> 
> Strongly magnetic ones are less likely to have PMs than either non magnetic or slightly magnetic.



Hmm, that was news to me, from what I've read elsewhere it appeared as an either/or situation. But, regardless of that, I probably wouldn't have kept on collecting them. From my somewhat limited time and space available for recovery/refining, I'll stick with gold for now. We have a quite well regulated system for returning e-waste in Norway, so whatever I don't spend time and effort to collect will still get caught up downstream (Not literally).

The only thing I collect specifically apart from gold-bearing parts are the Tantalum-capacitors, just because they are easy to spot and pick off with a pair of pliers before using rougher equipment to get the flatpacks and contacts.


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## patnor1011 (Mar 13, 2017)

Well I have slightly different approach. I do not test them with magnet as it seems waste of time, however I do collect all of them including resistors. They add up pretty quickly and if you think about it they will have quite a lot of silver in them when you process kilograms. Another point worth to mention is that they are soldered on small pads which often tend to be gold plated so there is more there than most of the people think. 
That sentence in my signature applies to this situation quite well.


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## PlainsScrapper (Mar 16, 2017)

anachronism said:


> Just being magnetic doesn't mean there are no PMs there. It's not mutually exclusive.
> 
> Strongly magnetic ones are less likely to have PMs than either non magnetic or slightly magnetic.



Huh, interesting, I guess I will sort them out and still keep the ones that are strongly magnetic but keep them separate and process them separately. Good advice.


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## Salburr (Mar 17, 2017)

This is great info. I am soooooo glad I found this forum before i just did the You tube thing. Now it has caused me to sit back, strip boards and LEARN first. Appreciate all you guys for sharing your knowledge.
I guess I should introduce myself and get a few posts on here before just asking questions (I have a couple pictures that I am stumped on what is on the board, but don't want to be thought of a a "one shot" question guy that never comes back or participates) 
I'm in Alberta, and have only recently started in the ewaste scrapping, have done the major base metals for several years but happened upon a cache of computers and that got me into "all these small shiny things"..... My chem knowledge is average, but I have read about 200 posts so far (yes safety ones second, Hoke first (what a keener)) and have updated/increased that knowledge a lot. 
Looking forward to when I can post with intelligence instead of just asking questions. have a great weekend everyone....


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