# Ceramic CPU gold plated Lids



## ahmadbayoumi (Sep 29, 2017)

Hello Dears,

I have some Ceramic CPU gold plated Lids and I need to process them for gold recovery.

I searched the forum here and found 2 ways:

1- Multiple soaks in HCL

2- Diluted Nitric (50% Nitric/50% water) leach

I need your help to understand the pros and cons of each way PLS.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Sep 29, 2017)

1-slow, nasty fumes
2-fast, nasty fumes


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## ahmadbayoumi (Sep 29, 2017)

Thanks a lot Topher 

I'll go for the 2nd one of course as it's fast

But should I introduce some heat or leave it to finish the task whatever the time it takes ?


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## Topher_osAUrus (Sep 29, 2017)

I always heat. Even heated, it still takes a while for it to work. Not nearly as long as HCl, but dont be expecting instantaneous results. If its done in a day, you will be lucky


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## nickvc (Sep 29, 2017)

Are these with gold braze?
If so mix some AR and put onto heat and slowly add a few at a time to the solution, make sure you have plenty of space for the reaction and only add a few at a time after all reaction has stopped, this method allows you to process them very quickly.


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## g_axelsson (Sep 29, 2017)

Easiest but uses a lot of nitric acid and produces a lot of waste : Use nitric acid to dissolve the base metal and then process the gold foils.

Cheap and easy, produces a lot of waste : Use HCl and copper chloride to dissolve the base metal and then process the gold foils.

Fast but produces a lot of waste, not as easy as a two step process : Dissolve straight into aqua regia. You will be working with dirty solutions or carefully adjust the amount of aqua regia used to optimize. Not something I would recommend to a novice.

Cheapest and quite fast : Sulfuric acid cell to deplate the gold. Base metal can still be sold as scrap and produces least amount of waste.

And of course, there are a lot more to each method than I just wrote, the devil is in the details.

Göran


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## Topher_osAUrus (Sep 29, 2017)

Will the sulfuric cell strip the braze? I was under the impression that it wouldn't, and AR is one of the very few things that will.


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## g_axelsson (Sep 29, 2017)

It would probably not strip gold braze, but as I said, the devil is in the details.

Nothing is said of what type of base metal it is, copper based, kovar or tungsten-copper. Neither do we know if there is any gold braze.

Ceramic CPU:s doesn't tell us much actually.

Göran


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## lazersteve (Sep 29, 2017)

Complete digestion of the lid is the only sure fire method to get all of the Au. I have seen many of the cpu bottom lids with multiple layers of nickel and gold plate. The nitric soak only works to remove the outermost gold layer in many cases unless you use extended soak times and lots of manual scraping in the rinse and recovery stage. Even then, you still can not be sure all of the layers have been removed. 

Steve


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## patnor1011 (Oct 1, 2017)

I just did some of these, I guess I can try to dissolve some completely.


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## kernels (Oct 1, 2017)

Nice

I've got some to do soonish, would appreciate your feedback patnor


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## patnor1011 (Oct 2, 2017)

I need little bit more time to finish them but in about a day or two, I will have more info.


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## patnor1011 (Oct 3, 2017)

Lids on my picture came from mostly i960 and 486. These do not have multiple layers. The foil is the best to strip slow in a water with the just tiny splash of nitric. It is crucial to start with a tiny amount of nitric with even smaller additions and let them strip over a couple of days. Plating comes off like nice chunky foils. Overdo with nitric and you end up with a mess where you will have to dissolve it all.


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## kernels (Oct 5, 2017)

patnor1011 said:


> Lids on my picture came from mostly i960 and 486. These do not have multiple layers. The foil is the best to strip slow in a water with the just tiny splash of nitric. It is crucial to start with a tiny amount of nitric with even smaller additions and let them strip over a couple of days. Plating comes off like nice chunky foils. Overdo with nitric and you end up with a mess where you will have to dissolve it all.



Great, did most of the foils strip off with this technique ? Did you do any stirring or agitation ?


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## patnor1011 (Oct 5, 2017)

It is quite a slow process but saves a lot of chemicals. 
What we did is that we put about a kilogram of lids in a beaker with about 700ml of water. To that, we added a tiny bit of Nitric - about 10-20ml. Nitric was added in like 10ml increments 2-3 times a day. I stirred them a little bit every two hours or so, just to let solution to get to all of them. Stirring that amount in one pot is quite a task as they are small so a lot of them are packed together. They started releasing foils on the second day and I can say that 80% of foils were loose after 2 days. If you add too much of nitric it will attack Kovar making a bubbling brown mess from it. 
As I said 80% of foils were loose after 2 days I recovered them with a sieve with big holes in a bucket filled with water. Rest will strip eventually in a few days but as Steve mentioned it is quite labour intensive process trying to get all of them so we just left them sitting in a beaker till rest of them come loose. Foils from them are quite a sight, foils from fingers look like poor relatives to this type of plating.


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## kernels (Oct 5, 2017)

Fantastic, thanks for sharing your method and experience patnor :G


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## patnor1011 (Oct 6, 2017)

Well, it is not my method, I learned it from Jon and it worked for us. Never seen nicer foils in my life. When we dissolved them and precipitated solution with SMB we have seen the gold drop as metal It was sparkling, shining like gold snow... I took a short video on my phone so cool it looked I was staring at it for a long time.


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## lazersteve (Oct 11, 2017)

Here is a link to some pictures of what to expect from lid foils:

Ceramic CPU lid foil images

I have been using a method that I developed after several years of experimenting.

Steve


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## anachronism (Oct 11, 2017)

I'm a little confused Steve. Your post directly above mirrors Pat's posts unless I am reading something awry, however you previously make mention of the requirement to completely digest lids as many are multi layered. Would you please clarify which position is correct in your view? 

Personally I've yet to see a multi layered lid with gold between the layers on a mainstream ceramic processor but I would genuinely be happy if you would point me towards them, as I'm sure would most of the membership. 

Jon


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## lazersteve (Oct 11, 2017)

There are lids with several layers of plating on them. I have seen numerous types over the last 10 years of my refining ceramic cpu lids. I typically run 40-100# batches of gold lid ceramic cpus (gross weight of cpu and lid) and find numerous multilayered lids in every batch.

As for the specific part number I can not say. Typically lids with several layers of plate tend to have squared off corners as opposed to rounded corners as a general rule. 

My statement to digest them completely is on the context of achieving 100% recovery (or as close as one can get). I run my lids in acid to get the foils, sort out the multilayered ones and digest these types completely.

I will find some pictures to prove my statements as you do not sound convienced by my post. 

I have run litetally hundreds of pounds of gold plated cpu lids (no ceramic housing lid weight only) in the last 10+ years. The largest batch of lids I have run in acid at one time is 25#. I have run 25# batches multiple times. Trust me on this, their are multilayered gold plated cpu lids. 

Pictures to follow.

Steve


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## lazersteve (Oct 11, 2017)

Here are a few pictures of some of the cpu lids I have run. I am looking for the pictures I have of the multilayered lids. :













You can see in the second photo above that several of the lids in the stack in the background still have a layer of gold on them, these are the ones that have a second coating under the first. I have closeup photo evidence of the multiple layers, still looking for the pictures. The gold layers are clearly visible with a layer of silver colored (nickel) between each gold layer. They tend to peel layer by layer. The inner gold layer is typically much thinner than the outer gold layer. 

Steve


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## lazersteve (Oct 12, 2017)

As a side comment. I do not use the method that Pat outlined. My method does not involve any periodic additions of chemicals. The acid mix I use requires no additions after started. Stirring the bucket once the reaction starts to bubble is required. 

I have also stripped these in cyanide. The yields are lower than using the acid method that I developed. 

Steve


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## anachronism (Oct 12, 2017)

Thanks Steve

I too have had the ones that "don't strip as intended" as per your second pic. I'll take a closer look at the ones I have currently got in the system tonight but I've always though them to be a thinner plate without any buffer material. Of course I could be wrong as we all are sometimes. 

I'll take the XRF gun home with me too and see if there's a difference in base material. 

What's your preferred mix of Nitric/water for using one initial addition?


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## Topher_osAUrus (Oct 12, 2017)

That sounds interesting.

How would they plate nickel onto a layer of gold?


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## lazersteve (Oct 12, 2017)

I can't be sure it is nickel, but it is a layer of silvery white metal that is thick enough to peel off after the first soak. Typically you will see the corners of the multilayered lid have a shell of this white metal over them, sometimes with remaining Au from the outer Au layer. These corner shells easily peel off to reveal a second Au layer, all be it very thin compared to the outer layer of Au.

Look for the lids with sharp outer corners as that is where I see most of the multilayered ones. If I'm not mistaken they are on Orion cpus (double gold) and other non intel/amd marked cpus.

Steve


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## patnor1011 (Oct 12, 2017)

Jon, you should have quite a bit of orion lids in last batch we did.


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## anachronism (Oct 12, 2017)

patnor1011 said:


> Jon, you should have quite a bit of orion lids in last batch we did.



Yes I do I'll take a closer look Pat. So Steve, the Nitric/water mix you recommend?


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## lazersteve (Oct 12, 2017)

My mix uses more than just nitric and water. I developed this mix back in 2011 when I was running 600#+ of high grade ceramics per month. There were no Pentium I black bottom or AMD K6's in the shipments, 80%+ of each shipment contained gold lid cpus. This supply lasted almost 4 years before it finally dried up with the drop in Au prices.

It took a lot of trial and error to find the correct mix that would quickly strip the foils and leave the kovar mostly in tact. 

I can turn 25# of clean gold plated lids into ready for market Au bar(s) in 48 hours. Smaller batches are quicker.

Steve


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## anachronism (Oct 13, 2017)

Ahh from your previous posts you said you ran them in cold Nitric. So that's not the case, and you're not comfortable sharing right? No problem at all that's your prerogative. 8) If I were to take a wild guess it would be Hydrogen Peroxide as the additive. 

I'm glad to hear it works extremely well though.


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## lazersteve (Oct 13, 2017)

Nitric is in the mix, peroxide is not.


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## anachronism (Oct 15, 2017)

I wasn't comfortable with this so I ran a test this week. 

I took 0.5Kg of lids as per the previous batch mentioned by Pat and ran them the way we had dicsussed. Please refer to the two pics below. As you can see the vast majority of the lids relinquished their gold plating. The ones that didn't (many Orions as have been mentioned by Steve and Pat) have retained their plating.

If you look at the pic with three beakers the left has the stripped, and there are relatively few unstripped followed by a pic of the foils. The foils clearly show undissolved Nickel within the liquid. The second picture shows one of these lids with a visible Nickel flash, along with a number of lids that are only partially deplated all of which demonstrate a Nickel flash between the gold and base metal which IS in fact iron based as the rest are.

As such, there is no evidence for multi layered lids merely a difference in the barrier plating. I'm going to try the Nickel barrier-ed ones in a slightly different mix and I will post up the results so that everyone can benefit. 

Steve I think you may have dissolved a lot of lids you didn't need to but I'd welcome your comments. 

Jon


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## lazersteve (Oct 15, 2017)

I can see there is no conviencing you Jon. 

Steve


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## lazersteve (Oct 15, 2017)

Digest all of the lids in the center beaker of the first picture and you will get another small yield of Au in addition to the foils you recovered in the first run.

The center beaker lids are the only ones that I would digest completely. The others are already stripped and do not require complete digestion.

Steve


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## anachronism (Oct 15, 2017)

No problem. I'll strip the ones in the centre beaker completely, put pics up and then digest the remaining metal and if I'm wrong I'll happily admit it. 8)


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## lazersteve (Oct 15, 2017)

Once I have exposed the inner layer I prefer to digest those remaining lids in AR since it is faster. The only reason I choose AR is because I don"t like to wait for the thin inner layer to strip. I guess you could use the sulfuric cell or many other methods to remove the inner layer, but each of these has their own issues as well.

All in all complete digestion is not the only way to be sure you get all the Au, but it is a sure fire way to address the oddball lids after the inital strip.

Steve


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## anachronism (Oct 16, 2017)

Hi Steve

Where we are disagreeing is the existence of this "inner layer." The pics I have shown are the original layer, they just won't strip in Nitric effectively with the Nickel base. You can even see where a few have begun to do so slowly in the centre picture. Speaking practically the plates are really thin and the reasoning behind making them multi layered in the first place isn't clear. There's absolutely no physical evidence to show multi layering.

I'll run the tests I mentioned above but respectfully at this point we still have to agree to disagree on this. 

Jon


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## lazersteve (Oct 16, 2017)

The ones in the center beaker have already lost a layer of Au as evidence by the nickel layer in the center of the picture that is over the Au layer. None of the lids you ran started out as nickel colored lids so it is clear that the ones with a partial outer nickel layer have already shed a layer of Au.

This would have been easiest to see if you had some close up pictures of the lids prior to cleaning off the outer foils. The thick outer Au layer sheds first, then the middle nickel layer dissolves, exposing the inner thin Au layer.

Steve


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## lazersteve (Oct 16, 2017)

This is a close up of your picture that clearly shows the nickel layer is over the remaining Au layer on several of the lids.




Steve


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## anachronism (Oct 16, 2017)

Its the other way around mate- it's gold over the Nickel.


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## lazersteve (Oct 16, 2017)

At this point we disagree.

The ones I see like this, the nickel is over the Au.

In your picture, the nickel is peeling off the Au just like I see all the time with my lid runs. I have confirmed this many times by taking a sharp pointed knife and inserting it under the nickel layer. When the nickel on the corners (like the one under the top one that is half and half in your enlarged picture ) is pulled away, a fresh layer of Au is exposed at the corners.


Steve


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## lazersteve (Oct 16, 2017)

Here is an updated version of your previously posted picture with arrows indicating exactly where the nickel is peeling off of the Au. No where do I see any Au peeling off the top of nickel.




Steve


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## lazersteve (Oct 16, 2017)

I took a few minutes to record a quick video demonstrating the nickel layer over Au verse Au over nickel. Sorry about the poor quality of the phone video, I did not do any editing on the raw video. All of the lids in this video have been stripped once already, these are leftovers.

Multilayer CPU lid Demonstration

I hope this clears up any confusion about the leftover unstripped lids in your pictures.

Steve


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## Topher_osAUrus (Oct 16, 2017)

That is intriguing to say the least!

I wonder how they do it?
Even more of a curiosity is why they do it?


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## anachronism (Oct 16, 2017)

It does more than that- I've just gone out and looked closer at them in light of the video and yes you're right the gold is under the Nickel. We live and learn. Fair play Steve. I'm wrong. 

Jon


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## Topher_osAUrus (Oct 16, 2017)

anachronism said:


> It does more than that-
> Jon



https://youtu.be/iqu132vTl5Y
:mrgreen:


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## lazersteve (Oct 16, 2017)

No worries, I was merely trying to share some insight that I learned several years back. I have seen all sorts of manufacturing anomalies that surprised me when I found them. I won't get into some of the others I have found, but they are intriguing to say the least. When you process thousands of pounds of gold lid ceramic cpus in a year by hand, you tend to see so oddball stuff if you pay attention closely. I have destroyed several chips that would drive a collector crazy, except for the fact that you would never know the cpu was a misfit, until you began processing it, then it's too late.

Overall, I enjoyed the back and forth and it resulted in a learning experience, that is what matters to me. Maybe this discussion will prompt some members to now go back and check out the lids they may have incompletely stripped and find a few more grams of Au.

What the purpose of the inner layer is? I have no clue, perhaps a CPU manufacturing worker or plating expert can chime in and enlighten us as to what the extra layer is for. My guess is that these lids are plating mistakes, that ended up getting replated to bring the plating up to manufacturing standards. 

Steve


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## g_axelsson (Oct 16, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> That is intriguing to say the least!
> 
> I wonder how they do it?
> Even more of a curiosity is why they do it?


How is easy, the real question is why?

I can't imagine any technical reason to plate gold - nickel - gold at all. I've been thinking about it for a while and the only reason I could come up with was a failed plating process. Just throw the rejects back with fresh lids for a nickel + gold plate, so the ones rejected in the first batch becomes dual layer plated lids.

To be fair to Jon, some of the lids that came out with the gold intact was still on the first layer. It's obvious by the printing still on the surface. If the gold is thick enough and not scratched up it would protect the base metals under the gold and go through the process unaffected.

In any case, dual layers or just thick gold, it's easy to sort through the lids and remove the ones that still have gold. Those can always be processed again after receiving some scratches or fully dissolved in aqua regia.

Nice thread, I've learned something new today. Thanks to all who contributed!  

Göran


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## kernels (Oct 16, 2017)

Yeah, awesome thread, I was 100% convinced that Jon would be correct until I saw that video posted by Steve! Thanks to both of you guys for the education!


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## Topher_osAUrus (Oct 16, 2017)

g_axelsson said:


> Topher_osAUrus said:
> 
> 
> > That is intriguing to say the least!
> ...




Im sorry Göran, I hate to be that guy.. 
-Already learned something for today and being greedy, wanting more!
-I haven't found anything fruitful on my searching for how to plate nickel onto gold. Only gold onto nickel?

Can you help me out here please? I really, genuinely would like to know! (I'll never need the knowledge, but I want to have it ["The more you know", type of thing!]
Thanks in advance!


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## g_axelsson (Oct 16, 2017)

You can do it in the same way you can plate nickel on copper. Just because there isn't any articles about electroplating nickel on gold doesn't mean it is hard. It just mean there is no reason to do it.

One place it happens often is plating racks, each time it is used for plating objects there is a layer of nickel plated, then a layer of gold, then nickel, gold... and so on. The object to be plated is changed on each cycle so it only receives a gold on nickel surface but the plating rack is building up layer upon layer.

Gold is such a good substrate so plating nickel onto gold shouldn't be hard.

Göran


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## Topher_osAUrus (Oct 16, 2017)

Doh!
Didnt even think about that example, that has been demonstrated on the forum previously.

Thank you for taking the time!


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## anachronism (Oct 17, 2017)

kernels said:


> Yeah, awesome thread, I was 100% convinced that Jon would be correct until I saw that video posted by Steve! Thanks to both of you guys for the education!



It's a good thread Kernels. I might have been wrong but I learned something, and everyone reading it will also learn. That's a win in my book. 8) 

Jon.


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## snoman701 (Oct 17, 2017)

anachronism said:


> kernels said:
> 
> 
> > Yeah, awesome thread, I was 100% convinced that Jon would be correct until I saw that video posted by Steve! Thanks to both of you guys for the education!
> ...



Serious question for you Jon.

With the quantity you are moving, what makes you decide to process manually vs have processed with the bulk of your product? 

Magnetism of the kovar lid?


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## anachronism (Oct 17, 2017)

Haha not quite- it's more the difference between private work and company work.


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## snoman701 (Oct 17, 2017)

anachronism said:


> Haha not quite- it's more the difference between private work and company work.



Ahh...where "hobby" meets 9-5


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## denim (Oct 17, 2017)

Bravo gentlemen!! Nice to see a true discussion and a very professional end to it. This is why I joined the forum. Thank you!


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## anachronism (Oct 17, 2017)

denim said:


> Bravo gentlemen!! Nice to see a true discussion and a very professional end to it. This is why I joined the forum. Thank you!



Damn straight Denim. We need more threads like this.


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## patnor1011 (Oct 17, 2017)

I did not believe about double plating as I could not see logical reason and I literally had them in my hands. Replating rejects sounds plausible. 
It pays to look closer, not that I would miss it as unstripped lids would go back to stripping solution but as I said it is better to look twice or more. Good job Steve.


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## rickzeien (Dec 11, 2017)

I am new to the forum. This was a fantastic thread. Much to learn have I. Thanks to all.

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk


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