# first time with ceramics and nitric!!!



## kronix (Dec 18, 2012)

hey everyone!

so i had a small amount of ceramic processors around and i figured i would try my hand at processing them, as i have been reading about it for quite a while now. i had 130.4 grams of some of these:


and i also had a pentium pro, so i figured, hey even if i screw up i should be able to fix it now with everything i have read. 

i made some nitric with lazersteves wet nitric recipe, and boiled broken chips, with small additions of potassium nitrate as needed until the solution was saturated. i then poured it off and filtered the material, returned filtered material to the main beaker. i rinsed well, with a final boil of water to get out as much of the nitrate solution as i could before AR. i tested all liquids with stannous to make sure no values had been misplaced.



i then proceeded with steve's poor mans AR recipe, on the second run i managed to dissolve all of the gold and other base metals. 

i filtered the liquids 5 times each with the same filter, and let settle overnight. i filtered it once more in the morning and took 5 ml into a baby food jar. i added some potassium metabisulfite, and swirled a while until i got a color change. i left it for a hour and there was a layer of powder on the bottom with gold shine on the surface. i proceeded to precipitate the whole lot, and in the end it tested negative for gold. 

i washed the powder as per harolds instructions except for the ammonia ( partly because i dont have any but i know i should have since there is a chance of silver contamination, but hey, im still learning and broke from christmas haha) and it looked really nice, i didnt take a pic though, i just wanted to melt it.

i melted it in a fused silica crucible, and poured it into water. it weighs 1.8 grams, and it looks ok for purity, ill see if i can get a better picture. 





i also just checked and there is still some gold settling in my large beaker of used smb (i always let it sit for a few days to see what settles) so there may be more to add to the yield.

cheers! - Ian

PS. does anyone have any tips on getting a decent picture of their gold in regards to lighting? this stuff is too shiny to focus on properly lol.


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## Geo (Dec 18, 2012)

try well lit ambient light and turn off the flash.

well done btw.


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## Anonymous (Dec 18, 2012)

Nice work there. But as Geo said, you should also take the picture in the daytime, outside to get the natural light to reflect your work.

Kevin


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## goldsilverpro (Dec 18, 2012)

The main thing on these type parts is to make sure you dissolve all of the gold braze underneath the silicon chip with the aqua regia. It will usually be the last thing to dissolve.


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## kronix (Dec 18, 2012)

Thanks Geo! 

I'm pretty happy with the yield considering it was less that half a pound of ceramics. Plus there is still gold settling that I'll clean and melt tonight or tomorrow.

- Ian


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## joem (Dec 18, 2012)

Ian - Awesome job. You're definately never going to be a poor man.


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## kronix (Dec 20, 2012)

goldsilverpro said:


> The main thing on these type parts is to make sure you dissolve all of the gold braze underneath the silicon chip with the aqua regia. It will usually be the last thing to dissolve.



yeah, i still have to pick through the spent ceramics to see if i missed anything. it looked like all of the die's separated at a quick glance, bit i dont want to leave anything behind. i was planning on keeping them together with all of the future ceramics i process until i have a big enough amount to warrant using more chemicals, plus i will hopefully have a good method for crushing cpu's to a fine mesh size at that point.

also i processed the ceramics WHOLE meaning every single piece, top and bottom plates, and for anyone thinking of doing this, make sure you remove the bottom cap on the pentium pro's, as they make quite a mess with nitric, and caused me a bit of a headache to remove the yellow salts that developed. i just diluted, swirled, and poured off into a container to catch any foils in the bottom. as usual i tested with stannous before disposal of any liquid, and after every major chemical change in my process to make sure no gold was lost, or misplaced. 

i think the important thing i learned from this whole process is you can read a million pages of info but until you actually commit to performing a procedure you can never fully prepare for what can go wrong. with that being said, with the amount i have read here it made it easy for me to fix a problem on my own, based on all of the help other members have gotten with similar issues, and the knowledge contained in this forum.

i think a lot of the noobs make mistakes because they are excited and get gold fever, not realizing how much work it actually takes to learn these procedures the proper way and develop your recovery and refining skills to the point where you can recover enough to actually profit from it (although i think most of us do it partly for fun, i know i do). i made lots of mistakes at first, and am really happy with this forum for being patient with me and helping me along the way. i can gladly say im over the beginning stages, but i do have to say i like the excitement of a nice shiny piece of gold more now because every time i melt a button the satisfaction of getting it right is my reward. 

i also got another .2 of gold out of the solutions after settling for 24 hours. BONUS! 

cheers! - Ian


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