# Silicon Valley Scrap - Toll Time



## Topher_osAUrus (Mar 30, 2017)

Got my parcel in the mail from California today. Just unpacking and taking pictures and notes for each of the incoming materials.

Looks beautiful! All of it!

Microwave parts -1144 grams
Cylindrical pins - 717g
Pronged pins - 1503g
Partial plate pins - 1092g
Gold traces - 1083g
'sim cards' -776g + 69g
Gold mylar pieces -124g
Ceramic processors -654g

The "sim cards" arent really sim cards, I cant recall exactly what they came from, arcade machine cards I think?

Anyways, I will keep updating this thread with pictures as I go, I believe to start. The traces and pronged pins will be first in nitric. While the other pins will be getting treated for traces of solder.

I, of course, have more pics, but I need to trim them down and get them a much more reasonable size before putting them on here.

Thread will be updated after I get some of it going, and then have the chance to post up.

Thank you all again, without each of you here, I would never have learned this valuable trade, and would have never gotten this wonderful opportunity.


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## Tndavid (Mar 30, 2017)

Get r done!!! :G


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## g_axelsson (Mar 30, 2017)

Nice... and may I say... Topher, how tiny hands you have! :lol: 

Göran


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## anachronism (Mar 30, 2017)

He does have tiny hands doesnt he.  

The top pics look like the kind of stuff I do. You'll enjoy those.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Mar 30, 2017)

I decided to go with processors first. Started by breaking them up, removing the caps to run in hot hcl to remove the foil, and the rest of the ceramics in AR.





The peeled traces went into a 2L beaker, covered in water, then a bit of nitric to kick it off. I neglected heat initially, to prevent a runaway reaction, since i went about 2/3 full with foils (foolishly).. But, so far they have been doing fine. And now that some of the nitric is exhausted, its on to heat.


I was hoping for solid foils floating, but it appears they are a bit thinner, as far as plating goes, so they are disintegrating, but, at least its not fine black powder (yet)


I know, I have been SUPER self conscious about my itty bitty hands my whole life! 
:lol: :lol: 
Really though, as soon as I opened the box, Hendrix (my youngest) just HAD to see what goodies daddy got in the mail today!


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## anachronism (Mar 30, 2017)

Nope- put the caps in dilute NITRIC not HCl Chris. The Nitric will passivate on the iron lids and the foils will come off over a few days. 

That's one of Sam's tricks I cannot claim credit for it but it works a treat.


Edit- also save yourself a load of time and reagents- put those sim cards in AR.

Mix up your AR- 6:1, heat it, add a few at a time. When the reaction dies, add more. When your beaker is full, flush it over to another beaker and carry on adding. You're doing proper batches now Chris- the processes change somewhat but the principles remain the same.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Mar 30, 2017)

anachronism said:


> Nope- put the caps in dilute NITRIC not HCl Chris. The Nitric will passivate on the iron lids and the foils will come off over a few days.
> 
> That's one of Sam's tricks I cannot claim credit for it but it works a treat.



50/50 Jon? Or like 10% dilution?

I didn't even think the nitric would eat enough of the substrate before passivation, so I was just goin with the copper chloride etch (eventually, of course now its just HCl..but, starting to green a bit)
But! Thats good to know!

Ill take them out, incinerate to get rid of the HCl and get on with nitric


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## anachronism (Mar 30, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> anachronism said:
> 
> 
> > Nope- put the caps in dilute NITRIC not HCl Chris. The Nitric will passivate on the iron lids and the foils will come off over a few days.
> ...



15% is fine - add more every day - it's a very slow reaction. Also read the edit on my post above 8)


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## Topher_osAUrus (Mar 30, 2017)

Check, and check.

As I understand it, there are bonding wires in the "sim cards", that being the case, I was under the assumption they were only liberated by incineration.

I was planning on roasting, grinding, then washing and AR. But, now wonder if direct AR will reach the bonding wires, if given enough time?

Thoughts, gentlemen?


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## Topher_osAUrus (Mar 30, 2017)

Forgot to show the pronged pins in nitric. And while i was photographing that, I roasted the caps and switched to nitric.



Also moved the traces into a 5gallon bucket, so I could process them ALL at once.


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## Digibill (Mar 30, 2017)

FYI - So once you're done with the SIM cards you're going to end up with an epoxy / plastic substrate inside of which is the IC and 6 small gold-plated pads. After the acid, they become very brittle and crush up very easily.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Mar 30, 2017)

Digibill said:


> FYI - So once you're done with the SIM cards you're going to end up with an epoxy / plastic substrate inside of which is the IC and 6 small gold-plated pads. After the acid, they become very brittle and crush up very easily.



I have yet to open the bag of the ones you ran, but I did see that a few of them were obliterated already. Since there isnt too terribly many of them (just 25,000 :roll: ) i think I will run them in ar, rinse well, dry, and try to crush in my massive mortar and pestle. If that doesn't work well, or is too difficult. They will get incinerated then crushed.


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## snoman701 (Mar 30, 2017)

Once I get my shop up, I'll send you a barrel to mill in, that way you can just load it up and let it run. Ball mill of sorts.

Are the lids iron, or more of a steel (kovar). I have not tested it on kovar, but I know that with mild steel you can get away with 47% nitric acid. It passivates. I use it to separate carbide from silver soldered steel with minimal (if any) damage to the steel. It helps to keep the reaction cold. I ran them outside all winter. At elevated temperatures, you can end up with a runaway reaction if the % goes too far out. 

How will you run the microwave stuff? I've got a lot of it. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Topher_osAUrus (Mar 30, 2017)

snoman701 said:


> Once I get my shop up, I'll send you a barrel to mill in, that way you can just load it up and let it run. Ball mill of sorts.
> 
> Are the lids iron, or more of a steel (kovar).
> 
> How will you run the microwave stuff? I've got a lot of it.


Thats mighty kind of you!

Kovar, I believe. 

I am going to separate ferrous out and run the non magnetic stuff in nitric, the magnetic bits, I may run in dilute sulfuric, or the sulfuric cell. Haven't decided yet. May even see if dilute nitric will passivate and release foils, like the caps are doing now.

Another update

Started the sim cards in some AR.



The cylindrical pins and the pronged ones have almost all released their foils.







Floating on top of the bucket of traces is a white material, described to me as a fabric, or backing of some sorts? No idea, but, I do know the traces are coming along nicely.

Seems all the material processed so far is breaking up into small foils, and none are thick enough to hold their shape after the substrate dissolution.

I partially thought about just rinsing all the foils free of the base metal and processing the foils the rest of the way. But, I want to be sure to get every particle of gold possible, so I will continue to dissolve them


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## Topher_osAUrus (Mar 30, 2017)

Got the processors ran in AR and leached another time to make sure all metal was dissolved. Added both together and just precipitated, in the morning I will decant and wash that gold up.



Rinsed clean processor bits.



After denox, before filtering lead sulfate and/or silver chloride off.

Thats all for now.

All questions, comments, and concerns are welcomed. Thank you!


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## Digibill (Mar 30, 2017)

Yeah, my understanding is that the white floating stuff is a fabric type insulating matrix (think fiberglass) that is actually layered between the copper to provide multiple circuits over the same trace.


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## snoman701 (Mar 30, 2017)

So it's basically a multilayer circuit board on a tiny scale.


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## Digibill (Mar 31, 2017)

Basically, yes.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Mar 31, 2017)

The progress from today so far.


Sim card AR directly after filtering and sulfamic addition.


The powder from the processors.


The foils from the traces, filtering


Foils from the processor caps.

Anyways...back to it..


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## PlainsScrapper (Apr 1, 2017)

Looking good! 8) Keep us posted.


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## snoman701 (Apr 6, 2017)

Did you take a vacation or something?


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## Topher_osAUrus (Apr 6, 2017)

snoman701 said:


> Did you take a vacation or something?



Hah, I wish.
I have been quite busy getting this stuff knocked out and the other toll that i got. 


The foils from the pronged pins. Ended up being tin in the alloy.
So, i filtered, roasted, ended up taking 6 hcl leaches, then i sent it to ar. After ar, i rough filtered after allowing to settle overnight. Added sulfamic to remove the minute amounts of extra nitric. Fearing excess lead that wasnt converted to sulfate form, i added a good bit of sulfuric. Let it sit, then did a final filter before ppt.



Flakes from the cylinder pins. 
Easy to do, but, little to recover



The mud from the processors, sims, pins after washing before redissolving and precipitating.



The ar run of the pronged pins immediately after smb addition.

I have more pictures of everything. Including the button of the first half of stuff that I ran for this gentleman.

I will try to post up more shortly and further details. Wasnt a whole lot new to add since the majority of the work was just babysitting the digestions and adding nitric as needed. Let me say, dissolving everything is NOT the way to go, and I would have been much better served to run most through the sulfuric cell, or a cyanide based leach. But, as I am not set up for the latter right now, I chose to dissolve it all! (idiot!)

Yes, that is a wifebeater in a collander to filter the foils. I ran the solution through multiple times to get all of the baby flakes. The next day, (to ensure nothing made it through) I ran it through a charmin plug.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Apr 6, 2017)

One more pic before i get back on the road and head home to work a bit, before i have to do daddy daycare.

This is a pic of the 2 buttons, big one is from nasa scrap.
Medium one is from first powders from the silicon toll


Pics of the bottoms, as the tops weren't the prettiest bells at the ball. But, I get 90-92% locally regardless if its 99.99% or 98%, so, if they tell me to sell local, I dont expend the extra resources to rerefine unless its mine.

12.7 and 7.8 after the flux removal.

I was rushing to get the silicon scrap done, and didnt let the fines settle, so from the first half there is probably another gram or 2 that will be added to it.

The downfall of refining. Rushing is never a good thing, and usually ends up with losses (misplacements) but, its never truly lost.

I was really expecting it to be significantly higher... Significantly
But, stockpot had nothing on the bottom. Filters didn't either. Nitric buckets have no flakes or black mud at the bottom, so I guess the bottom of the beaker is what it is.


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## Tndavid (Apr 6, 2017)

"Can't put gold in the ground Todd " as the wise man one said! Lol. Great job none the less. If it was there you would have got it, I have no doubt about that!!!


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## Topher_osAUrus (Apr 7, 2017)

This is the bottom of the beaker of the soldered pins, post nitric dissolve. Few pieces of stainless that are mingling with the foils. Oddly enough, these had quite a few good pins in there. By "good", I mean that after base metal removal, the pins maintained their shape instead of turning into little bitty gold flakes. 

After this picture, I rinsed out as much of the spent acid as I could, then added a bit of dilute sulfuric to see if it would dissolve the remaining base metal. It seemed to do the trick, as well as alleviate some of the metastannic problem. ...just some, there is still a LOT, so it is getting dried and roasted now.



This is the microwave stuff. I wasn't really sure how I was going to go about the recovery phase of this process. Since I had used about 12.5L of nitric already with all the other stuff, I decided to just throw this material in the nitric "stock pot" and let it work a few days. Seemed to work well, ended up removing the gold from probably 75% of the material. The rest will be picked through and I will try a fresh, hot, dilute nitric run on it. If that fails me, I will cross that bridge when I get there.
The majority of that which has not been cleared of its foils seems to be on stainless.


Last night, before closing up before bed. I decided to clean up the pyroceram catch pan that I religiously use between the burner and beaker. After the past few days of nitric dissolving, there had accumulated more than a few spots of copper nitrate that had dripped off the watchglass when taking it off to stir or add more acid. I took the beaker off the hot catchpan, and put it on another one. I used my squirt bottle and gave a few squirts of water so I could wipe up the blue mess. Well, stupidly I left the paper towel on the hot pyroceram piece.. ..while my attention was on the beaker and new catchpan, I see an orange glow out of my peripheral... Holy crap, the paper towel is on fire!. ..even though it was halfway wet, the little acid was enough to get it goin.
Luckily I was out there to immediately catch it and get it put out, had I not been, well.. I'd rather not think of that situation. ...all I know is that I wont ever allow that situation to happen again.


Let my stupidity be a warning to the wise. Nitric is a VERY powerful oxidizer, and it doesn't take much to make bad things happen.


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## snoman701 (Apr 8, 2017)

Yeah dude...slow down on the nitric! hehe

Seriously? 12.5 liters? 

I've ran my stainless parts by doing a reverse AR. 1:1 Nitric / Distilled H20 warm (not hot), add HCl dropwise until gold is gone...I literally do this very slowly, and purposely do it when I am not sitting there watching it. You'll still have plenty of free nitric left after the gold is gone, so I then use that for other recoveries. 

I've got a couple of really heavily plated aluminum parts...I love these things. I've just had them sitting in a beaker for a few days. I add a a few mL of nitric every couple of days and the plating just falls off as the nickel base is digested. I actually had to scratch it pretty deep as the gold was too thick to allow the nitric to penetrate.


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