# Ribbon Cable



## Anonymous

Hi folks, Great Site!!!! So much knowledge and experience. Regarding PM content, is the wire in ribbon cables silver? I have found both silver and gold contacts on the end of the ribbon. Please advise. Thanks, Rick


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## aflacglobal

Welcome to the forum Rick. I am not the one for that answer, but rest assured some will catch it for you. You just getting into this. Tell us a little about your adventures, so to speak. See you on the flip side.

Ralph


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## Anonymous

rickjackieb said:


> Hi folks, Great Site!!!! So much knowledge and experience. Regarding PM content, is the wire in ribbon cables silver? I have found both silver and gold contacts on the end of the ribbon. Please advise. Thanks, Rick



Can anyone provide some insight on this?

Regards,

Rick


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## Harold_V

rickjackieb said:


> rickjackieb said:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi folks, Great Site!!!! So much knowledge and experience. Regarding PM content, is the wire in ribbon cables silver? I have found both silver and gold contacts on the end of the ribbon. Please advise. Thanks, Rick
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Can anyone provide some insight on this?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rick
Click to expand...


My years of refining revolved around high grade wastes, so I don't now a great deal about electronic scrap, but it would be simple to test the ribbon in question. If the wire within is copper colored, pretty good bet that's what it is. If, by chance, you find it to be white in color, dissolve a tiny bit of it in a few drops of nitric acid and a touch of water----tap water will do. If you get a slight white precipitate in the solution as the wire dissolves, it's likely silver---and a touch of table salt will prove it is, or isn't. If it's silver, the salt will precipitate the silver nitrate as silver chloride, which will resemble cottage cheese to a degree. 

If, on the other hand, your solution is blue, it's likely the wire is nothing more than copper, perhaps tinned. 

Harold


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## lazersteve

Rickjackieb,

Welcome to the forum. 

Sorry for the delays in answering this one. Harold's suggested test will provide you a definitive answer to your question.

I can assure you that silver paste is definitely used to print some of these ribbions. Another place you'll find silver printed circuits is inside keypad membranes. From microwave oven keypads to laptop keyboards, this silver printing process is a very common manufacturing process for membrane keypad circuits.

Here is proof of what Harold and myself are talking about:

*This is an overview of a disassembled older laptop keyboard:*








*Here is a close up of the mylar sheets that contain the silver traces:*






*You will need to peel off the thin sticky backing on one side of the ribbon:*

*A shot of the nitric working on the silver traces:*







*And finally table salt has been added to produce the white silver chloride 'cottage cheese':*







The fact that the silver is sandwiched between the mylar sheets makes recovering it an involved process. I would suggest controlled melting as an initial step to remove the protective mylar coatings. Mylar melts at 254C and silver melts at 961C.

I hope this helps.

Steve


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## lazersteve

All,

I spent one hour harvesting desktop keyboards for the mylar sheets. I processed 20 assorted keyboards in the hour. Of the 20 desktop keyboards 18 contained silver printed mylars. The total weight of the mylars was 9.8 oz. Here's a photo of the mylars:






I'll post more accurate silver yields when time permits.


Steve


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## lazersteve

Is anyone following this thread? :? 

It's so quite you could hear a pin drop.

Anyway, I've slowly melted one mylar from a keyboard. The mylar and silver traces weighed 5 grams after gently melting with a heat gun set to medium. The mylar melted with no fumes and just crumpled into a semitransparent ball in the melting dish.

I then went at it with my Oxy/Act torch on the lowest possible gas flow and with the tip 6-8 inches from the mylar silver mass in the melting dish. After 30 minutes of tedious melting and periodic pouring off of black resins the silver began to group into a nice mash under the black goo. I tried to keep the mylar from igniting and producing a sooty smoke. 

When no more melted resin would pour off, I added two teaspoons of borax and stepped up the heat; not full on but hotter and closer. Within five minutes the silver pooled into a BB while the borax flamed up as the last of the mylar residue burnt away in it. 

Surprisingly the borax came out clear yellow when the last of the silver BB's joined together.

Here's a photo of the silver from the above process:






I can't weigh the BB on my scales due to it's size , but I estimate it is no more than a quarter of a gram. If it is a quarter gram then a single pair of keyboard mylars should produce approximately 1/2 gram of silver per keyboard.

More to come later.

Steve


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## PhillipJ

Well, if that don't beat all Steve! That't pretty cool. But you must of thought about the cost of supplies.


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## lazersteve

Phillip,

Absolutely. This was merely a test of the waters, a proof of concept if you will.

I have access to hundreds of free keyboards. If I can develop a large scale method to process pounds of these mylars in a single batch they may prove to be profitable. If nothing else they can provide very good silver for inquartations. :wink: 

Steve


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## aflacglobal

Is anyone following this thread? 

It's so quite you could hear a pin drop. 

I always follow your post steve. With great anticipation i might add. 
But like a good cat i just lurke in the shadows. :shock: 

I've been off following ( or trying to ) your latest video series.
I'm trying to learn the chemistry behind it. Dummy version of course.
Always looking for improvement, so to say.

You keep making them video's your going to need an agent one day. lol

I now know about keyboards thanks to you. :wink: 

Ralph


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## Charlena

aflacglobal said:


> You keep making them video's your going to need an agent one day. lol
> 
> I now know about keyboards thanks to you. :wink:
> 
> Ralph



Don't know wether to love ya or to watch out for ya! LOL


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## aflacglobal

Aflac AKA Ari Gold. :lol: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yra_S2-MwVE


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## Buzz

Steve,

I just took apart about a dozen keyboards of different makes/model.

When I looked at the pair of mylar sheets that came of them all, the silver coloured traces are sat on the surface. I can get a sharp craft knife and scrape bits of them off.

Would this mean i could just pass the sheets through Nitric to dissolve the traces or would the Mylar interfere with this?

I'd have a go and see but i just don't like messing with Nitric!

Kind Regards
Buzz


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## lazersteve

Buzz, 

You are right on the money. Passing the mylars thru a shallow pan of dilute nitric works. I tested a small piece a few months back. Like you said, I don't like working with nitric either, maybe there is an alternative solvent which will accomplish the same task. 

I haven't done any more work on the subject as my silver supply is at a level that meets my inquartation needs for now. 

Steve


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## Never_Evil

Steve

Would boiling the mylars in just water separate the layers? If that were to work you could have access to the traces from above and maybe use a foam brush to spread the nitric over the traces, process and dispose of waste. Of course these are just thoughts so Im not sure if they would work.

dennis


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## lazersteve

Dennis,

The two mylars peel apart easily (they are only connected at a few points). The silver is printed on the mylar surface and is easily removed with dilute nitric. A scrub brush (toothbrush) would speed the process, but expose you to the acid more.

Steve


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## fixinator

I've been following this thread, Steve. I've been lurking here for a long time now. I've stockpiled quite a few mylars. I am certainly interested in learning a cost effective way of processing these.

Fix


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## lazersteve

Welcome back,

I'm toying with using a dilute nitric bath dip tank for the mylars. I've tested it with a large clean pickle jar as the tank and my initial tests shows it works pretty well.

Steve


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## Never_Evil

I did some quick math in my head and I will try to show my work here. You stated that one milar sheet could yield 1/2 gram, we will use that for our number. It takes 31.1034 grams to get one troy ounce. Quick math to me says you will need at least 63 keyboards to get one troy ounce of silver of todays value of $14.69. Thats a lot of work for what seems very little pay off because of materials needed to recover, almost break even on the deal.

I think this is possibly a project you take a bunch of keyboards into a second grade class with cheap #2 philips screwdrivers and have a group take them apart for you. The kids can use the contact rubber pads for projects, you get the milar steel and wire, and the school can dispose of the plastic (if non recyclable).


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## lazersteve

Evil said:


> You stated that one milar sheet could yield 1/2 gram, ...






I said:


> I can't weigh the BB on my scales due to it's size , but I estimate it is *no more than *a quarter of a gram. If it is a quarter gram then a *single pair *of keyboard mylars should produce approximately 1/2 gram of silver per keyboard.



Steve


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## Never_Evil

My appologies for misinterpretting, I thought you said one pair of mylars AND one keyboard. If we need to redo the math, double it to about 125 keyboards for one troy ounce. That sounds like even more of a waste of time and materials, unless you have other people do it.



> single pair of keyboard mylars should produce approximately 1/2 gram of silver per keyboard



dennis[/quote]


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## banjags

BUMP...

This is quite interesting. Steve have you pursued this any further. 
Would the newer keyboards still use silver? Say 2003 and up?


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## Anonymous

If you ran the mylars through a shredder you could pack them into a smaller container and dissolve quite a few at one time, without having to seperate the sheets.

Jim


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## Gotrek

Similar to the silver traces in the keyboards I routinely use a silver contact/trace repair pen which is nothing more then silver particles in a glue. It yields traces that look exactly like the keyboard pictures posted. I probably go through one or two a month. I'd imagine you could recover the silver from the caked innards of the pen.

I throw them out but it looks like I'll keep them for one of you guys...


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## Anonymous

Hey guys..new to this forum and have already found a lot of useful information. My father owns a recycling bussiness and I can recall one of the customers saying that he used to burn the mylar sheet into an ash. After all the mylar sheets were burnt he would place the ash in a large crucible and heat them for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes the silver would pool in the bottom of the crucible and the slag would stay at the top. I would assume that burning the mylar sheets would not be to safe though. Maybe someone could give this a try.


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## ThePierCer

I got a load of 300 keyboards the other day. I dismantled them all and now have a very nice pile of sheets. I'm thinking about using a shallow glass baking pan as a nitric bath to remove all the silver. Thena second one as a clean water bath. 

Has anyone had any more progress with these?


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## ThePierCer

anyone know about the content of the IDE ribbon cables? Is there anything worth while in them? I've seen prices of .30-.70 / lb at the scrap yards, but i wasn't fire if that was because of the copper content or if there was othere metals in there.


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## Gotrek

ThePierCer said:



> anyone know about the content of the IDE ribbon cables? Is there anything worth while in them? I've seen prices of .30-.70 / lb at the scrap yards, but i wasn't fire if that was because of the copper content or if there was othere metals in there.



As far as I know they don't have copper in them all the ones I've seen have aluminium wire


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## Anonymous

I just found this thread, and it excites me, as well I've been getting computers from small local schools and wasn't sure what to do with the keyboards besides us them as practice for the local annual keyboard toss competition.

Now I know that I can do more with them.

In fact just today we cracked a keyboard open to see what was inside and I brought the mylars home to toy around with.


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## Rag and Bone

The scrapyard where I cash in most of my base metals has recently dropped the price on ribbon cable (connectors removed) to $0.20 from ~$0.60, Anybody else experience this lately? They said that their buyer did a recovery test on ribbon cable and they might not accept it in the future.


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## Anonymous

I think that copper has gone down, I was getting between 2.80 and 3.20 a pound for it. The last time I went, I only got 2.10 and 2.40.

Jim


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## flankdrive04

Any further details on the whole Mylar thing? Would Acetone dissolve Mylar? maybe try some natural products? I know that Eucalyptus oil disolves alot of tings, but yet to try.

Would love to further this topic!

Cheers! :lol:


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## Gotrek

Ribbon cables are usually aluminum not copper. so .20 a lbs sounds fair. Maybe they thought it was copper and someone clued them in. Most PC wiring is aluminum and not copper.


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## Rag and Bone

It was passing as #2 insulated, then #3. Now its down to 20 cents, which is actaully fine because I can get more for it elswhere and I don't need to clip the connectors. I had the neighbor clipping the wires for me then we would split the money from the wire. He just finished two coffee bags full when the price shot down unexpectadly


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## Anonymous

Consult kitco base metals before selling your copper. http://www.kitcometals.com/

Copper June 16,11:08
Bid/Ask 3.7314 - 3.7359


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## Gotrek

And aluminum is about 1.30 right now. So 20 cents a lbs for ribbon cable is more then fair since it's aluminum


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## agpodt77339

Are you sure that they are aluminum and not tin plated copper? I once tested a silver colored wire from a computer (not IDE though) by rubbing it on my testing stone. It made a copper colored streak.


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## Rag and Bone

I doubt it's aluminum. I cashed in #2 insulated last week that was silver colored. They threw it all in together with the copper colored stuff.


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## istari9

I bundle all mine with the copper wire and get #1 common for it. If its wire they buy it no questions except my drivers lic. To make sure its not stolen.

Ray


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## Rag and Bone

Dang, Ray. How do you get away with that? If thats the case I might need to run a truck down to K.C.


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## istari9

I guess because I did not know it was alum and put it in the copper pile. Now that box may weigh about 100lbs and there are several. So the yard picks them, empties them, and weights the empty boxes. Then I get paid. 

Ray


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## Gotrek

I always thought they were aluminum. SATA cables are Tinned copper (tons of info online about those) not so sure anymore about regular ribbon IDE. I emailed Startech a local canadian distributor to find out. I'll keep you posted.


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## Gotrek

Answer

Thank you for your inquiry! Generally, the conductors in these cables are made from aluminum, around 30ga. You can verify with a particular cable by checking the cut-off ends visible above the last connector.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.

Sincerely,
Andrew McIntosh
Technical Support, StarTech.com


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## flankdrive04

istari9 said:


> I guess because I did not know it was alum and put it in the copper pile. Now that box may weigh about 100lbs and there are several. So the yard picks them, empties them, and weights the empty boxes. Then I get paid.
> 
> Ray



WOW, thats a lot of cable!! Would love to see your operation. It must be on a big scale??


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## istari9

Funny I never thought of my operation as big. I just work in the basement and keep a stady flow of material going through as I process it. 
I still pick up more each week from several computer dealers. I really enjoy the work and love the color of PMs !

Ray


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## usaman65

any sucess on the maylars???


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## Anonymous

MoVegas said:


> Hey guys..new to this forum and have already found a lot of useful information. My father owns a recycling business and I can recall one of the customers saying that he used to burn the mylar sheet into an ash. After all the mylar sheets were burnt he would place the ash in a large crucible and heat them for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes the silver would pool in the bottom of the crucible and the slag would stay at the top. I would assume that burning the mylar sheets would not be to safe though. Maybe someone could give this a try.



Has anybody tried this yet? After page 2 a whole new post started....lol what if you reduced the amount of mylar by cutting extra mylar from around the traces? What is the by-product of burning mylar?


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## peter i

Mylar is PET or Polyethylene terephthalate.

Its an aromatic plastic and will combust to carbon dioxide and water if fully burned. If partially burned.... do not breath the smoke, it could be nasty.

Your time spent cutting off mylar is worth more than the silver you might reclaim.


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## MICHIGANPROSPECTOR

Rag and Bone said:


> It was passing as #2 insulated, then #3. Now its down to 20 cents, which is actaully fine because I can get more for it elswhere and I don't need to clip the connectors. I had the neighbor clipping the wires for me then we would split the money from the wire. He just finished two coffee bags full when the price shot down unexpectadly


I clipped and dissasmbled some older ribbon connectors the other day and found some of them to contain gold plated pins. Others howver were just tin. Has anybody been able to determine whether or not these are cost effective to recover?


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## samuel-a

MICHIGANPROSPECTOR said:


> I clipped and dissasmbled some older ribbon connectors the other day and found some of them to contain gold plated pins. Others howver were just tin. Has anybody been able to determine whether or not these are cost effective to recover?



thus that *are *gold plated, yield 0.1% or less gold by weight.
you decide if it's cost effective...

i clip them connectors from the ribbon and when i'll have enough, i'll just sell them to mr. scrap man or to a refiner to process them for me.


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## MMFJ

Getting back to the topic of this thread (since it has been idle for a LONG time.....), and since silver is much higher today.....

We got a DOD paper shredder in our JUNK the other day and thought about processing mylars in it as it comes out pretty much "DUST".



Now, ideas? 

We've got about 100 keyboards from our latest haul and thinking this topic needs a bit of attention (seems keyboards are a 'bane' to everyone?)


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## lazersteve

There are a lot of good older forum post on processing keyboard mylars, including incineration, acid treatment, and yield data.

Steve


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## Tagsyboy

Steve, I have been searching the forum for info on processing mylars and the amount of reading could go on for days, in this thread you talk about melting the mylars. did you use and chemicals to make that silver BB or did you just melt the mylar down into it ? do i need any nitric ?
Thanks,
Tags




lazersteve said:


> Is anyone following this thread? :?
> 
> It's so quite you could hear a pin drop.
> 
> Anyway, I've slowly melted one mylar from a keyboard. The mylar and silver traces weighed 5 grams after gently melting with a heat gun set to medium. The mylar melted with no fumes and just crumpled into a semitransparent ball in the melting dish.
> 
> I then went at it with my Oxy/Act torch on the lowest possible gas flow and with the tip 6-8 inches from the mylar silver mass in the melting dish. After 30 minutes of tedious melting and periodic pouring off of black resins the silver began to group into a nice mash under the black goo. I tried to keep the mylar from igniting and producing a sooty smoke.
> 
> When no more melted resin would pour off, I added two teaspoons of borax and stepped up the heat; not full on but hotter and closer. Within five minutes the silver pooled into a BB while the borax flamed up as the last of the mylar residue burnt away in it.
> 
> Surprisingly the borax came out clear yellow when the last of the silver BB's joined together.
> 
> Here's a photo of the silver from the above process:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I can't weigh the BB on my scales due to it's size , but I estimate it is no more than a quarter of a gram. If it is a quarter gram then a single pair of keyboard mylars should produce approximately 1/2 gram of silver per keyboard.
> 
> More to come later.
> 
> Steve


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## NoIdea

morning all - Pyrolysis! Do Not Incinerate! The time i have spend understanding the process of pryrolysis and how different materials behave under these conditions, there is deffinately more to it than heating organics in the absence of air. When mylars are heated to a point where the plastic film starts to disintegrate, you end up with gases, volitile liquids(in gas state), carbon, waxes, etc, and silver. The problem here is the turbulent nature of the pyrolysis gas products, the silver sometimes hitches a ride, and will look to find a place to deposit itself, usually somewhere near the exit. So this tells me firstly, you will loose silver if you choose incineration, and secondly the silver will seed out onto the coolest part of the pyrolysis reactor. The silver forms as a oddly shaped nugget or sometime if hot enough will pool into a nugget, either way the silver stays within the reactor. And of course if you scrub all your waste flue gas, you should not loose squat.  

hope this helps someone.

Cheers

Deano


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## RESET

What is an acceptable melting dish to be used with the melting method? Can I use a stainless mixing bowl? I want to shread multiple sheets and process them without nitric.


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## Westerngs

Reset,

You want to stay away from metal containers for melting things. The molten metals will sometimes alloy with the container and you end up with a major headache.

Your best bets are clay melting dishes or clay graphite.


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## RESET

Could I use the metal bowl for the primary melt of the mylar then transfer it to a crucible for the final melt with the borax?

EDIT: Never mind. Even in the first melt, I would be melting the silver traces according to Steve's post.


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## sena

i was running small batch of 30kg mylar and processed using nitric leaching , some mylar overlapped accidentally making no contact with nitric , so after washing and drying , i took the virgin ones and some half leached ones for incernation, for a trial, so i took iron vessel ,the bottom i made a thick layer of 
charcoal , so that the melt doesn't stick to the metal , after it completely burnt out and it was like a plastic mould .ill post some pictures tomorrow, it would be crushed and taken for second stage for roasting in ss pan .

Regards
Sena


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## justme2

In one post diluted Nitric was mentioned but I didn't see the percentage is it 50/50 ?

In another post I saw "heated Nitric" was that also a 50/50 solution and how much heat ?

Thanks, in advance, for the info. mcw


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## niteliteone

justme2 said:


> In one post diluted Nitric was mentioned but I didn't see the percentage is it 50/50 ?
> 
> In another post I saw "heated Nitric" was that also a 50/50 solution and how much heat ?
> 
> Thanks, in advance, for the info. mcw


Generally when we speak of working with nitric acid, we automatically assume it around 67% from the supplier and it is then diluted with an equal amount of water when we use it i our process's. At least I do.
Unless stated differently.


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## wrmahaff

Getting ready to process my 400 pounds +/- in keyboard mylar. Figured I'd bump the greatest thread ever created on the subject. I think I'm going to go with the melting method for simplicity purposes to start. My question is this: What's the largest melting dish/container available? With as many sheets as I have, I'd like to melt off large batches at once, rather than one at a time.

Standard kitchen baking dishes appear to be good to about 450, but I think with the heat gun I'm going to quickly exceed that. Need something that will take a little more heat.


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## butcher

Most dishes found in your kitchen will not take the heat, most all will crack or shatter.
about the only kitchen dish, I would try would be an older Corning pyro Ceram dish, incinerating the Mylar down in volume, and then use a melting dish to melt the silver further to molten metal...

You need a melting dish made for melting silver or gold, they make some larger dishes I have one about 4 to 5 inches.

You could also build a furnace with a refractory liner, like with soft fire brick and giving it a wash coat of refractory for a harder surface when dried and fired...

keep searching answers for your questions on incinerating metals, and melting them, reading through the forum posts on these subjects you may find a better answer to solve your problem...


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## wrmahaff

butcher said:


> Most dishes found in your kitchen will not take the heat, most all will crack or shatter.
> about the only kitchen dish, I would try would be an older Corning pyro Ceram dish, incinerating the Mylar down in volume, and then use a melting dish to melt the silver further to molten metal...
> 
> You need a melting dish made for melting silver or gold, they make some larger dishes I have one about 4 to 5 inches.
> 
> You could also build a furnace with a refractory liner, like with soft fire brick and giving it a wash coat of refractory for a harder surface when dried and fired...
> 
> keep searching answers for your questions on incinerating metals, and melting them, reading through the forum posts on these subjects you may find a better answer to solve your problem...



If you're referring to using Nitric, I've read up on that too. May do some one way, some the other just to compare the two methods from both a time and a recovery basis.


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## butcher

I was not referring to nitric, although that could be another method. 
I was talking about incineration and melting, and some ideas of utensils.
Whatever method you decide on, study it well first, and understand the dangers involved.


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## justme2

ThePierCer said:


> anyone know about the content of the IDE ribbon cables? Is there anything worth while in them? I've seen prices of .30-.70 / lb at the scrap yards, but i wasn't fire if that was because of the copper content or if there was othere metals in there.


IDE flat white ribbon cables are copper with a tin coating that looks like silver wire. It's not. There are also some wire and flat braided wire in both servers and TVs that look to be aluminum they are tin coated copper as well.


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