# Pins/connectors...cpus



## Anonymous (May 10, 2009)

I got really fed up trying to separate pins and connectors. I watched steve's chisel, bandsaw, heat gun video and still tought it was too much time for too little gold. and we had no chisel bandsaw or heat gun
We were just clipping pins off with snips but could only cut like 2/3 of length and the rest bent...
I tried making a gel of AP in gelatine that we could paint onto the pins and hopefully wash gold off...too hopeful...not working, not enough AP on the pins.
Then we got angry and just smashed the board into quarters and dipped them in AP until the gold came off which took about 3-5 minutes, then washed in water to clean flakes. This was REALLY easy and we could do a motherboard in 3 mins..so now we're thinking why doesn't everyone do it this way? There must be a catch ...I'm guessing lots of base metal but so what? We can clean that out later right?

Can someone confirm? CPUs...I think the general approach is put in AP until the pins fall off? Then smash the chip and put in AP to remove base, then wash and put in HCL-Chloro to extract gold? There's some youtube vid on computer recycling..that says they just dissolve the whole lot in AR, but that would contaminate with pin juice right?

Finally I should say that I own a lab so I am anxious to see how much gold is lost in filtration, we will centrifuge the filtrate to see what pops out, I think it could be a lot even using number 2 paper which is down to 1/2 micron, colloidal would whizz straight through that. Also as a bonus to people who actually read this and as a thanks to Steve & co , I did a project refining trying to concentrate road dust for Pt. We found a simple way to concetrate it and found that most Pt is associated with rubber tyre dust...We got to the point of phyto-concentration...i.e. growing plants in the concentrate, results not collected..Basically we could easily get it to same ppm as Pt ore with no heating, we were hoping the phyto bit would give us another x10..there's quite a lot on plant accumulation of Pt and Pd out there...


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## Anonymous (May 10, 2009)

I can only speak for myself, I found that the processes in this forum are actuarate and are designed with specific purposes in mind. I could never get enough scrap to make money, only lost money>Education always cost. 

Reasons for serpating the plated stuff from the rest that I have found,
1st to reduce the volume of chemicals used, 2nd to keep tin, lead and others out of the process (makes life easier), 3rd if you dissolve the gold from the pins, etc it will just replate on the other metals contained in the scrap, may be too thin to see but it will be there.

My advice, if you have scrap, sell it on ebay and buy gold with the money, you will get a far better price for your scraps than gold content, you will not have to source chemicals, you will get more gold by selling and buying it.

Chow,
Jim


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## glorycloud (May 10, 2009)

Hey Jim, where's the fun in that? :lol: 

Ah well, you are probably right but if is fun dreaming that the
gold on the pins has great value!! 8) 

I, for one, will just pick what I want to refine (CPU's, fingers, mil spec looking stuff) and send the rest down the line for someone else to refine who has the advantage of incinerating and processing in volume.

Keep it small and just have fun with the e-scrap. You won't ever get rich but if it is a hobby for you, keep snapping those fingers off baby! :wink:


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## steveonmars (May 18, 2009)

The best way I found to get the gold from the pins is to use a cell. I'm trying something a little different the next time and I'll post pics if it works. The pins don't have a lot of gold if you consider one pin but they add up fast. I have tens of thousands of them in mayonaise jars just sitting around until I can get the time to run a cell. It's amazing how much gold you get when you have enough pins. Gold is gold!

Steve


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