# My results of specific types of IC chips, flatpacks and BGA



## Tzoax

This is my little contribution to the site, I have tested various types of chips for gold content using these steps:
1. Separation of the specific type of chips, removing paper stickers if any, removing wires from the edges of the chips with scalpel (*some types of chips are processed along with these wires and that will be indicated), weight them, and count the pieces of chips included.
2. Pyrolizing chips with butane torch.
3. Turning chips to ash on a hotplate
4. Shaking the chips inside of the glass jar and sieving the ashes
5. Repeating steps 3-5 until all of the white/grey powder goes through the sieve, and the resin consists of wires, silicon dies and heat spreaders
6. Washing with hot water until water is clear
7. Removing magnetic wires with neodymium magnet while still inside in water (*these wires are processed separately, I remove the basic metals with nitric acid and process them with aqua regia, for every 5kg of all kind of chips I recover 2-3 grams of gold only from these wires, so all of my results are not including gold from these wires, and not including the gold from the resins-wires, silicon dies and heat spreaders, it only relates to sieved ash).
8. Remove the basic metals from concentrate with nitric acid and washing again with water
9. Aqua regia, neutralizing excess nitric with urea, dropping the gold with SMB.
10. washing the gold powder 3xdistilled water 3xHCl, 3xdistilled water.
11. Weighting the gold and calculating the percentage of gold yields by kg of specific chips and even the gold yield of one piece of specific chip.

I will post one by one type of chips. This is a first type - SMALL VARIOUS CHIPS. You can see on the pictures shapes and the size of these chips. They have at least 6 wires, some of them are thinner then the others, also some of them are square and have wires of all 4 sides. Since their size are similar and very small, I decided to classify them as small various chips and process them together. Because they are very small I have not removed the wires.




The total weight is 747g, there are 6317 of chips, and the gold recovered was 1.0g.
Conclusion is:
1kg of small various chips contains 1.338688g of gold. (only from ash, not including magnetic wires with gold bonding wires trapped inside of them and resins-wires, silicon dies and heat spreaders)
Average weight of one chip is 0.118252335g.
Average gold content by one chip is 0.000158303.


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## Tzoax

The next type of chips are FLATPACKS 2S THIN. These are RAM type chips, they are all thin and have wires on 2 sides.
I removed the wires with scalpel.




Total weight of chips - 428.7g
Number of chips - 858pcs
Avg weight of 1 chip - 0.49965035g
Gold recovered - 0.3g
Avg gold per kg - 0.69979g
Avg gold per piece - 0.00034965g


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## Tzoax

IC CHIPS 4-SIDED 24x24mm
These chips are square, thick, 24x24mm, like shown on the picture, wires are removed.




Total weight of chips - 804.4g
Number of chips - 184pcs
Avg weight of 1 chip - 4.37173913g
Gold recovered - 0.4g
Avg gold content by kg - 0.497265g
Avg gold content by piece - 0.002173913g


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## Tzoax

FLATPACKS 4S RECTANGULAR THICK 20x13mm
These chips are thick, rectangular, they have wires on all 4 sides, 20x13mm, wires are removed.




Total weight of chips 502.6g
Number of chips 327pcs
Avg weight per 1 piece 1.537003058g
Gold recovered 0.7g
Gold per kg - 1.392758g
Gold per 1 chip - 0.002140673g


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## Tzoax

BGA VARIOUS CHIPS
All of the types og BGA chips, already separated from green bases with a heat gun. They do not have magnetic parts.




Total weight of chips - 456.9g
Number of chips - 286pcs
Avg weight of 1 chip - 1.597552448g
Gold recovered 5.2g
Gold content per 1kg - 11.381046g
Gold content per 1 chip - 0.018181818g


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## Tzoax

Flatpacks 4-sided square thick 27x27mm
Wires was removed.




Total weight of chips - 576.5g
Number of chips - 109pcs
Avg weight by 1 chip - 5.288990826g
Gold recovered - 0.7g
Gold content per 1kg - 1.214224g
Gold content per 1 chip - 0.006422018g


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## Tzoax

IC chips 2-sided Small var
Wires was not removed.




Total weight of chips - 407.2g
Number of chips - 460pcs
Avg weight of 1 piece - 0.885217391g
Gold recovered - 0.1g
Gold content per 1kg - 0.24558g
Gold content per 1 chip - 0.000217391g


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## Tzoax

Rectangle 2-sided 7x13mm
Wires was removed.




Total weight of chips - 789.5g
Number of chips - 1669pcs
Avg weight of 1 chip - 0.473037747g
Gold recovered - 0.3g
Gold content per 1kg - 0.379987g
Gold content per 1 chip - 0.000179748g


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## Anonymous

Thanks for sharing this information with us. 8) 8) 

Jon


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## Tzoax

Flatpacks 4S Squ. + Rect. thin
All of the thin chips - square and rectangular that have wires on all 4 sides. Wires was removed.


Total weight of chips - 392.2g
Number of chips - 405pcs
Avg weight of 1 chip - 0.968395062g
Gold recovered - 0.9g
Gold content per 1kg - 2.294748g
Gold content per 1 chip - 0.002222222g


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## Tzoax

That was my tests so far, when i test again some new type of chips i will post it here, also if someone wants to share their results they can post here so we can compare results and get more accurate values. I hope these results will help someone to have some roughly view of gold content in specific types of chips.


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## FrugalRefiner

Very nice Tzoax. Thank you for sharing!

Dave


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## Grelko

Thank you very much for taking the time to do this, it will help alot.


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## richard2013

Hello and Thanks Tzoax 

have you also tried cellphone bga chips?


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## Tzoax

richard2013 said:


> Hello and Thanks Tzoax
> 
> have you also tried cellphone bga chips?


Hello, i never tried to test cellphone chips, all of my chip tests was from computer motherboards, PCI cards, graphic cards, hard drives, laptops and network boards and equipment. For me, the cellphones are not interesting, they are hard to find in some larger quantities, they are often overpriced, it takes a lot of time to take them apart, it takes too much of cellphones to collect several hundred grams of chips for testing. There are lot of other values inside of cellphones, but for me it is a waste of time comparing to the other electronic scrap that i could buy for the same money. For example, if 1 cellphone costs 0.4$ i will always buy 1 or two old graphic cards with big BGA chips for that money, it just saves me a lot of time and work.


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## Tzoax

I just tested a new type of chips - SMALL BGA chips, like in newer RAM memory types (DDR2/DDR3), and the similar chips from motherboards and cards. They are all small, square or rectangle shaped, and all of them have a foil base with solder balls.
I soaked the chips in concentrated HCl and bring them to boil 3 times, the most of the tin dissolved. I incinerated the chips and washed with water. This time i used poorman's AR with KNO3. There was still some tin left so it took me some time to filter the solution with metastannic acid. I dropped the gold with SMB and washed the gold powder with hot water. I redissolved the gold again with poorman's AR to be sure that all of the contaminants are gone. I waited until AR was crystal clear and the contaminants like silver chloride and metastannic acid was settled at the bottom, then i carefully decanted the AR solution through the filter paper and dropped the gold with SMB again. I rinsed the gold powder with hot distiled water 3 times/3 times with hot HCl/3 times with hot distiled water. i dried the gold, measured it and here are my results...


Total weight of chips: 233.7g
Number of chips: 919pcs
Average weight of one chip: 0.25429815g
Gold recovered: 1.1g
Avg. gold per 1kg: 4.706889g
Avg. gold per one chip: 0.001196953g


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## g_axelsson

That is a very good result! I was afraid that the short small gold wires in the BGA chips would mean less gold. It's quite a lot actually, compensating for the smaller component size.

I've just started going through boxes of memory sticks and was going to do a test as yours, but you beat me with a few weeks.
I will add my results when I have them.

Thanks!

Göran


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## Tzoax

g_axelsson said:


> That is a very good result! I was afraid that the short small gold wires in the BGA chips would mean less gold. It's quite a lot actually, compensating for the smaller component size.
> 
> I've just started going through boxes of memory sticks and was going to do a test as yours, but you beat me with a few weeks.
> I will add my results when I have them.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Göran


I was surprised too with a gold content in this type of chips, i think that it is because of weight and surface area of the chips - one average big BGA chip weights 1.59g (without foil base and solder balls), and one average small BGA chip weights 0.25g (with foil base and solder balls). The small BGA chips are lot thinner and they have wide surface area. So my opinion is that big BGA chips have longer gold bonding wires, but small BGA chips have much greater number of gold bonding wires. Take a look at the picture with small BGA chips and count the solder balls on any chip, they have about 100-150 wires per single chip. In one kilogram of small BGA chips the number of chips are 4000, with minimum 400000 of gold bonding wires. In one kilogram of big BGA chips the number of chips are 629, and i think that they have much less number of gold bonding wires than 400000.
Thank You.


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## patnor1011

Tzoax said:


> I just tested a new type of chips - SMALL BGA chips, like in newer RAM memory types (DDR2/DDR3), and the similar chips from motherboards and cards. They are all small, square or rectangle shaped, and all of them have a foil base with solder balls.
> ......
> Total weight of chips: 233.7g
> Number of chips: 919pcs
> Average weight of one chip: 0.25429815g
> Gold recovered: 1.1g
> Avg. gold per 1kg: 4.706889g
> Avg. gold per one chip: 0.001196953g



And there goes one of the last "secrets" in IC yields... :mrgreen: 
They are second best after s/n bridge BGA, I mentioned that few times, weight/mass ratio and lack of other metals like pins in internal structure make them more valuable than other IC with pins.


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## Grelko

Tzoax said:


> 5. Repeating steps 3-5 until all of the white/grey powder goes through the sieve, and the resin consists of wires, silicon dies and heat spreaders



Do you happen to know the mesh size of the sieve you were using? I've been using a flour sifter, approximately 25-30 mesh? I believe I counted 27/inch. (The square holes are a bit smaller than 1mm by 1mm) I was wondering if I should keep going until everything is around -100 or smaller, either with my pipe crusher, mortar/pestle, or just re-burn it. I just sifted out 397g of black/grey powder from a batch I did yesterday.

I ran a small batch on an old scrap BBQ before, panned it a bit, then ground it up small enough to have the powder go through a coffee filter. I ended up with some copper and bonding wires, maybe 15 of each. Took a good while to get down to just the wires though.

I was wondering if it's possible to crush the pieces up enough, so that you wouldn't need to incinerate it at all? I have to buy coal/charcoal, but I can use my pipe crusher or mortar/pestle for free. I'm just seeing if I can save a couple dollars.


Edit - Nov 10th (Answered my own questions)

Over the last 2 days, I very slowly went through approximately 200 grams of the powder I had. The bonding wires must be around -150 or -200 mesh. I knew they were really small, but I didn't think they were quite this small. Just messing around with a makeshift goldpan, I spent atleast 10+ hours going through it. I used a hard drive magnet, and even went as far as using tweezers to pick out the copper wires. It might end up weighing 0.1g? (it's still wet and is probably around 80% gold, the rest is black). It was all mixed chips "even the 3 legged ones with the copper tops that have a hole in them", just the lowest recovery, no Ram, CPU, N/S bridge etc.

Yes, it is possible to crush the chips enough, that you wouldn't need to incinerate them. (Just incase you live in an area that doesn't allow fires) It'll take you a while if you use a pipe crusher and mortar/pestle though.

On a side note, panning bonding wires is probably about the same as panning "gold flour", except you might want to use an eye dropper instead of a snuffer bottle. I may just melt this down into a tiny picker, then dissolve and clean it after saving up more.


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## arisas

that what i call a POST about gold recovery bravo to you sir you give to the user here what they came to to ask for bravo again...


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## Tzoax

Grelko said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> 5. Repeating steps 3-5 until all of the white/grey powder goes through the sieve, and the resin consists of wires, silicon dies and heat spreaders
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Do you happen to know the mesh size of the sieve you were using? I've been using a flour sifter, approximately 25-30 mesh? I believe I counted 27/inch. (The square holes are a bit smaller than 1mm by 1mm) I was wondering if I should keep going until everything is around -100 or smaller, either with my pipe crusher, mortar/pestle, or just re-burn it. I just sifted out 397g of black/grey powder from a batch I did yesterday.
> 
> I ran a small batch on an old scrap BBQ before, panned it a bit, then ground it up small enough to have the powder go through a coffee filter. I ended up with some copper and bonding wires, maybe 15 of each. Took a good while to get down to just the wires though.
> 
> I was wondering if it's possible to crush the pieces up enough, so that you wouldn't need to incinerate it at all? I have to buy coal/charcoal, but I can use my pipe crusher or mortar/pestle for free. I'm just seeing if I can save a couple dollars.
> 
> 
> Edit - Nov 10th (Answered my own questions)
> 
> Over the last 2 days, I very slowly went through approximately 200 grams of the powder I had. The bonding wires must be around -150 or -200 mesh. I knew they were really small, but I didn't think they were quite this small. Just messing around with a makeshift goldpan, I spent atleast 10+ hours going through it. I used a hard drive magnet, and even went as far as using tweezers to pick out the copper wires. It might end up weighing 0.1g? (it's still wet and is probably around 80% gold, the rest is black). It was all mixed chips "even the 3 legged ones with the copper tops that have a hole in them", just the lowest recovery, no Ram, CPU, N/S bridge etc.
> 
> Yes, it is possible to crush the chips enough, that you wouldn't need to incinerate them. (Just incase you live in an area that doesn't allow fires) It'll take you a while if you use a pipe crusher and mortar/pestle though.
> 
> On a side note, panning bonding wires is probably about the same as panning "gold flour", except you might want to use an eye dropper instead of a snuffer bottle. I may just melt this down into a tiny picker, then dissolve and clean it after saving up more.
Click to expand...

Grelko, Sorry for the late answer, I was busy these days... I use simple plastic sieve like in the picture. I've done 30+ kg of chips with just this one, this sieve is very strong and it perfectly fits to jars where I shake and sieve the chips. I don't know the mesh size but it does job for me. I am considering to buy a bigger one with the same mesh size to save some time.


I don't use a pipe crusher and mortar/pestle. I shake the burnt chips inside of jar, sieve them, and the rest of the chips or parts of the chips that wasn't burned enough/didn't go through the sieve - I burn them once again. That way the silicon dies stays in one piece and at final step i remove the wires, plates and silicon dies by hand and with magnet. There will still be some little pieces of chips there and I burn them once again or if they are soft i crush them with spoon and then sieve that again. At the end I sieve the whole powder again and remove the much of little copper/kovar wires i can. Then i rinse the powder with water and remove magnetic parts with magnet.
I haven't try to grind the chips, but researching the forum I found out it is a not good way because of many reasons.


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## mls26cwru

for what its worth, I pass my material through 40, 100, & 400 mesh sieves...The bonding wires will pass through even the 400 mesh... They do have a tendency to clump together with other copper wires, so I pull the clumps out during the screening and process them later.


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## Grelko

Tzoax said:


> Grelko, Sorry for the late answer, I was busy these days... I use simple plastic sieve like in the picture. I've done 30+ kg of chips with just this one, this sieve is very strong and it perfectly fits to jars where I shake and sieve the chips. I don't know the mesh size but it does job for me. I am considering to buy a bigger one with the same mesh size to save some time.
> 
> I don't use a pipe crusher and mortar/pestle. I shake the burnt chips inside of jar, sieve them, and the rest of the chips or parts of the chips that wasn't burned enough/didn't go through the sieve - I burn them once again. That way the silicon dies stays in one piece and at final step i remove the wires, plates and silicon dies by hand and with magnet. There will still be some little pieces of chips there and I burn them once again or if they are soft i crush them with spoon and then sieve that again. At the end I sieve the whole powder again and remove the much of little copper/kovar wires i can. Then i rinse the powder with water and remove magnetic parts with magnet.
> I haven't try to grind the chips, but researching the forum I found out it is a not good way because of many reasons.



Mine was just a stainless steel flour sifter. Yesterday, I ordered a couple more sieves, a gold panning kit, and a few other items. The sieves are atleast 100-200 mesh.

I started trying to incinerate my chips, but couldn't get rid of the plastic smell "because my neighbors live about 15 feet away", so I was going to crush all of them into powder "I know about the silicon dust etc" and I'll be wearing some type of filter mask. I had all the powder in a jar to shake/break the powder up, then got everything wet and took out the magnetic pieces. Picked out the copper wire with tweezers, then broke it up more with a mortar/pestle until everything looked to be the consistancy of flour or finer. (I basically used most of the same steps as Patnor's 1st E-book)



mls26cwru said:


> for what its worth, I pass my material through 40, 100, & 400 mesh sieves...The bonding wires will pass through even the 400 mesh... They do have a tendency to clump together with other copper wires, so I pull the clumps out during the screening and process them later.



I noticed that the bonding wires were EXTREMELY small. :lol: 200 mesh seems like it's good enough to get them out of the powder. If I see any clumping together, I put that part back into the mortar/pestle and crush it again. I'll be processing the copper wires later to recover any gold that's still mixed in.

Even with a 10x jeweler's loupe, some of the bonding wires are hard to see.

I'm about to crush up close to a pound of TO-92's? the small round, but flat on 1 side, with 3 legs "not gold plated legs" to see if any of those have gold wires in them.


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## mls26cwru

remember to save the silicon dies and process them for PMs as well... there is a bit of brazing that gets left behind where the wire brakes off from the die during grinding. It is a substantial amount and worth going after if you have enough... its usually a silver/gold alloy (for the chips i have processed) so you will have to take that into account when you process them.


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## Nickperl

Very helpful. I have work to do. My result from just the ceramics was .77g of 139.5g chips (again, not the fiber bottoms). My process was as follows:
1. 139.5 grams of ceramic tops of Northbridge IC chips.
2. Pyrolized in SS pan over burner with torch over (covered)
3. Mortar and pestal
4. Meshed through grease screen used in cooking (sorry, no pic - but can get one).
5. Pan for gold. (all other material separated and processed via nitric including copper, heatsinks, even the wafers - then merged with all nitric results before AR)
6. Nitric, then rinse, then dry , then AR, filter and put in separatory funnel
7. Add Butyl Diglyme and shake for five minutes.
8. Rinse 2-3 times with five percent HCL
9. Drop with dissolved Oxylic Acid.
10. Put on heat, nearing boiling, stirring often, takes 2-3 hours.
11. Filter (coffee) and rinse. Then put back in beaker and boil with water, again with HCL, again with water. 
12. Filter and then let dry in filter. 
13. Move to crucible and melt.
RESULT. This is just the ceramics. The fiber still needs to be done. .77 gram gold from the 139.5 grams. With all my gold, I eventually re-refine to gain purity.
PROBLEM. Any time I use the AR the solution always has GREEN in it. The only yellow AR I get is when I'm processing gold soaked from china and dishware using Acid-peroxide process).
PROBLEM, My yields are not as good as yours, although I did not do the fiber halves. I understood there wasn't much in those anyway but I will eventually process those.


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## g_axelsson

There is plastic tops on the BGA chips. Not ceramics.

Göran


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## Nickperl

Plastic versus ceramic I guess I can't be sure. They seemed to crush all the same. Thanks.


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## Tzoax

Nickperl, thank you for sharing your results. There could be many reasons why the results are varying, some of them are:
1. If you have a pile of all kind of BGA chips (only PLASTIC tops, there are no ceramic BGA chips as i know) there is a big difference between the ones with and without internal heatsink, the more of chips with internal heatsinks you have - the less gold per weight there will be. I am intending to test them separately one day.
2. When you sieve the chips, the longer gold bonding wires will get tangled together and will not go through the sieve, on the first picture there is that residue that didn't gone through sieve, the tangled gold bonding wires are visible with naked eyes, on the second picture are the same gold bonding wires - magnified. Make sure to when processing BGA chips, all of that residue mix together with your concentrate (previously washed with water) and then continue with nitric acid or whatever process you are using, Before everything, when chips are burned i am only remove the internal heatsinks, everything else goes to process, and this steps only relates to BGA chips since they do not have any magnetic metals, they also have very little basic metals.




3. The results may varying because the chips are not burned to ash as well, i do not use mortar and pestle, i just shake them in jar and the parts that stays hard, i burn them again until they all becomes white and soft, that way there is less risk that gold bonding wires stays trapped inside of unburned clumps of plastic chips.
4. maybe you processed everything well and that is a true yield for that chips, there are many types of BGA chips and the yield is depending of type, where are they built, when are they built, etc.

I don't know the exact yield of green fiber bases, i tried once to process them, and obtained a very little of gold, about 0.1g for a bunch of them.

"PROBLEM. Any time I use the AR the solution always has GREEN in it. The only yellow AR I get is when I'm processing gold soaked from china and dishware using Acid-peroxide process)."
That means you still have the basic metals inside of solution, when you (before AR) properly process the material with nitric acid (and washed with dist. water) there should be no green/blue color or very little in your AR solution.


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## sokon

Tzoax said:


> I don't know the exact yield of green fiber bases, i tried once to process them, and obtained a very little of gold, about 0.1g for a bunch of them.



In green bottom bases is 0.7g / kg. Analysis made in Umicore.


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## Tzoax

sokon said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know the exact yield of green fiber bases, i tried once to process them, and obtained a very little of gold, about 0.1g for a bunch of them.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In green bottom bases is 0.7g / kg. Analysis made in Umicore.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for that information. I am collecting the green bases and one day I will process them. And there is a gold inside the BGA solder balls too, i read somewhere there is 2g of gold per 1kg of solder balls, i never tried to test the yield, but I've just done a gold presence test and i am sure there is gold. I have read about it in a Patnor's posts and i think that some people were saying it is not worth processing because of the spending too much acids. If someone tested the BGA solder balls it would be nice to share the results. Thank You.


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## g_axelsson

Most BGA have flash gold on the surface of the copper. (For example the small gold corner on the base.) When the solder balls are soldered to the fiber base the gold is dissolved in the solder so there is no surprise that there is gold in the solder balls.
The same is true for solder from all gold plated boards that are soldered.

Göran


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## Tzoax

Thank you very much for explanation Göran. I will make a test for gold content inside of BGA solder balls as soon i collect several hundred grams of them.


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## vgecas

hello,

maybe someone have tried to strip gold plating by putting plated items in molten solder bath and later dissolving solder in HCl ?


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## mls26cwru

g_axelsson said:


> That is a very good result! I was afraid that the short small gold wires in the BGA chips would mean less gold. It's quite a lot actually, compensating for the smaller component size.
> 
> I've just started going through boxes of memory sticks and was going to do a test as yours, but you beat me with a few weeks.
> I will add my results when I have them.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Göran




I did a test too, but my numbers are a decent amount lower... I ended up with 1.1g Au./lb of chips (1.9g of Au from 770g of chips). I have not checked the residue from dissolving the solder balls for gold, and I am going to rerun my ash through the sluice to see if I may have missed some stuff in there. I will update if something significant changes :/


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## Tzoax

This will be the next type of IC chips for gold content testing - small and middle CERAMIC IC chips like shown on the picture:




I scrapped this chips from telecom boards from middle 90's.
They DO NOT HAVE gold plated wires, gold plated cap, and golden bonding wires. They ONLY HAVE gold based alloy used for BRAZE. So, this test is basically for gold content inside of the braze used to solder chip to the ceramic.




According to this link http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=21617&p=223791&hilit=braze+pins+times#p223791 and informations that archerytech1 posted, I am expecting relatively good yield. This is the text from the archerytech1 post:

(1) Plane areas. 4-8 micro". An example of "Plane" areas are large gold plated areas covering a circuit card. The gold's main purpose is to provide some corrosion protection and that only takes about 5 micro". There may be some shielding going on also.
(2) Wear areas. 25-35 micro" (usually closer to 30). These are areas that might be connected and disconnected 100's of times during the life of the instrument. The best examples are connector pins and circuit board fingers.
(3) Heated areas. 45-55 micro". On some all gold plated parts, such as old side-braze IC packages, the chip is brazed to the base at about 700F and the lid is brazed to the seal ring at about 560F. The entire package is heated. If the gold were much thinner, there would be a tendency for the gold to discolor during the heating. Also, there could be brazing problems if it were thinner.

I've separated the IC chips with knife and hammer and this is the look of the chips now, they are ready for AR treatment.




According to the above data the thickness of the braze is 45-55 micro inches
That is approximately 50 micro inches = 0.000127 cm

The volume of gold that fits on 1 square cm of the braze field is: 0.000127 * 1 * 1 = 0.000127cm3

The density of Au is 19.3 g / cm3

So, the theoretical weight of PURE gold per 1 square centimeter of braze field is:
0.000127 * 19.3 = 0.0024511 g

The weight of test IC chips is 153.9g, there is 38 pieces, average weight per one chip is 4.05g.

The approximate surface area of 1 chip braze is 4mm x 4 mm = 16mm2 = 0.16cm2

And finally, total estimated gold content for 153.9g of small and middle IC chips (with gold braze) would be 38 * 0.0024511 = 0.0931418
Minus 20% = 0.07451344 g of gold

The 20 percents was subtracted because braze alloy is made with 20% of tin and 80% of gold.

That would be 0.4841 grams of gold per 1 kg of those chips.

But, it is just my guessing, we will see when i bring this to the end, i will post my results when i finish the test. I hope that i will get some detectable gold weight with my scale with only one decimal.


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## Anonymous

If, as you are suggesting, there is 80/20 gold braze on these then you'll be extremely pleasantly surprised when you process them.


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## Tzoax

spaceships said:


> If, as you are suggesting, there is 80/20 gold braze on these then you'll be extremely pleasantly surprised when you process them.


That is the data that i found on several sources, i hope that it is a truthful. Yes, and considering that the braze "maybe" have some tin and the volume of chips is large comparing to the gold ratio, i have a bad feeling that there is also a possibility to be extremely pleasantly surprised when i face the problem with monoatomic gold. :mrgreen: It happened to me couple of times but with some other materials, and i haven't mastered the solving the problem of monoatomic gold. This is a first time i process this kind of chips. And i've read it have some nasty glue used to glue the two halves of chip. I hope that it won't cause me much trouble in reaction.


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## Anonymous

Colloidal gold? Never had a problem with it mate. Make sure you're not playing with tiny amounts in the first place.


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## Tzoax

Thank you spaceships, next time when i have very small amount of gold in very diluted solution i will use evaporation to prevent creating colloidal gold (not monoatomic, thank you for correction).


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## mls26cwru

have you tried running any more lots of those small bga chips from RAM chips? I ran a second run with even worse results than my first attempt... has anyone else tried running them?


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## solar_plasma

mls26cwru said:


> have you tried running any more lots of those small bga chips from RAM chips? I ran a second run with even worse results than my first attempt... has anyone else tried running them?



Some bga seem to have aluminium bonding: example

I am not sure, but I think I saw constructions, that had no bonding wires at all ....just like flip chips, too.


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## richard2013

mls26cwru said:


> have you tried running any more lots of those small bga chips from RAM chips? I ran a second run with even worse results than my first attempt... has anyone else tried running them?



Can you show samples of the BGA chips you process Thanks


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## Tzoax

mls26cwru, one of the reasons that our results was so different maybe was he fact that i was not using only chips from RAM memories. There was many small BGA chips from laptop motherboards, graphic cards and other computer parts. Some of them was twice bigger (but they are still small BGA), maybe they have a better yield than RAM BGA chips. Take a look at a picture i posted for small BGA chips, there are a lot of chips that are not from RAM memories.


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## mls26cwru

I was using the BGA RAM chips from all kinds of RAM... as long as it had two rows of chips on both sides of the ram, i sheared off the chips and ran them. solder was removed before roasting, then the chips were ground, separated from the dies and fiber layer, the ash was sluiced, then the concentrates, dies, fiber layers were all leeched individually for Au recovery. 

I'm thinking the inclusion of the small N/S bridge might be enough of a reason for the difference... I took a closer look at the picture and it does appear there are a decent amount of them... but why my second run was so much different, that is really what confuses me... the second batch I ran, the recovery was ~0.3g for 453g of chips (before solder removal). 

Maybe by taking double row/double sided ram, maybe that meant I was only taking newer stuff that has lower PM content/Al bonding wires? That is a possibility I didn't think of before... what do you guys think?


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## Tzoax

mls26cwru, there is no single one N/S bridge chip on that picture. All that chips are small BGA chips, not N/S BGA chips. I processed N/S bridges in a separate batch, take a look at that picture and you will notice the difference.
There are so many factors that is impossible to always have the same values. But you can know some approximate values and what you could expect from your material. The different result for 0.3g that you get on second test is not something that should be worried about, it's only about 10-15 percents less than your first test.

That simply means that next time you could expect result in that range - for example 2.7 - 3.1 grams of gold per kilogram of your material.


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## mls26cwru

my mistake, when you said you included other chips from laptops and misc. computer parts, i misread/misunderstood it... i thought you were talking about the really tiny N/S bga's and when i saw the green in the picture i assumed that's what they were. thank you for the clarification!

I think I will try third and final run of ram chips and see if my result is any better then this last time... it cant hurt and will give me something to do!


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## Tzoax

Trying to avoid a very small (undetectable) amount of gold, i collected some more of ceramic IC chips to make a test. I also added big one IC chips like in the picture. So this test will be for all sizes ceramic IC chips that only have gold braze (no gold plated legs, no gold bonding wires, and no gold plated caps). Also, there is no EPROM chips.




From earlier calculations i expect something around 0.4841 grams of gold per 1 kg of those chips.
Total weight of chips is 372.6g in 80 pieces. Avg weight of one piece is 4.6575g.
So from this batch i expect 0.3726 * 0.4841 = 0.18 grams of gold.




Most likely i will use poorman's AR (HCl and KNO3) to process this IC chips. I will post result when i finish.


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## Tzoax

This is what i've done so far: 
-The ceramic IC chips was settled inside of 600ml beaker.
-I used 200ml of %16 HCl with 20g KNO3 added in small portions over time, on a hotplate with temperature just below boiling. Over time vhen solution evaporated a few centimeteres i refilled evaporated volume of solution with a fresh HCl and added a little more KNO3 until solution becomes saturated (deep brown color, picture 3)
-I decanted the solution (there was no visible gold left on IC chips) and replaced with a new one, same as before (200ml of %16 HCl with 20g KNO3). 
-The whole reaction is done in 4 hours. This is sample pictures from beginning to the end.








After solution was saturated a second time i decanted it and decided to stop processing it because of the next reason...

It is obvious (and i have read about it) that the glue (or what ever was used to join the two halves of the chip) was reacting with acid and it becomes white powder that is forming on the bottom of the beaker. And this process is very slow, after 4 hours there was still a lot of it attached on the chips. Considering that, and the fact that the gold is in solution i stopped the reaction because i was sure it is unnecessary (maybe i was wrong but i doubt that this substance can interfere the process between AR and reactive metals).
This is the picture of remaining white "glue" on the chips after reaction.




I neutralized the solution with urea, filtered it through double filter paper (it was very slow because of the white powder that is most likely mix of a "glue" and silver chloride. this is a picture of a filtered solution.




This is where i was left, soon i will precipitate the gold in solution with SMB.

One thing confuses me... The dies are still attached to the ceramics. It also looks like the braze is still there but it have silver like color instead of golden.
Is it possible that this was not gold braze at all? It is maybe (gold plated) Ag / Pd alloy or some other braze alloy that are not reacting with AR. I don't know.


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## Barren Realms 007

Tzoax do you see the silicone dies left on the chips after you have processed them? You are missing the gold under these dies and the chips need to be processed for a longer period of time.


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## Tzoax

Barren Realms 007 said:


> Tzoax do you see the silicone dies left on the chips after you have processed them? You are missing the gold under these dies and the chips need to be processed for a longer period of time.


Thank you very much, i was close to throw them away, you saved me some gold. So there is still possibility that this braze have gold. I was confused with a color, but if it is tin / gold alloy, the silver color could be from tin.

I dropped gold with SMB and now i'm waiting it to settle, it looks like something about 0.2 - 0.4 g so far.




I will collect this powder and i will join it with the rest of gold powder that i process from the rest of the material thanks to you.


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## g_axelsson

The remainder should be the 20 percent silicon from the braze... look at it as silicon inquarted with gold. What's left is the silicon skeleton, soft and easily broken just like inquarted gold.

Göran


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## goldsilverpro

Several times, I assayed those type cerdips (ceramic dual inline packages) in the photos back in about 1990. At today's prices, they would be worth about 16 cents each in gold. That's about .004g each.


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## Tzoax

This is a pictures of two chips with silicon dies still attached. If i am understand it correctly, the silver color ring around the silicon die (where the gold braze was) contains no more gold, it is a silicon remainder (skeleton) from it, and underneath a silicon die is still undissolved gold from the braze that AR still haven't reached. 

I thought that braze is made of alloy of Au/Sn, but since there is a silica remainder the braze is most likely alloy of Au/Si.


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## Tzoax

I have washed the gold powder from above picture and here is the results:

Weight: 389.1g of IC chips
Number of IC chips: 82 pieces
Avg. weight per 1 piece: 4.74g
Gold content: 0.2g
Gold content per 1 kilogram of IC chips: 0.51g
Gold content per 1 IC chip: 0.002439024g

*This is only from above test, there is still some gold beneath the silicon dies, i will update results when i process them. So, for now this kind of IC chips have at least 0.5g of gold per kilogram and all of that gold comes only from the gold braze used to solder silicon dies to the ceramics. 

The next test i am intending to do is with silicon dies from incinerated mixed plastic IC chips. They should have some of the braze on them. I never tried to process them, and i have a lot of them mixed with wires and heatsinks. If this test shows well i will separate the silicon dies from the rest of the material and process a lot of them.

This is a sample i will test: 68.4g. I have no idea of the yields, i hope i will get some detectable amount of gold.


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## goldsilverpro

I would think the majority of the gold in the cerdips is under the chips. According to my numbers, there would be .328g in the batch you did. Considering you said you didn't get it all, what you got sounds about right.

About 40 years ago, I processed a lot of those. The 2 ceramic halves contain about 5 percent glass frit in their makeup. They are "glued" together with additional glass put between them and then fired. I discovered that the halves would separate by heating them to about 800F and then quenching them in water. The glass in between shattered. I then tumbled them in a cement mixer, which broke the kovar away from the ceramic and I finally separated out the kovar with a magnet. At that point, the extreme tips of the kovar leads had gold plating on them, necessary to attach the Al bonding wires from the chips. The bottom ceramic halves had gold plating on the chip mounting pad and the chip mounting of Au/Si braze. I'm thinking I treated the ceramic with AR and didn't worry about the tiny bit of gold on the kovar.


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## mls26cwru

Tzoax said:


> The next test i am intending to do is with silicon dies from incinerated mixed plastic IC chips. They should have some of the braze on them. I never tried to process them, and i have a lot of them mixed with wires and heatsinks. If this test shows well i will separate the silicon dies from the rest of the material and process a lot of them.
> 
> This is a sample i will test: 68.4g. I have no idea of the yields, i hope i will get some detectable amount of gold.



I think you will be surprised from these... In my experience with BGA chips, these are always worth recovering gold from... a word of advice though, the brazing/wire is a Au/Ag alloy. Each bonding wire attaches to a lead on the silicon chip and under a microscope you can see the brazing and a 'stub' from where the bonding wire broke off. I don't have any numbers on this myself so I will be interested to see what you get!! Great thread!


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## g_axelsson

I would look for palladium too among the dies. It seems like a palladium braze is often used to secure the die on the lead frame.

Göran


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## upcyclist

You mentioned your unknown white powder at the bottom of the beaker after processing, and I did notice this (emphasis mine):



Tzoax said:


> This is what i've done so far:
> -The ceramic IC chips was settled inside of 600ml beaker.
> -*I used 200ml of %16 HCl with 20g KNO3 added in small portions over time, on a hotplate with temperature just below boiling. *Over time vhen solution evaporated a few centimeteres i refilled evaporated volume of solution with a fresh HCl and added a little more KNO3 until solution becomes saturated (deep brown color, picture 3)
> -I decanted the solution (there was no visible gold left on IC chips) and replaced with a new one, same as before (200ml of %16 HCl with 20g KNO3).
> -The whole reaction is done in 4 hours. This is sample pictures from beginning to the end.
> 
> [pictures deleted]
> 
> After solution was saturated a second time i decanted it and decided to stop processing it because of the next reason...
> 
> It is obvious (and i have read about it) that the glue (or what ever was used to join the two halves of the chip) was reacting with acid and it becomes *white powder that is forming on the bottom of the beaker*. And this process is very slow, after 4 hours there was still a lot of it attached on the chips. Considering that, and the fact that the gold is in solution i stopped the reaction because i was sure it is unnecessary (maybe i was wrong but i doubt that this substance can interfere the process between AR and reactive metals).
> This is the picture of remaining white "glue" on the chips after reaction.



I'm wondering if you have metastannic acid. Your earlier research mentioned and 80/20 braze of gold and tin. Now you're dissolving your tin in a mixture that contains nitric acid...


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## Tzoax

Thank you all for great tips and advices!

GSP, it is a great way to prepare the ceramic chips and get rid of kovar legs and glass before processing with acids. I also have the EPROM chips (with no gold bonding wires) and no visible gold braze. I wonder if these contains some of the gold.

mls26cwru, i have a lot of various IC chips silicon dies that are mixed with BGA chips silicon dies. So i can't test them separately. I processed this 68.4g of them and now i am ready to drop the gold with SMB. I am very exited to see results. I will post some pictures.

Göran, thanks for the tip, i am saving the rest of solutions in a stockpot.

upcyclist, long time filtering is most probably not because of tin, because reaction between AR and tin generally produces tin IV chloride /stannic chloride (that is soluble in AR).

This is a pictures from processing IC chips silicon dies with poorman's AR - HCl and KNO3 and the look of the filtered solution..


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## Tzoax

I dropped the gold, it took a whole day to settle to the bottom, there is a very little of gold, maybe around 0.1g in my opinion. For now i will leave it as it is and i will collect some more of silicon dies to make a test and then i will mix the gold and calculate the gold content. 

68.4g that i processed seems to be very little of material to make a good test considering my scales have only 1 decimal. I started to separate the silicon dies from the incinerated chips and i will collect at least several hundred grams for testing.


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## mls26cwru

for 68 grams, that looks like a decent amount... pictures can always be deceiving, but it looks like you might have more that 0.1g. Did you have any problems with silver? did you find any other PMs?

I have a shipment of chips coming in in the next couple days, Ill keep close track of weights and recoveries from the silicon dies and add it to this thread.


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## Tzoax

mls26cwru, yes it looks promising, maybe there is more than 0.1g. In case there is less than 0.1g it will be not detectable with my scales since it has only one decimal. So, i will test some more and merge the gold. This is a very slow, for 2 hours of work i collected 40g of silicon dies so far. I wonder is there a better way for separating silicon dies from wires.

I had no problem with silver chloride, everything was left inside a double filter papers. If there is anything left of precious metals in AR, it will be recovered later, it goes to stockpot. Thank you for furure sharing of your results, how are you planning to separate the silicon dies from wires?


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## g_axelsson

Instead of measuring the weight on a small amount of gold it can be melted and the diameter measured. From the volume and density a more exact weight can be calculated.

Göran


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## Tzoax

Göran, thank you for this information, i will keep that in mind. I have no experience in melting, and it is a small amount of gold for induction furnace i use for melting. I would say there is a very little gold here because it took 1 day to settle and there was no visible forming clumps of gold when stirring (comparing to AR solution that i used couple days ago with 0.2g of gold inside and even larger volume of AR solution - the clumps of gold was forming while stirring).


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## mls26cwru

After I roast my material (This is only for BGA style, nothing with metallic legs) I grind them and pass them through a number of sieves... I would have to double check, but i think its 1/2", 1/4", 1/8", and 1/16" sieve for a rough sieving... that allows me to get out heat-spreaders in the first rack, most dies in the second rack, most broken dies in the third rack. Of course there is a little bit of hand separation that goes on, but the different sieves will sort 90percent of the material for me. The wires/ash break off and pass through the sieve and I just put the whats left in a container for processing later.

After a couple attempts, I settled on using an initial nitric leach because I was running into so much silver... not that its a large amount of silver, but more that the silver chloride is so voluminous that it covers everything and will stop the reaction (i don't have a stirring hot plate so my solutions just sit overnight most of the time). I decant and wash and after i am convinced the silver is gone, then I use an AR leach for the gold.


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## Tzoax

mls26cwru, thank you for the tip with different sizes of sieves, i have not tried that. I will buy or make some sieves for that, i was using only one sieve for everything and it worked well. I collected some more of silicon dies - 71.6g, here is the picture.




I was separating this 71.6g of silicon dies from wires by hand for 2 days (2 hours per day).
I am intending to process today this dies and tomorrow when i drop the gold i will mix it with gold that i dropped from the first test (68.4g of silicon dies) so i will measure how much gold was in the total of 140g of material.

This 3 pictures are the look of gold dropped from first test (68.4g). It looks like it have much but i would still say something about 0.1g. The gold particles are so little that they need some time to settle and they are not clumped together when i try to concentrate them on one side. Possibly they have some impurities. When i process the other batch 71.6g, i will mix the gold and refine it again with AR, wash, and measure.


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## Tzoax

I dropped the gold from 71.6g of silicon dies and mixed with gold from previous dropping (68.4g). So, this result will be from 140g of silicon dies from mixed various IC chips and BGA. 

Then i dissolved the gold powder with AR again to make sure that all contaminants are gone. But when gold dissolved there was milky color of solution and i knew that was is because of presence of silver chloride. I made a mistake because i filtered solution with (double) filter paper and some of silver chloride was going through it. I should wait at the first place that silver chloride settles at the bottom of the flask, and then i should decant AR solution prior gold dropping. 

The first picture shows AR solution (of 120g of silicon dies) pictured with a flashlight, second picture is without flashlight, and the third picture shows AgCl starting to settle at the bottom.

I will wait the most of AgCl is settled at the bottom, and when AR solution becomes crystal clear i will drop the gold, wash, and post the result.

One thing confuses me...when i filtered the AR solution there was no visible AgCl, the solution was crystal clear, and now - after second AR dissolving it seems it have much of AgCl. Maybe it is because of the reduced volume of the solution at second AR dissolving.


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## Topher_osAUrus

According to 4metals, the solubility of silver chloride drops wayyyy off depending upon temperature.

If you initially filtered it while hot there could have been no apparent silver, but once it cools, it shows up.

Thats why alot of people add ice. Its cools it down, and dilutes it. Both things are beneficial. Removing silver chloride, and adding water to help keep SO2 gas in solution to precipitate gold.

Excellent thread!


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## Tzoax

Thank you very much Topher_osAUrus, i will have to start to use the ice when dealing with silver, i made a mistake because i filtered a warm solution, that explains why AgCl showed ostensibly suddenly in solution after cooling.

I finally finished the testing... here are some pictures of washed gold chloride - wet and dry, and microscope view. Conclusion is beneath the pictures.










The result is 0.1g of gold per 140g of mixed silicon dies.
The yield will be about 0.71 grams of gold per 1kg of mixed silicon dies.
In a way i am satisfied with result since it is good yield per kilogram, on the other side it takes too much of a chips and work to collect and separate 1kg of dies. Anyway, it all adds up. 8)


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## Topher_osAUrus

Looks good to me. I love me some gold though!

Only other thing I caught/saw is
Gold chloride is the salt of gold
The last pictures you sent/showed is of metallic gold
After gold chloride is reduced with whatever precipitation method you like, it's no longer gold chloride, but just gold.

Thats me just nit-picking

It's still beautiful, and you're right...every microgram adds up


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## Tzoax

Thank you again Topher_osAUrus, i learned a lot from you :shock: , and also feeling bit of shame  not knowing such a basic things.
Now i see how much more i need to learn.


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## Topher_osAUrus

Tzoax said:


> Thank you again Topher_osAUrus, i learned a lot from you :shock: , and also feeling bit of shame  not knowing such a basic things.
> Now i see how much more i need to learn.



Shame? Never should be felt when learning....ever.. For no one person knows it all. And those that claim to do, are surely full of it (knowledge isn't what they are full of..)

To me, it seems as if you know a great deal. And for you to share your knowledge and experiences with us on the forum (members and guests alike) speaks great things toward your character.

A great many just come to absorb the information contained in this library we call a forum, and then never show their progress or results for fear of judgement or constructive criticisms, (i myself am guilty of not posting up things that i have done...my rationalization is that "they have already been posted")..but, really it takes a big man[person] to take being corrected gracefully. You, are one of those graceful guys...even though it was just a couple of small oversights..

Thanks again for this thread. You have given me a great guideline of whats worth messing with next, and what can wait awhile.

Keep up the excellent work. I eagerly await your next contribution to the forum. You are very precise and methodical. And i love it.

-topher, the thankful


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## Tzoax

Topher, you have the right about everything, i will keep learning and trying to contribute, as long as here are a great people like you and many others who justifies the site's motto "Refiners helping one another". It is the way i comprehend this forum and that is why i feel pleasure to help someone and gratefulness when someone helps me. Thank you for all your kind words and for your "nit-picking". :lol:


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## Topher_osAUrus

Tzoax said:


> Topher, you have the right about everything, i will keep learning and trying to contribute, as long as here are a great people like you and many others who justifies the site's motto "Refiners helping one another". It is the way i comprehend this forum and that is why i feel pleasure to help someone and gratefulness when someone helps me. Thank you for all your kind words and for your "nit-picking". :lol:



No worries! It wasnt any trouble at all. I like to help whenever i can. You have a great attitude and work ethic, and reading about your process is rewarding in its own right. There are alot of people that come here and want everything done for them, and there are alot of people like you, who take initiative and give back.

So thank you for that. Can't wait to see what you do next!
-topher
P.s. -i used to love playing hearthstone -(mtg really, but online too expensive)-but once i started my schooling for back yard refining, i had no time for it anymore...but it(they are)great game/s that require alot of forethought and strategy - similar to the work it takes to refine (feel free to message me about it/them, i used to LOVE to play strategy games/FPS games)


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## goldsilverpro

If I remember right, you said that your balance was only one decimal point. In that case. when you report a yield of 0.1g, it could be between .05 - .149 and a 0.2g yield from .15 to .249. Percentage-wise, those are big differences. Also, it can make a difference if you're not melting the powder. A melted BB will almost always weigh less than the powder.


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## Tzoax

goldsilverpro said:


> If I remember right, you said that your balance was only one decimal point. In that case. when you report a yield of 0.1g, it could be between .05 - .149 and a 0.2g yield from .15 to .249. Percentage-wise, those are big differences. Also, it can make a difference if you're not melting the powder. A melted BB will almost always weigh less than the powder.


Yes indeed, in this case it may be between .05 - .149 grams of gold in these 140g of silicon dies. If i processed a larger amount it would be more precise but it was very slow for me to separate manually the dies from wires. It is time to buy a new scale with 2 decimals, and several sizes sieves. I will process the silicon dies again in larger quantity and measure the gold with 2 decimal points. In my case, i managed to make 997 purity of gold (tested with XRF), and about 3 percents of gold loss when melted in induction furnace. This is a look of one grain of it.


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## Tzoax

I am preparing a new type of material for testing - the BGA (green) fiber masks with BGA solder balls still attached on them. I will test the BGA solder balls one day separately, but now i would like to try to process them altogether. I removed the BGA chips (mostly N/S bridges, the rest was from the graphic cards, skazi drives etc.) with a sharp knife and hammer, so some of the solder balls stays on a motherboard, some dropped off. You can see in a picture how much of solder balls are still attached to the fiber. I removed the black tops (chips) with a heatgun (that's why gold is visible on the fiber) and there are 107 pieces, weight is 218.8g.

I am planning to process them on the next way:

1. Hot HCl bath (just below the boiling) for removing as much tin possible from the material (mostly from solder balls)
2. Filtering the remained HCl and collecting possible small particles of gold inside of filter
3. Fresh addition of HCl and if necessary repeating step 1 and 2
4. Processing the mamaterial (together with filter paper) with Aqua regia

There would be a lot of copper, maybe it would be better to process with A/P after HCl bath, prior AR...

If someone have experience with this material or have some advice, or how to process it more efficiently please give your opinion.


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## Topher_osAUrus

Salutations friend!

Are you incinerating them at all?

Or just doing a leech on the plastic and fiber?

I believe the gurus here pyrolize the blacks so they release the bonding wires in their entirety. There may be a miniscule amount of gold that is trapped in plastic if not?


I would be curious of numbers of recovery for pyro'd bga's vs. Non-pyro'd ones.

Edit (my 1 year old made me hit submit..) to add:

But, doing pyro vs non may be difficult, as to get equal lots of the exact same bga chips would be a tall order, unless it was a metric ton of rejects from the factory or something of the sort.

I know there are some members that get and recover/refine factory rejects, but i am not sure if it is an ongoing thing or just every now and then..

Thanks again for sharing your experiences with us!


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## Tzoax

Thank you Topher. I will not incinerate them (this time), i already begin to process them 2 days ago.
I started to boil the fiber masks in 16 percent HCl 2 days ago. I was adding portions of 400ml HCl and after several hours i replaced it with next fresh 400ml of HCl and so on.

The used HCl was stored and collected in a big beaker, where the stannous chloride crystals was forming. I diluted it with warm water to break the crystal form of tin. When that was done, there was white/gray powder at the bottom, when stirring it settles fast (few seconds). I believe it is mainly silver chloride, and maybe some trace of gold foils, so i filtered it and i am keeping the powder for later.

I added 5 portions of 400ml 16-percent HCl, totally 2 liters, and after many hours of boiling 15 hours totally i was start wondering is it possible that the tin needs so much acid to go to the chloride state, or maybe it is not so reachable inside the solder, or maybe it is slow because i didn't use concentrated acid, and similar thoughts... In a meanwhile, i noticed that all gold plated parts become covered with tin, it was tin plated .




I decided to stop boiling in HCl, i was thinking that after 15 hours and 2 liters of HCl the most of tin was gone, so i poured a fresh HCl, and added 10 grams of KNO3 to form AR. Reaction was very faster, the solder balls was rapidly dropping from the masks and dissolving..




But, on my surprise, the metastannic acid goo was starting to form, i thought that tin inside of AR solution should form soluble Stannic chloride, not metastannic (that is formed in a Nitric acid solution). So i poured it off and waited metastannic to settle. The color of AR solution is pale green. The gold plated parts are still tin plated. And thats the where i am now. I will add fresh AR, and continue to process.


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## jason_recliner

I would put my money on a HCl wash then a copper ii chloride leach, as the best process here. No nitric/nitrate means no risk of tinny slime. Incineration also would not not necessary, so you'd avoid a fine carbon mess to have to be entirely rid of.

Just as long as the leach is pre-used copper ii chloride and not a fresh batch containing peroxide. For often with AP [in the literal sense], if you dissolve a little gold it doesn't matter as it will cement out. But with these fibre boards, dissolved gold carries some risk of cementing on copper traces inside the fibre layers.

I am a little concerned that this cementing could also happen with your KNO3 PMAR. If that dog happens to bite, you still have the ability to incinerate and crush to reclaim it. Though then it starts becoming a lot more work for the small yield (as maybe 95 percent of the gold is in the black tops).

Best of luck

Edit to add:


> But, on my surprise, the metastannic acid goo was starting to form, i thought that tin inside of AR solution should form soluble Stannic chloride, not metastannic (that is formed in a Nitric acid solution).


This may not be stoichiometrically correct, but something like:
HCl + KNO3 -> KCl + HNO3.
Your added nitrate gives you a little weak nitric acid in your hydrochloric, plus potassium chloride salt.

Tin in AP will form stannous chloride (and cements copper out first too). Tin in AR or PMAR will form goo.


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## Tzoax

Thank you Jason, once i tried to process several of fiber masks (with no solder balls) in a AP, and it did quite well - the foils separated and begin to flow, just like finger foils. And it was done in a 2-3 days with no air bubbler or heating. 
Now i was thinking that because there was solder balls on fiber masks, it would be quicker to process it with AR after HCl boiling, but this way it is not only longer, than it is much complicated and it is definitely not a good way to process this kind of material.


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## Tzoax

After all, i made it. After boiling in HCl (in total 2.5 liters) i removed majority of tin. With PMAR (in total 1.5 liters HCl + 150g KNO3) added in portions (300-400ml) copper and gold finally started to color the solution with beautiful emerald green color.




This is a look of remained material.




I filtered the solution.
Since i had a lot of solution with little gold (1.5 liters) i started to evaporate the solution. But, after reducing volume by 1/3 (to 1 liter) the solution turned black.




There was some of the stannous chloride left in solution, so i was sure that it was colloidal gold. I stopped evaporating, neutralized the solution with urea until there was no foaming, tried to drop the gold with SMB but nothing happened, the gold was in colloidal state. I added about twice much hot water, heated and still nothing happened. After couple hours, when solution cooled the gold was forming at the bottom. *(I was surprised since i was expecting that gold will drop faster when warmed, but in this case it started to drop when it was cool. Maybe it just needed some time, or maybe there was much contaminants like AgCl that is settling only when cold)
Anyway, the gold looked dirty.




So i dissolved it again in PMAR and this is a look of AR now, after second dissolving. I pictured this picture with a flashlight so the contaminants like silver chloride would be more visible, but it looks like there is very little of contaminants.




So, it turned out pretty well, i did this with a wrong method, and after 5 days of work i managed to obtain some gold. I will wait 'till tomorrow that contaminants settle, i will drop the gold, wash, and post result.


----------



## jason_recliner

The final colour is looking good to me.

I advise you stock-pot all of your wastes from this exercise, with the exception of initial tin washes. I expect there is a probably a decent proportion of gold remaining in it. Note I said proportion, though maybe not quantity - it's all relative isn't it? But it will be good practise in your recovery techniques.


----------



## Tzoax

Thank you Jason, i will save the rest in stockpot. I dropped and washed the gold.






There is 0.1g of gold in 218.8g BGA (green) fiber masks with BGA solder balls still attached on them.
Gold content per 1kg of material - 0.45g.

*My scale have one decimal, so the result could be anywhere between 0.05-0.149g.


----------



## Anonymous

I think what you're doing here is great, however please excuse me when I politely suggest that using scales with this low level of reading makes the results posted pretty inaccurate all round especially when coupled with the small sample sizes. 

It's almost at the point of not being useful because your errors in some cases could be over 50 percent yield. Might I suggest that it would be more pertinent to re-run all these with a valid set of scales so that your findings can be relied upon? 

Again let me state that I think it's a great thing to do and report upon however the figures have to be more accurate to be of any use to members reading them. As they are, the margin for error is just too large. 

Kind Regards

Jon


----------



## Tzoax

Jon, when i buy preciser scales (0.01) i will re-run all sort of material where the result was very low (0.1g, 0.2g...). I never processed materials like silicon dies or BGA fiber, solder balls, etc, so this was just a quick test to get familiar with process and see is it worth processing. In all cases i found it is worth processing even if the result was 0.05 instead of 0.1 for such a small sample sizes. When i was buying scales i thought that i wouldn't need preciser scales more than one decimal, but i also had no idea that one day i will test materials so precisely. Thank you for all of your help and advices, i will buy 0.01 scales as soon as possible. I am collecting silicon dies, bga fiber masks and bga solder balls to collect much larger sample sizes. Also, i already prepared a many types of IC chips (with minimum sample of 1kg) for re-running. 

If you have read my posts about IC chips, you noticed that results was only from ashes, not including silicon dies, wires, plates, and possible bonding wires trapped in all that material.
So, even in that cases it is not so precise, because that chips contains even more gold.
Now i have idea of re-running many types of IC chips but with complete treatment, to get all the gold out of specific types of IC chips including silicon dies, wires, plates, and possible bonding wires trapped. All of that plus with my new 0.01 scales i think that results will become much, much valid and useful for GRF members.


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## Anonymous

Brilliant Tzoax- thanks for the answer- I'm looking forward to the results. 8)


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## richard2013

Tzoax thanks for the hardwork

Hope you can try cellphone small IC types, also please consider the recovery of gold powder dissolve in hot HCL or left for longer in cold HCL.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus

Tzoax,

On the green bottoms (see attached)

Is the spot that i have circled able to be scraped off with your fingernail?

It looks black, like cemented gold to me?
But, i honestly have *NO* idea, just a curiousity. As i would think the underlying material beneath the plating would be a different color.

Again, excellent work on this thread.

-me


----------



## Tzoax

Topher, 

i thought too that it could be cemented gold on top of copper, so i boiled it again and again with fresh PMAR but nothing happened. When i looked it with microscope it looked like plastic, very smooth and shiny (light reflection) so i guess it is just a color of material beneath the copper. It looks exactly same like on fingers (when foils falls off), in the rest of processed residue fingers you will see a black line on many of them. I guess it is some kind of barrier between fiber and copper.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus

Could be a carbon barrier, but thats pure conjecture on my part.

I havent ever done these really..
Well, i have, but i stupidly threw them all in the fire pit then treated as ash.

Thats the last bucket of my mistakes to fix... Ill get to it... Eventually.

-topher


----------



## Tzoax

This is illustration of gold source of IC chip silicon dies, there are 4 possibilities for cracking, only when gold bonding wire/joint breaks, the gold stays on the silicon die.


----------



## mls26cwru

As promised, my numbers from my last run (finally  ).

Wt. Si chips: 105g
Gold recovered: 0.40g*
Silver was recovered as well in the form of AgCl, but added to a larger batch to process later. Estimate between 0.5-1g of Ag.
total wt% gold: 0.38%

*my scale is accurate to 0.01g, but I rounded down from 0.44g since it was gold only refined one time.

I also have the luxury of a microscope to visually confirm when all the bonding wire stubs have been dissolved. While its not much, it adds up. Usually I wait until I have a pound or more of chips, so it is definitely worth saving them.


----------



## Tzoax

mls26cwru, it is great result! Thank you for sharing. I have many pounds of IC chips wires, internal heatsinks and silicon dies and it is all mixed up, all along with some gold bonding wires that escaped me there.

I made a test with mixed (barely magnetic) pins in AP and it worked quite well. 
I was thinking to separate the iron/kovar based wires and plates from barely magnetic ones with magnet. And to process in AP copper/brass/bronze (barely magnetic) wires, plates and silicon dies with it. When the reaction completes in remaining material besides gold there would be Si dies, after filtering dies could be processed along with gold in AR. That would save me a time to manually separate Si dies. 

I am very interested in the results because i am wondering how much gold bonding wires i missed, how mush gold is in brazed contacts and plates, possible gold plated wires and plates etc. all together.


----------



## Tzoax

I made a test with a different way of processing IC chips and i managed to get about 30% more gold than i usually do. I don't know exactly how (i have some thoughts how it is possible), but when i was processing ic chips this way (few times) i was always surprised with gold content. But i wasn't sure, because i wasn't testing, i expected approximate yields and it was always higher than expected. This time i decided to make some tests compared on my earlier test results (done in a regular/old way (diluted nitric/AR)) and on my surprise the more than 30% of gold showed up. 

I tested multiple times specific types of IC chips and the results was always the same +- 5 or 10 percents maximum. But processing the new way, results was always better than processing the old way for about 30%.

Example:
Test:

Total: 931g 

Small IC chips 313.7
Flatpacks 4-Sided Square + Rectangular THIN 350.7g
Flatpacks 4S Rectangular THICK 266.6g

From my earlier results i would calculate and expect something about 1.6g for this batch (look at my earlier tests in this thread). And i would get near expected, always. But processing a new way, the result was 2.5g, little more than 30% than expected.

Interesting thing is that anyone can do the same test with both methods and compare the results to be sure.

Some pictures with gold bonding wires doing this way (above batch):





Of course, I will share with you which process i used, but i wonder does anyone is willing to make a same tests that i did (the old way and the new way with a same type and weight of IC chips), compare the results and post it here? I see that people are very rarely share their results, it would be much more helpful if for example 10 experts make a test of a same type of IC chips, with the same process, and share the results here. That way the expected amount of gold for a certain type of IC chips would be much, much more reliable. After that, in my opinion, the next direction of discussion should be modifying used process for more efficiency in gold recovery for the certain type of element.

My conclusion is that based on my own previous tests of IC chips i always had plus/minus 5 to maximum 10 percents of exception of gold content processing the well known way of iC chips. When i process the same weight of same chips with different method i recover +30% more gold. Before talking what is really going on and chemistry behind it, first i would like to confirm that my statement is right. I need a couple of volunteers that are willing to make the same test i did with both methods (dilute nitric/AR and a new one) and share the results here. That way it would be reliable. Is anyone interested?

Alexander


----------



## Tndavid

Very,very nice post. Thank you!!


----------



## Tzoax

I made a detailed instructions of the process, if someone is interested to make a test and share results send me PM. I am preparing next batch of ic chips for testing, this time i will take pictures step by step.


----------



## richard2013

Are you smelting then inquarting the Concentrated gold bonding wires in the new method?


----------



## Tzoax

Several people are already testing and they will probably post results here, if anyone is interested to try and compare results, here is what i have done.




Also, i will make another version of my process since i wasn't mentioning copper I and copper II chlorides, most likely the solution became saturated with copper, not silver since copper is higher than silver in a reactivity series of metals.. But, either way, that is process i used, i just have to make a good chemical explanation, someone without experience could mix up white powders of copper I chloride with silver chloride, so i will have to make a remake of instruction.


----------



## Tzoax

I am preparing the next batch of IC chips to test - Flatpacks 4-sided square thick 27x27mm. 



I already tested them once (second page on this thread) and i managed to get 0.7g of gold from 576.5g of this kind of IC chips, that is about 1.21g of gold per kilogram.


The differences from testing then and now:
-i collected about 3 times more chips of this kind than from the first time testing, now i have 1635.3g so the results will be more accurate
-i will be using a new way of processing them, like described
-my skills are better than before, so i expect less losses
-i will recover gold from every part of chips - silicon dies, iron and copper wires, heatsinks, powder with gold bonding wires.
-i will picture step by step of what i am doing to make it more understandable.

After burning the IC chips with torch, i baked them on a hotplate until they becomes white and soft.



After several sieving, and separating the wires, heat spreaders, and silicon dies from powder this is the picture of materials that i will process.



I will post the pictures as i progress.


----------



## kernels

Looking forward to seeing your results from this, will be interesting to see if your improved processing method leads to 30% improvement in yield here !


----------



## Tzoax

kernels said:


> Looking forward to seeing your results from this, will be interesting to see if your improved processing method leads to 30% improvement in yield here !


Thanks, we will see. Today, i started to make a concentrate out of ash/powder containing gold bonding wires.
So, after first water wash, the volume of powder was about 350ml, i dried the powder, incinerated again, sieved again (separated some more copper/iron wires), and now i am washing again, the volume of powder is now about 50ml. I will continue making the concentrate less volume as i can because the less carbon in concentrate - the more gold will be at the end (because of carbon absorption of gold ions from AR solution).


----------



## Tzoax

This is a picture of final concentrate - 70.8g of concentrate out of 1635.3g of chips.



In a 2l beaker i added 300ml of 16-18% HCl and gentle boiled for about 2 hours.



After decanting HCl i washed the concentrate with a lot of water several times.



I made poor mans AR with a 300ml fresh 16-18% HCl and 2 spoons total of KNO3, adding a few grams at time until all of the gold bonding wires dissolved. Neutralized with urea. The picture after decanting AR solution.




Filtering cold AR solution.



That is what i have done so far... now i am dropping gold with SMB , after washing i will post result.


----------



## Tzoax

The result is 2.4g of gold out of 1635.3g of this kind of chips.



Previous results when processing with diluted nitric acid method:
0.7g of gold out of 576.5g of chips === 1.21g of gold per kg of chips
Now:
2.4g of gold out of 1635.3g of chips === 1.46g of gold per kg of chips

That means 0.25g more of gold per kg, or 20.66% more gold!

This is only from concentrate, i will process the wires, plates and silicon dies for more gold to add to result.


----------



## danieldavies

excellent work. keep it up.


----------



## 4metals

So your concentrates ran 3.38% gold and the starting material ran 0.14% gold. 

So a ton of this material would yield 45 ounces. 

I guess chip picking is a worthwhile pastime.


----------



## Smack

I got 2.6 g per lb. from the last batch of N/S bridge, that's just from the black epoxy tops.


----------



## Tzoax

danieldavies said:


> excellent work. keep it up.


Thank you, i will do my best.



4metals said:


> So your concentrates ran 3.38% gold and the starting material ran 0.14% gold.
> 
> So a ton of this material would yield 45 ounces.
> 
> I guess chip picking is a worthwhile pastime.


In my opinion the best benefit of knowing how much gold each ic chip type have is when choosing to buy any electronic scrap. That way i could know approximately the value of ic chips on the boards, especially when i see telecom or medical boards first time in life, i am forming price/value of the board depending of my tests/knowledge so i choose to buy better stuff no matter what type of e-scrap is, chips are chips, i mean same type of chips are same type of chips. Couple of times i had opportunity to buy a lot of boards, for example couple hundred of poker boards, 30 cents each, but i wasn't sure is it worth, i saw that boards have lot of one type of ic chips but i had no idea how much it is worth. Then i got idea to test each type of ic chip and memorize yields, and next time i would know what and why to buy.



Smack said:


> I got 2.6 g per lb. from the last batch of N/S bridge, that's just from the black epoxy tops.


Thanks for sharing!
I guess you are weighting chips along with fiber base, otherwise you should have about double better result.
I take off the black tops-chips, and based on their weight i always have about 11g per kg.


----------



## Tzoax

I am processing silicon dies - 18.2g out of 1635.3g of chips.


Gentle boiled for about 1 and a half hours, with 150g of 16-18% HCl and few grams of KNO3.


After decanting and neutralizing with urea, i added little cold water, AR solution begins to sediment silver chloride.


The look of processed silicon dies.


After totally cooled, i filtered AR solution.


I heated beaker, added 1g of SMB, stirred, now i am waiting gold to settle. There is so little of gold, settling down will take some time...


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## g_axelsson

Have you tested the solution? There might be some palladium still in solution from the silver braze.

Göran


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## Tzoax

g_axelsson said:


> Have you tested the solution? There might be some palladium still in solution from the silver braze.
> 
> Göran


Thanks. No, i am adding all remaining solutions after gold drop to a stockpot to accumulate PM's, then i am dropping it with copper powder. Now i am focused on gold, i am not testing silver and palladium content in IC chips, one day maybe i should. For now i am saving all of the residues from IC chips (copper and kovar based internal wires, heat spreaders, and silicon dies for future refining. I am curious how much of gold bonding wires are trapped in these wires, all along with gold from wire joints, so i decided to process all of the gold from this kind of chips i am testing wright now (27x27mm thick flatpacks) and as i am waiting for gold to drop (from silicon dies) i separated the copper (left) and kovar (right) based wires for refining.
In this batch of chips (1635.3g) there is 73.1g of copper based wires and 18.9g of kovar based wires.


----------



## Tzoax

This is a picture of dropped gold from 18.2g of silicon dies, it is obviously very small amount of gold. I also processed the 18.9g of kovar based wires in poorman's AR, it also looks barely visible gold after drop. When i finish processing 73.1g of copper based wires and heat spreaders i will merge all of that gold, and add to obtained 2.4g of gold. For now, it seems that a GREAT majority of gold is in a concentrate. I was hoping that there would be some more gold in this wires because of the joint points between gold bonding wires and kovar/copper wires, it was logic to me that when gold bonding wire brake from base metal wire, there must be some gold residue on it, but for now it looks that it is so small amount of gold comparing with concentrate.


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## kernels

I love your thread man, really enjoying reading your updates, doing some great work!


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## jason_recliner

Not sure the size of your beaker, I'll take a stab that this looks in the realm of 50-100mg. Not much for the work, perhaps, but definitely interesting.
I would like to say that I really appreciate this thread and your objective posts.


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## Tzoax

Thank you for support! 
I just finished testing gold content in all residues from ic chips beside concentrate, and my conclusion is that there is minor gold content, in my opinion it is not worth processing (only) for gold, but if processing to recover silver and palladium, it makes no reason not to recover the gold along with it.


----------



## archeonist

This is by far one of the best posts on this forum! Thanks so much for your effort. I am picking chips for a year now and I now have a reference of what I can expect from processing them. It really is fantastic that you shared your method in creating 30% more gold from refining. Once I process my chips I will post some results here.

Thanks again!


----------



## Tzoax

archeonist said:


> This is by far one of the best posts on this forum! Thanks so much for your effort. I am picking chips for a year now and I now have a reference of what I can expect from processing them. It really is fantastic that you shared your method in creating 30% more gold from refining. Once I process my chips I will post some results here.
> 
> Thanks again!



Thank you archeonist! I am glad that my results will be useful to you. Right now i am preparing next material for testing - SOLDER BALLS FROM BGA CHIPS. It is one of the most interesting material for me because i always wanted to know how much gold there is, and there is so little information about it. Thanks to Patnor's document he provided in his thread here http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827&p=211524&hilit=bga+solder+balls#p211524 there is about 2.24g of gold for kilogram of this material. So i started today removal of solder balls from BGA chips, i will collect couple of hundred grams and i will test it.


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## kernels

Looking forward to see you results from these.


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## Tzoax

This is a picture of starting material inside of beaker.




I added 20% HCl and started to simmer boil the solution. This is picture of solution after 2 hours.




This is a bottom view - the solder balls are slowly dissolving.




This is top view - the crust formed.




After 3 hours of total simmer boiling i stopped the process since of lacking my free time, i will continue today. In a meanwhile it looks that most of the tin dissolved. When solution cooled the lead crystals formed like in the picture, probably some of the tin crystals either. 




Today i will continue simmer boiling for few more hours and i will filter the solution while still hot to get rid of most of the tin and lead. After that i will boil the material in water and filter again. 

My plan is that i repeat the whole process again with fresh HCl to make sure the most of the tin and lead is dissolved and filtered. After that i will incinerate remaining material altogether with filter papers and process it with AR. 

If there is anything near 2g of gold per kilogram of solder balls that means it is a very good material for saving, easy to find (graphic cards, motherboards, newer RAM memories etc.) and easy to collect. Also, one of the best benefit in my opinion will be gold recovery from solder balls from flip chips (the ones with silicon die at top that does not have gold bonding wires) - if there is about 2g of gold per 1kg of solder balls - flip chips will be a great and rich source of solder balls. I have a bunch of them, if this test shows good results i will start saving solder balls for future refining.

Alex


----------



## 4metals

Back in the 1970's I worked for a connector manufacturer and a common failure was due to brittle solder joints, this was due to gold contamination in the solder pots where the contacts were dipped to solder them. We had to routinely analyze the solder pots to keep the solder under the limit. 

The pots could never exceed 0.2% gold or they had to be changed. We changed out the pots a few times a year by removing about half of the solder and putting in fresh solder. 

Considering the solder pots were changed out at or before 0.2% (or 2 grams per kilogram) I wonder how likely it will be that the solder you have removed from the scrap will be at the 0.2% level? It is possible and will be interesting to see the result. 

This is a website where they list the levels of contamination permitted to comply with the industry specification J-STD 001E.

http://solderlab.com/why-test-your-solder/

I remember it was never an easy task to find a refiner who wanted to process solder pot material, especially when we knew what was in there when we shipped it. But then again the gold price back then was in the $150 an ounce range.


----------



## kernels

I would be surprised and amazed if the solder balls give you 2g per kg. Surely it is only the ENIG plating that dissolves into the solder balls ? Can't wait to hear the results man, great test to run.


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## Tzoax

According to this document http://www.smta.org/chapters/files/SMTA_India_03_PCB_Surface_Finishes_-__Implication_on_the_SMT_Process_Yield_(Liya-Indium).pdf under "ENIG: Electroless Nickel/Immersion Gold" subject, i found that "- Au Thickness = 3-10 microinches" and about maximum gold content inside of solder by percent is "This threshold is ~ 3 wt% gold". 

And here i found that gold content should not be more than 5% - 
"The second coating is plated electroless nickel/immersion
gold over the copper pad. The thickness of the electroless
nickel layer is determined by the allowable internal material
stresses and the temperature excursions the board will be
subjected to throughout its lifetime. Even though the gold
metallization is typically a self−limiting process, the
thickness should be at least 0.05 microns thick, but not
consist of more than 5% of the overall solder volume.
Excessive gold in the solder joint can create gold
embrittlement. This may affect the reliability of the joint."
https://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/SOLDERRM-D.PDF

This is interesting article about gold plating thickness: http://www.finishing.com/590/96.shtml

Anyway, the more i read, the more i am confused about this subject. Personally, i would be satisfied if there is even 1g of gold per kilogram. But, on the other hand it may happen that i dont see any gold from it. I guess there is only one way to find out.

I filtered the solution (while still very hot) and this is pictures of filtered and cooled solution. There should be the most of the tin (stannous chloride) and lead (lead chloride crystals).








And this is picture of remaining solids inside of filter paper.




Today i will incinerate this material with filter paper, i will measure the weight of it and most probably repeat HCl simmer boiling process one more time to be sure all of the tin has gone, because the last thing i want to deal with is colloidal gold.

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

I finally bought a scales with 2 decimals. Thanks to everyone pointing this out, now my results will be much more accurate.

Alex


----------



## anachronism

Well done Alex.


----------



## Tzoax

Thank you Jon.

I incinerated remaining material and after weighting it was lighter by 43.6%. There is still a 56.4% of total starting weight. So there is obviously more tin there. I will repeat the whole process once again (HCl simmer boiling/filtering/incinerating) and i will measure total weight again before AR process.


----------



## kurtak

Andrew 

I could be wrong here - but from what I can see it looks like copper is causing a problem for you 

In your OP showing your starting material I am seeing a fair amount of copper traces struck to the bottom of the solder balls (pic of solder balls still on green fiber part) & this copper is in with the solder balls after removing the solder from the green fiber

Then looking at the last set of pics after incineration (including magnified pics) it looks more like the material is copper then looking like tin (solder)

So here is what I "think" is happening --- because you are using a simmer boil - air - from the bubbles of the simmer boil is a factor in dissolving of the tin

As we know - air (oxygen) with HCl allows copper to dissolve as CuCl2

Therefore - you have some copper going into solution - but - because the tin is more reactive then the copper - the tin is cementing the copper back out - causing the copper to form a passivation layer on the tin

The reason the copper becomes a passivation layer is that as the HCl is loading with tin (& thereby cementing the copper) is the HCl looses it power (becomes weaker) to dissolve copper - the less reactive metal --- even though there may actually still be free HCl to dissolve more metal

I "think" (there I go - thinking again) :lol: what you are going to find is that you need to use an "excess" of HCl so that there is enough HCl to dissolve both the copper & the tin AND keep the copper in solution 

Personally - if I were doing this I think I would set up an electrolytic cell for tin - so as not to detract from your project I won't go into detail about the tin cell - other then to say one of the problems with a tin cell is that the tin likes to grow "very" long "whisker" like tin crystals from the cathode & they grow "very" fast - so you have to really keep an eye on the cell to keep the whiskers knocked down to keep the cell from shorting between anode & cathode

Kurt


----------



## Tzoax

Great "thinking" Kurt! :shock: Thank you, now it makes sense. I knew that HCl (with a bit of air (oxygen)) will not dissolve (much of) copper either way, and i thought there was much less of copper in there so i was planning when finally getting rid of most of the tin and lead i could process that "little" copper (along with gold and other undissolved metals) in AR. 

So, i am considering that i repeat this process once again (HCl simmer boiling/filtering/incineration) AND after that i could use old CuCl2 solution to dissolve most of the copper (and tin if left) from material. Then i would incinerate material and process with AR (if the most of Sn/Cu is dissolved - i will check by final weight of material).

Kurt, thank you once again, and i wish you a Happy Birthday!

Alex


----------



## g_axelsson

Incineration done correct will drive off water but add oxygen, so any exposed copper will be oxidized and is easily dissolved in straight HCl.

Since incineration adds oxygen the material actually gains weight. Just something to think about. Both copper(II) oxide and tin(IV) oxide is 25% heavier than pure copper or tin.

Göran


----------



## patnor1011

If you notice there was only 0.3% of copper in material I had scanned. It was because I melted small solder balls so any of those copper traces or lets say most of them were left out and not mixed much with tin. When I think about it more even harvesting method may be a factor. I usually do use heat and solder balls melt so there should be minimum copper present there. Scraping them off may introduce more it can be seen on your picture.


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## kernels

Hi Alex, any update yet ?


----------



## Tzoax

Thank you all for replies, i was busy last week so now i will continue to bring this test to the end.

I repeated HCl simmer boiling one more time. 




This time the whole material becomes gray/white colored and soft. I filtered it while still very hot, but very soon filtering becomes very, very slow - one drop for about 10 seconds. After that i boiled material with water and filtered it. 




This is a look of material through magnifying glass.




This gray/white colored sediment looks just like metastannic acid. Maybe there is some of the silver chloride too. But, after incinerating i thought that if metastannic was converted to metal form next time HCl simmer boiling will put tin in solution (stannous chloride)...but it looks like it produces even more of metastannic than first time (in case that this gray/white colored sediment it is metastannic). 

The filtered solution (cooled) shows no crystals this time.

I am considering either to repeat incineration/HCl simmer boiling OR processing it with AR from this point

Alex.


----------



## patnor1011

One more incineration and wash does not hurt. I am wondering (and it is just an idea) that you may get better result if you try incinerate and leach it in hot sulfuric this time instead of HCl. If you are careful and brave enough to play with hot sulfuric it may speed up things for you.


----------



## g_axelsson

NaOH have also been used to fight the metastannic acid.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=20477

Göran


----------



## geedigity

> I finally bought a scales with 2 decimals. Thanks to everyone pointing this out, now my results will be much more accurate.



Excellent decision.


----------



## Tzoax

Thanks Pat, i have no experience with hot sulfuric and i am not in hurry. I will repeat incineration/HCl simmer boiling couple more times if needed. I will incinerate this material and i will weight it. The filtered solution was yellow/green color and i think the most of the copper is separated from material. 

And if somehow metastannic appears again and again after couple more of incineration/HCl simmer boiling, i am more interested about using NaOH like Goran said. 

It looks like material weight is reduced, after i incinerate it i will post pictures and weight of it.

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

I finished second HCL simmer boiling/incineration treatment and this time overall weight was reduced by 14.6%.

This is a comparison between two treatments and overall weight:

41.8% -remaining material
43.6% -reduced weight after first treatment
14.6% -reduced weight after second treatment






It still looks like there is much of tin present, i guess i will have to repeat these steps couple more times.


----------



## geedigity

Is there any possibility that the silver that was present in the solder balls as been converted into silver chloride? Maybe you could take a small sample, mix it with an equal part of sodium carbonate and a little borax and melt to see if you get any metallic silver. Not sure if the tin would be reduced to metallic tin during the melting, but if not, then try to dissolve the reduced metal in nitric acid. Any residue would likely be your gold.


----------



## Tzoax

geedigity said:


> Is there any possibility that the silver that was present in the solder balls as been converted into silver chloride? Maybe you could take a small sample, mix it with an equal part of sodium carbonate and a little borax and melt to see if you get any metallic silver. Not sure if the tin would be reduced to metallic tin during the melting, but if not, then try to dissolve the reduced metal in nitric acid. Any residue would likely be your gold.



Thank you geedigity, i think there is some of silver chloride there, but the problem is that there is much of tin left in there. I think there is much of tin left in there based on total weight left, according to Patnor's test there should be about 87% of tin, 10% of lead, 2% of silver and 0.22% of gold. So i managed to get rid of 48.2% of base metals (tin and lead) but there is still 41.8% of material. Even if i count that tin(IV) oxide is 25% heavier than pure tin (like Goran said) it is about 30% of overall weight. So i think there must be much of tin there, little of silver and very little of gold. Adding nitric to any form of tin (with gold) will give much troubles like metastannic, gold loss and/or forming colloidal gold after, plus slow filtering (while colloidal gold is running through filter paper). It could be done that way, but it is much, much greater work with much of gold loss. So i am not processing tin with nitric or AR.

I will try to make few more times steps i already did with incinerating/HCl, and i will continue with it until there is about few percents left from overall weight. 

Alex


----------



## g_axelsson

Tin can have several different oxidation states. The one that can create problem is Sn2+ that makes a gel that traps gold when mixed with nitric acid or colloidal gold when mixed with gold chloride. Sn4+ as an oxide might be a lot easier to filter and will not reduce gold chloride. You could always try on a small sample to see if you can put gold in solution without making an unfiltrable (is that a word?) gel.

Göran


----------



## aga

g_axelsson said:


> unfiltrable (is that a word?)


Should be 'unfilterable' , but 'unfiltrable' is close enough.

You use the apostrophe ( ' ) correctly, while many natural English speakers do not, so please do not feel too bad


----------



## Tzoax

I just started to prepare material for next simmer HCl boiling and as soon as i added fresh (20%) HCl the solution colored green like in the picture in matter of seconds.




Since there was lot of copper in material (mostly from copper wires attached to solder balls), green color of solution should be copper (II) chloride. After incineration copper oxide turned into copper (II) chloride almost instantly after addition of fresh HCl. So i was thinking that since there is already formed copper (II) chloride solution, i could just give it some time to most of the copper goes into solution, just like regular copper (II) chloride procedure. I am not in hurry, i just want to make this test without mistakes. I will give it one week with occasional stirring, then i will filter the material, incinerate and weight it.


----------



## Tzoax

Closer look.


----------



## richard2013

Tzoax,

Add air


----------



## Tzoax

Thank you Richard, i added some air. This is results after one week in A/P:
The material is lighter by 9.3%.

This time i didn't incinerated the material, i decanted the solution, washed with water, and decanted it again. Then i dried the material.







And this is list of weight reduced after each step:

43.6% -weight reduced after first treatment (HCl simmer boiling/incineration)
14.6% -weight reduced after second treatment (HCl simmer boiling/incineration)
9.3% -weight reduced after third treatment (1 week in A/P /dried)
32.5 -remaining material

I am considering to bring this test to the end today, to process it with AR. After these 3 treatments the majority of tin and other base metals should be removed.
But on the other hand...there is about 1/3 of starting material left, i am afraid that there is still much of tin left that could cause problems later in AR. 

What do you suggest?


----------



## mls26cwru

i think I would take a small small sample and and some plain nitric to it... if there is any tin left, you will know pretty quick... if it dissolves the sample, the resulting colors should give you a decent clue as to what is left.

Another idea is to run a couple of hot water boils to remove and lead chloride... I was working on this same problem and that seemed to remove a decent amount of material. I have since put this project on the back shelf since I had a bunch of personal matters to attend to and havent had much free time.


----------



## patnor1011

If you still do have 1/3rd of starting material then most of it is simply tin. You started with something containing over 90% of tin therefore unless you get to less than 10% then majority of what you do have there will always be just tin.


----------



## richard2013

Tzoax if the area you are into will allow you to smelting, that's the fastest way, considering the acid spent of removing tin, that we can compare to the smelting lost if reasonable.

After oxidizing Tin and lead in smelting and use silver as collector, you can proceed with the inquartation, and recover silver lastly.


----------



## Tzoax

Thank you all for help and good advices. I just want to let you know that I am bringing this test to the end and everything is fine. I have a nice yellow gold chloride solution. There is no trace of green(blue) color of copper II chloride in solution. Also, there was no problem with filtering. I still have a very little of silver chloride white cloud in it, I will leave it to settle and decant it. I took a pictures and I will post them in the morning. Then I will drop the gold powder, wash it and weight it. So, tomorrow I will have results.

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

Processing with AR:



Residue:



I am waiting silver chloride to settle.



Today i will have results.


----------



## kernels

Looking forward very much to hearing your results


----------



## Tzoax

kernels said:


> Looking forward very much to hearing your results


Me too Hein. I just started to drop gold. Everything is fine. I will give it some time to settle, then i will wash it and weight it. This is a bottom view picture after one minute after adding SMB.


----------



## g_axelsson

One minute old gold, that's fresh.  

Seems like the incineration turned the tin into something easier to filter. No need to add too much time and chemicals to dissolve everything when you can filter it off instead.

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

g_axelsson said:


> One minute old gold, that's fresh.
> 
> Seems like the incineration turned the tin into something easier to filter. No need to add too much time and chemicals to dissolve everything when you can filter it off instead.
> 
> Göran



Yes, next time i will keep that on mind. And i was surprised how fast gold dropped and how clean it was.
Phew...i'm done. 



I will weight it and i will post result. But first i must to rest a bit, this is most interesting part so give me some time to enjoy in it, i will take some coffee.  First of all i am satisfied i managed to get the gold out of this type of material without troubles. I think i will save this little ones from now on, i like how this gold looks.  For this test i used 133.6g of solder balls and all the gold in the picture is from that...
...i will continue with details and results after break.

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

This is result:

Out of 133.6g of solder balls i refined 0.19g of gold. 
That means there is about 1.42g for one kilogram of solder balls.

And to add that this was my first time processing it, i was replacing this material a lot of times from one jar to incineration pan and so on... so i am sure i lost some of the gold in this long way of processing it. Also, when i put gold powder on the scales a few drops of gold powder found its way outside of scales (it could be seen on the picture). So, i could say there should be more gold than this. 

So, i will surely save solder balls from now on. I think it's great source of gold and the yield is not bad.
Thank you all for great advices and help.

Alex


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## patnor1011

Sample I got xrayed was 2,2g/kg but that was just tin balls not a piece of copper traces. All melted together. I still have quite a lot of it. :wink:


----------



## Topher_osAUrus

g_axelsson said:


> Seems like the incineration turned the tin into something easier to filter. No need to add too much time and chemicals to dissolve everything when you can filter it off instead.
> 
> Göran



I can't say I know what it turns the tin in to, but I can attest that it is much better to filter.

With all the metastannic trapped foils I had, a good incineration and a few (plus+) HCl leaches, there still ended up being gray sludge at the bottom of the beaker. Further leaches of HCl did nothing to reduce the volume. The first batch I did, I went to AR with the grey sludge after 5 or 6 hcl leaches, all of the gold easily dissolved, and it seemed the sludge was in no way effected and remained on the bottom of the beaker.

With the batch that I am doing now, I am about at the point of being finished with HCl.(hopefully...) This time though, I was going to try a hot sulfuric leach on a small sample to see if I could remove more of the sludge pre AR, just because I believe it would be better to have no sludge at all. Even though the remainder gave me no troubles on the previous run.

It took several rinses of said sludge to get the rinses clear. But, now I am fairly confident that little to no gold remains trapped in the sludge itself.

Excellent work Alex. It takes a patient man to recover gold from such a mess!


----------



## snoman701

So I'm late to the party....but I've been watching.

If you add lead chloride to molten lead it will force oxidation of all of the tin, leaving you with just lead, and I'd assume gold. 

Impressive either way! Good job!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Tzoax

Thank you all for support.  

Considering all of the facts, i think i will repeat this test with changing some of the things.

This first test was primary aimed for me to personally make sure there is gold, to calculate is it worth recovering and will i be able to process it.

So, i saw with my own eyes there is gold, that yield is above 1g of gold per kilogram and even if it took me much of time i successfully recovered it at the end.

Now, i started to prepare solder balls for next test. I have lots of bare laptop boards, motherboards, graphics, RAMs etc that still have some of the solder balls still soldered on them (on the places where was BGA chips). I also have flip chips, and small BGA chips of all kind, i am using little knife for taking them off, it took me about few seconds to take off solder balls from one of the BGA chip/place on board where it was soldered.

And now since i am familiar with the process, i will process it much quicker and cleaner than first time. I learned a few things from this test and i know how to make another to be a better one - hopefully with better yields at the end.




Alex


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## patnor1011

Heat gun or hot sand bath will be much faster solution to recover tin than a knife. I was doing it with knife first too but after some time I moved to heat as I needed to scale up and make it all faster. Knife is ok for few pieces but your hands will be falling off after few hundreds and "production" will go down fast.


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## kernels

What an amazing result Tzoax, I am in disbelief about how good the yield is. Just another piece for your amazing thread. Thank you for the effort you put into this stuff and sharing it with us.


----------



## Johnny5

g_axelsson said:


> The one that can create problem is Sn2+ that makes a gel that traps gold when mixed with nitric acid or colloidal gold when mixed with gold chloride. Sn4+ as an oxide might be a lot easier to filter and will not reduce gold chloride. You could always try on a small sample to see if you can put gold in solution without making an unfiltrable (is that a word?) gel.
> 
> Göran



Would this cause the filtered powder to give a positive result, when tested with stannous chloride?


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## g_axelsson

You will get a positive result if you have gold present. The tin in that picture is either all oxidized and won't reduce any gold or if you get a barren solution the tin has already reduced the gold chloride back to metallic gold and then it's mixed in with the sludge.
If you still has excess of nitric acid then all the tin is oxidized.

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

patnor1011 said:


> Heat gun or hot sand bath will be much faster solution to recover tin than a knife. I was doing it with knife first too but after some time I moved to heat as I needed to scale up and make it all faster. Knife is ok for few pieces but your hands will be falling off after few hundreds and "production" will go down fast.



I prepared material for new test. This test will give me an answer is it better to process solder balls like i did in the first test (not melted) or when melted. And now i can compare new with old result and see the difference. So i prepared 104.9g of solder balls for this test (scrapped with knife or chisel).




After melting solder balls with hot air gun i poured the melted solder to water to make granules.




After measuring weight of solder granules, from original 104.9g of solder balls now solder granules weights 76.3g. That means that from 100% of solder balls - 72.7% goes to solder granules, and 27.3% to residues.
This is a picture of residue:




So this test will also give an answer is there considerable amount of gold in that 27.3% to residues. If my results after this test gives approximately same percentage of gold per kilogram (based on starting weight - not melted 104.9g) and my first test (1.42g/kg) then it will be much better, easier and faster to do collect solder that way - hot sand / air gun. Also, material will be pure, less of Cu and trash, less chemicals used etc. But first i will have to be sure that most of the gold will go to molten solder, that is why i am running this test. If there is considerable gold in that residue "trash" then i think mechanical separation will give more gold.

Anyway, i am optimist Pat, based on your document - 2.24g of gold for kilogram for pure solder (without trash/residues).

Alex


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## kernels

Bugger, now I'm going to be checking this thread every two hours for the next week again! Can't wait to see your results from this batch. I would recommend you process the residue first, should be a bit easier and we will get some information sooner!


----------



## Tzoax

kernels said:


> Bugger, now I'm going to be checking this thread every two hours for the next week again! Can't wait to see your results from this batch. I would recommend you process the residue first, should be a bit easier and we will get some information sooner!



I already processed solder granules with HCl 2 days ago. It took 10 hours of simmer boiling with 600ml of 20% HCl to completely dissolve tin and lead. Yesterday i filtered the solution while still hot. Today i will incinerate filter paper. Tomorrow i will process it once again with hot HCl, filter and dissolve in AR. So in saturday i will have results for this one.


So far i see it is MUCH easier and faster to process it this way (melted solder granules) than solder balls. I hope the most of gold will be in there. After tin and lead dissolved - a light brown flakes formed at the bottom - same color like gold powder. And there is no junk or copper traces, this is very clean and fast way for processing it. The filter paper is very light, there is just a little of tin/lead left so that is why i will incinerate it just once. 

I have one thought about solder in motherboards in general. I wonder what results would be if i grind just a thin layer of depopulated motherboards surface - taking off all of the solder, then melt the solder to granules and test it the same way like this. If this test gives a good results i think i will try it. Do you think it makes sense?


----------



## g_axelsson

It only makes sense to check the solder from motherboards and other circuit boards if the boards have flash plating on the solder pads. I don't know of any solder for general electronics that have gold as part of the mix, gold makes solder connections fragile and easily cracked if the level is just a few tens of a percent.

Göran


----------



## kurtak

Alex

Something to keep in mind when processing solder --- there are many different solder alloys used in electronics solders which means there is the possibility of encountering a number of different metals which can/will react different with (different) acids --- (different solders are used in different applications) 

I have (or had) a paper (its several pages) that lists all the different solders used in electronics - which I have been looking for so I could provide a list of the different alloys here for you - its a paper I acquired 6 or 7 years ago & its not in the folder I normally keep that type info in so I will keep looking for it

My point is - depending on solder alloys & how the different elements react with different acids - is going to have (at least some) effect on the resulting residues left after HCl treatment

You have already talked about the lead in the solder so no need to talk more about that

However - two other elements "common" to electronic solder are antimony & silver - antimony being more common then silver 

Antimony (being VERY common) is not effected by ether HCl or nitric (however - I am not sure how it is effected by AR) therefore the antimony will make up "part" of your residues after HCl treatment

Silver in solder (used for electronics) this is NOT a so to speak "silver solder" - rather - it is silver "bearing" solder --- meaning the solder (tin) is "bearing" a low percentage of silver (like 3 % or less)

Normally silver is not effected by HCl - however - because it is so diluted (finely divided) in the (tin) alloy - the HCl is likely going to cause the silver to convert (or at least partially convert) to silver chloride --- especially being as how you are running the HCl treatment hot

Therefore - IF - the solder you are working with is silver bearing - silver chloride (&/or silver) is going to make up "part" of residues after HCl treatment (along with antimony --- & ?)

I would test your residues for silver --- because of the likely hood of it being silver chloride & because it has been dried out - you will want to smelt it using soda ash as your flux - then test your smelted metal bead for silver

The silver (if its there) is likely not worth chasing (at least not on a small scale) but it would be nice to know if it is one of the elements in the solder so that you don't keep chasing it thinking its stannic tin & therefore trying to eliminate it by continued incineration & repeated HCL treatments --- in other words - trying to convert what you "think" is stannic tin (by incineration) to tin oxide & then trying to eliminate it with HCl --- as what you "think" is stannic tin - may in fact be silver chloride

Kurt


----------



## patnor1011

g_axelsson said:


> It only makes sense to check the solder from motherboards and other circuit boards if the boards have flash plating on the solder pads. I don't know of any solder for general electronics that have gold as part of the mix, gold makes solder connections fragile and easily cracked if the level is just a few tens of a percent.
> 
> Göran



RAM comes to mind, most of RAM I have seen does have plated pads where IC are attached, pinned and BGA both. Also majority of boards from laptop displays does have plated pads where IC, MLCC and resistors are attached.


----------



## Tzoax

kurtak said:


> Alex
> 
> Something to keep in mind when processing solder --- there are many different solder alloys used in electronics solders which means there is the possibility of encountering a number of different metals which can/will react different with (different) acids --- (different solders are used in different applications)
> 
> I have (or had) a paper (its several pages) that lists all the different solders used in electronics - which I have been looking for so I could provide a list of the different alloys here for you - its a paper I acquired 6 or 7 years ago & its not in the folder I normally keep that type info in so I will keep looking for it
> 
> My point is - depending on solder alloys & how the different elements react with different acids - is going to have (at least some) effect on the resulting residues left after HCl treatment
> 
> You have already talked about the lead in the solder so no need to talk more about that
> 
> However - two other elements "common" to electronic solder are antimony & silver - antimony being more common then silver
> 
> Antimony (being VERY common) is not effected by ether HCl or nitric (however - I am not sure how it is effected by AR) therefore the antimony will make up "part" of your residues after HCl treatment
> 
> Silver in solder (used for electronics) this is NOT a so to speak "silver solder" - rather - it is silver "bearing" solder --- meaning the solder (tin) is "bearing" a low percentage of silver (like 3 % or less)
> 
> Normally silver is not effected by HCl - however - because it is so diluted (finely divided) in the (tin) alloy - the HCl is likely going to cause the silver to convert (or at least partially convert) to silver chloride --- especially being as how you are running the HCl treatment hot
> 
> Therefore - IF - the solder you are working with is silver bearing - silver chloride (&/or silver) is going to make up "part" of residues after HCl treatment (along with antimony --- & ?)
> 
> I would test your residues for silver --- because of the likely hood of it being silver chloride & because it has been dried out - you will want to smelt it using soda ash as your flux - then test your smelted metal bead for silver
> 
> The silver (if its there) is likely not worth chasing (at least not on a small scale) but it would be nice to know if it is one of the elements in the solder so that you don't keep chasing it thinking its stannic tin & therefore trying to eliminate it by continued incineration & repeated HCL treatments --- in other words - trying to convert what you "think" is stannic tin (by incineration) to tin oxide & then trying to eliminate it with HCl --- as what you "think" is stannic tin - may in fact be silver chloride
> 
> Kurt



Thank you all for help and comments, and especially thank you Kurt for giving such a detailed explanations.

Unfortunately this last test with melted solder failed. But, everything is still there, i will process it next week, there will be no loss, i saved everything. Two unexplainable (for me) things happened. I could call them my mistakes, but either way i would like to understand what really happened. If anybody know how and why this happened it will be very interesting for me to learn it. So here is what happened:

*First Question*

-After 10 hours of simmer boiling 76.3g of melted solder in 20% HCl the only material that was left on the bottom was light (by weight) brown flakes, same color like gold powder. 

-I planned to decant it while it was still very hot *but* i was in a hurry so i left it for tomorrow.

-So, next day, when solution was cold there was white lead crystals and gray powder - probably some form of tin/silver/antimony all along with "brown flakes".

-And here is when problem starts. When i started simmer boiling with HCl process again, there was no way to dissolve that gray material again (like it was dissolved day before that) even after several hours.

-Then i realized i made a "mistake" day before. I really should decant it when everything dissolves that first day - that way only thing that will left in beaker would be that brown flakes, there was no gray residues. And one more thing about those brown flakes - their shape was same shape like solder granules at first place, but much much smaller. And when i stir the solution i see that they are very light, but still drops at bottom of beaker.

-So, this is my first question - *Why on a second day i couldn't dissolve everything (except those brown flakes) like i did a first day?*


*Second Question*

-I filtered the solution

-There was not much of material left in filter paper - it was about 20 grams (weighted while still wet so i think there was about 10 grams of material left (if dried))

-I decided to not incinerate it. I process it directly with PMAR (HCl/KNO3)

-I started with 250ml of 20% HCl and added small portions of KNO3

-Interesting thing to add about "gold flakes". Now, when i added fresh HCl - brown gold flakes disappeared and solution becomes black

-Solution started to change color to yellow....more and more, and i was planning to dissolve (if possible) all of that gray material

-The color of solution was so strong yellow that is was slightly going to orange. I knew it was rich with gold.

-I couldn't dissolve that gray material from the bottom even after few hours so i was thinking it was silver and other tin states that not react with AR

-And then...i made another "mistake".... A big mistake.... If i decanted the gold chloride solution at that point, and leaving gray material in beaker - i am sure there will not be problems. But - instead i added a little water to dilute it a bit so i could easier decant it. But, instantly solution becomes white colored like milk.

-I was sure it was silver chloride so i was thinking there will not be problems - when solution cools and silver chloride settles i would decant/filter it.

-but....on my surprise - the color of filtered "gold chloride" solution becomes a very very pale yellow colored, like a very, very weak lemonade. "Something" obviously dropped gold from solution when i added water or while cooling.

-So, my second question is - *why i have now "weak lemonade" when i saw "Fanta Exotic" was there? * 

Alex


----------



## g_axelsson

Tzoax said:


> *First Question*
> 
> -After 10 hours of simmer boiling 76.3g of melted solder in 20% HCl the only material that was left on the bottom was light (by weight) brown flakes, same color like gold powder.
> 
> -I planned to decant it while it was still very hot *but* i was in a hurry so i left it for tomorrow.
> 
> -So, next day, when solution was cold there was white lead crystals and gray powder - probably some form of tin/silver/antimony all along with "brown flakes".
> 
> -And here is when problem starts. When i started simmer boiling with HCl process again, there was no way to dissolve that gray material again (like it was dissolved day before that) even after several hours.
> 
> -Then i realized i made a "mistake" day before. I really should decant it when everything dissolves that first day - that way only thing that will left in beaker would be that brown flakes, there was no gray residues. And one more thing about those brown flakes - their shape was same shape like solder granules at first place, but much much smaller. And when i stir the solution i see that they are very light, but still drops at bottom of beaker.
> 
> -So, this is my first question - *Why on a second day i couldn't dissolve everything (except those brown flakes) like i did a first day?*


One thing that could happen is that SnCl2 reacts with oxygen from the atmosphere and creates various tin oxides. (The same thing that happens when stannous goes bad) These tin oxides can be really hard to dissolve again. For example SnO2 is soluble in HCl but might require hours of reflux to dissolve. You could test NaOH too, might work better than HCl.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_dioxide

The obvious solution that you already discovered is to filter it after it dissolved and before a lot of oxides are formed.



Tzoax said:


> *Second Question*
> 
> -I filtered the solution
> 
> -There was not much of material left in filter paper - it was about 20 grams (weighted while still wet so i think there was about 10 grams of material left (if dried))
> 
> -I decided to not incinerate it. I process it directly with PMAR (HCl/KNO3)
> 
> -I started with 250ml of 20% HCl and added small portions of KNO3
> 
> -Interesting thing to add about "gold flakes". Now, when i added fresh HCl - brown gold flakes disappeared and solution becomes black
> 
> -Solution started to change color to yellow....more and more, and i was planning to dissolve (if possible) all of that gray material
> 
> -The color of solution was so strong yellow that is was slightly going to orange. I knew it was rich with gold.
> 
> -I couldn't dissolve that gray material from the bottom even after few hours so i was thinking it was silver and other tin states that not react with AR
> 
> -And then...i made another "mistake".... A big mistake.... If i decanted the gold chloride solution at that point, and leaving gray material in beaker - i am sure there will not be problems. But - instead i added a little water to dilute it a bit so i could easier decant it. But, instantly solution becomes white colored like milk.
> 
> -I was sure it was silver chloride so i was thinking there will not be problems - when solution cools and silver chloride settles i would decant/filter it.
> 
> -but....on my surprise - the color of filtered "gold chloride" solution becomes a very very pale yellow colored, like a very, very weak lemonade. "Something" obviously dropped gold from solution when i added water or while cooling.
> 
> -So, my second question is - *why i have now "weak lemonade" when i saw "Fanta Exotic" was there? *
> 
> Alex


That's a hard question... I don't know exactly what happened. Tin oxides could still be a thing. The added water have dissolved oxygen in it and might have created more tin oxides.
The color change might be from the aqua regia formed in solution. The yellow color of AR is from dissolved nitrosyl chloride, a yellow gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrosyl_chloride
When you added water it could have affected that compound making the color change.

This is just speculations, nothing that I have tested myself.

On another note... 250 ml HCl for dissolving 10g of material seems like a lot of acid.

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

Goran, thank you. I processed everything again (material + filter paper) with AR.



g_axelsson said:


> The obvious solution that you already discovered is to filter it after it dissolved and before a lot of oxides are formed.
> Göran



I did it, i decanted it in filter while still hot and bright yellow colored.

I decided to repeat this process once again just in case there was still some gold left.

On my surprise solution was the same color - strong yellow.

And i did it once again - the same thing - solution was yellow.

Then, i had to stop because i had no more free time (i will continue today). So, i processed this remaining material 3 times with AR (about 125-150ml of each turn) and every time (after about 30 minutes of simmer boiling) solution was yellow like in the right picture. 

On this picture - beaker on a left side is the AR solution from first time processing couple days ago, and beaker on a right side contains AR from today (3 times processing - but still this same color)






g_axelsson said:


> On another note... 250 ml HCl for dissolving 10g of material seems like a lot of acid.
> Göran



Sorry, my mistake, it was about 120ml like in the picture, not 250ml. I confused because i used a larger beaker for processing with AR. For last 3 AR processes i used about 220ml total.


I can only guess why this is happening - why every time i use AR solution (from start) with this material solution have this yellow color (most probably gold chloride, i don't know what else could give this color). 
I was thinking reason could be there was not enough time for gold to dissolve so i left it much more time to simmer boiling but...after total of 4 hours trying to dissolve it (total time of those 3 tries) there is still this color when processing it with fresh AR.

Does anyone have explanation for this?

This is first time i see this kind of reacting. In all of the cases i did the most of gold goes in a solution after first run. And on a second run of little of AR i always pick up remaining traces of gold to solution. But now... the color of AR is always strong yellow even after 3 times processing it (after first one).

Just to compare this with a test (before this one - with not melted solder balls). - after first AR almost all gold went to solution, i know that because i repeated AR run again to collect possible gold traces and color was very very pale. But now it is complete opposite - AR color gives stronger yellow color after second run - and even more stranger the color is permanent after 3 more runs.


----------



## g_axelsson

Yellow color in AR isn't a test for gold. Have you tested with stannous yet? You could test your filter papers because they usually contains enough gold chloride to tell you if the last filtration contained any gold.

At least iron could give yellow color in AR and I'm quite confident that there are other metals and compounds that can give the same color. Maybe there are some iron contamination in your HCl?

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

g_axelsson said:


> Yellow color in AR isn't a test for gold. Have you tested with stannous yet? You could test your filter papers because they usually contains enough gold chloride to tell you if the last filtration contained any gold.
> 
> At least iron could give yellow color in AR and I'm quite confident that there are other metals and compounds that can give the same color. Maybe there are some iron contamination in your HCl?
> 
> Göran



There was no iron, the start material was melted tin granules. I even tested it with neodymium magnet just in case before i started. Also there is no iron contamination in HCl, i know that because i never before had this color (when using this same HCl and when the gold was not present - it was always transparent, like water). It also didn't have any contact with iron or any other metal (it was not incinerated). I didn't test it for gold because i was thinking i could get false positive knowing there is possibility of a little tin dissolved there also. I will continue today several more runs if needed until i collect all of this yellow solution, there must be end of it at some point. I will continue with this until solution becomes transparent, like it always do, only then i will be sure all of the dissolving metals are in solution. Then i will evaporate it to reduce volume, neutralize and drop the gold.

I suspect it have some relation with the fact that this time i didn't incinerated material (after first AR run) at all. It was a main difference between this and previous test (with solder balls - where i incinerated material several times like described).


----------



## Topher_osAUrus

Silver chloride dissolved in HCl is also yellow


----------



## Tzoax

Topher_osAUrus said:


> Silver chloride dissolved in HCl is also yellow



Topher, you are genius.  Thank you!

If that is the case, everything makes sense.

The filter paper is full of silver chloride and there was some of silver chloride that went through the filter when i decanted this yellow solution while still hot, and now i see on the bottom white sediment, most probably AgCl. But solution is still yellow even after many hours (being cooled).

So, if i understand correctly - some of silver could be dissolved in HCl and the color is yellow and dissolved silver will stay in solution when cooled.


----------



## FrugalRefiner

Try diluting some of the solution. While silver chloride is slightly soluble in concentrated chloride solutions, it is much less soluble in dilute solutions. If you get a precipitate and the solution clears, Topher may have your answer.

Dave


----------



## Tzoax

FrugalRefiner said:


> Try diluting some of the solution. While silver chloride is slightly soluble in concentrated chloride solutions, it is much less soluble in dilute solutions. If you get a precipitate and the solution clears, Topher may have your answer.
> 
> Dave



Thank you Dave, i just added some water -20/30ml and white cloud of silver chloride formed at the top and it is slowly dropping to the bottom.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus

Tzoax said:


> Topher_osAUrus said:
> 
> 
> 
> Silver chloride dissolved in HCl is also yellow
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Topher, you are *genius*.  Thank you!
> 
> If that is the case, everything makes sense.
> 
> The filter paper is full of silver chloride and there was some of silver chloride that went through the filter when i decanted this yellow solution while still hot, and now i see on the bottom white sediment, most probably AgCl. But solution is still yellow even after many hours (being cooled).
> .
Click to expand...


Throwing that word around quite liberally, aren't we? :lol: :lol: 

I have a beaker of HCl that has silver chloride in it, that is from some of my first washes of powder. I tend to just reuse it when I'm doing a recovery dissolve of gold from goldfilled or karat, where there is already silver chloride that will be in the mix. I like to keep the HCl concentrated for the dissolving, so it works faster, only diluting it at the end. Sometimes my aqueous sulfamic addition is enough to make the chloride drop out, sometimes I have to add ice. Either way, I like to filter as little as possible. So the silver chloride and lead sulphate will be separated at another time.

Keep up the good work Alex, I enjoy your result thread very much.
8)


----------



## Tzoax

Topher_osAUrus said:


> Throwing that word around quite liberally, aren't we? :lol: :lol:
> 
> I have a beaker of HCl that has silver chloride in it, that is from some of my first washes of powder. I tend to just reuse it when I'm doing a recovery dissolve of gold from goldfilled or karat, where there is already silver chloride that will be in the mix. I like to keep the HCl concentrated for the dissolving, so it works faster, only diluting it at the end. Sometimes my aqueous sulfamic addition is enough to make the chloride drop out, sometimes I have to add ice. Either way, I like to filter as little as possible. So the silver chloride and lead sulphate will be separated at another time.
> 
> Keep up the good work Alex, I enjoy your result thread very much.
> 8)



Well, i think you really deserved it this time. :lol: 
Thank you Topher, you really helped me a lot to understand what was going on here.


----------



## Tzoax

I finished testing. First beaker - 0.01g of gold, second beaker (with dissolved silver) - no gold.



My conclusion is that solder balls should be processed with HCl simmer boiling/incineration (like i did at first test) and there is no point melting it, it will just reduce gold content (some of the gold will be left in residues) and based on poor results of this second test - 0.01g it is obvious that something is wrong. I think it really needs incineration for better results.

I am still saving solder balls and now i know how i will process them in the future.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus

Hey Alex, have you tried a sulfuric leach at all on any small experiments?

I wonder if it would be a more efficient acid for the solder removal? Yes, it is very dangerous hot, but it can be a great tool in the fight against tin. 

I have not used it as much, since I started doing incineration then hcl leach, but that is primarily when dealing with the little solder encountered in jewelry. 

With escrap, bga solder balls specifically, the amount of tin is quite a bit higher, so the sulfuric might be a better initial choice, then move on to the torch and hcl. Where the bit of solder than remains could get oxidized and removed.

Just throwing out ideas, may not be a practical choice on a larger scale, but for a small test its at least worth a shot.

Best of luck dear friend


----------



## Tzoax

Topher_osAUrus said:


> Hey Alex, have you tried a sulfuric leach at all on any small experiments?
> 
> I wonder if it would be a more efficient acid for the solder removal? Yes, it is very dangerous hot, but it can be a great tool in the fight against tin.
> 
> I have not used it as much, since I started doing incineration then hcl leach, but that is primarily when dealing with the little solder encountered in jewelry.
> 
> With escrap, bga solder balls specifically, the amount of tin is quite a bit higher, so the sulfuric might be a better initial choice, then move on to the torch and hcl. Where the bit of solder than remains could get oxidized and removed.
> 
> Just throwing out ideas, may not be a practical choice on a larger scale, but for a small test its at least worth a shot.
> 
> Best of luck dear friend



Thank you Topher, great idea. I haven't tried it with sulfuric leach. I don't have experience with sulphuric since i never used it, maybe one day. It really isn't very bad processing it with HCl/incineration either. It just needs a little more time, and i am satisfied with results processing it that way. 

Alex


----------



## snoman701

Is the Parkes process of any use for this. 

Even if you got to zinc+tin+PM's, you should at least get past 60% of the mass in lead, as well as the difficulty of the lead causing the tin to passivate. (that does happen right?)


----------



## Johnny5

Tzoax said:


> BGA VARIOUS CHIPS
> All of the types og BGA chips, already separated from green bases with a heat gun. They do not have magnetic parts.
> BGA var 274.6g 172pcs.jpg
> BGA var 182.3g 114pcs.jpg
> Total weight of chips - 456.9g
> Number of chips - 286pcs
> Avg weight of 1 chip - 1.597552448g
> Gold recovered 5.2g
> Gold content per 1kg - 11.381046g
> Gold content per 1 chip - 0.018181818g



Have you ever had your gold tested (XRF)?


----------



## Tzoax

Johnny5 said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> BGA VARIOUS CHIPS
> All of the types og BGA chips, already separated from green bases with a heat gun. They do not have magnetic parts.
> BGA var 274.6g 172pcs.jpg
> BGA var 182.3g 114pcs.jpg
> Total weight of chips - 456.9g
> Number of chips - 286pcs
> Avg weight of 1 chip - 1.597552448g
> Gold recovered 5.2g
> Gold content per 1kg - 11.381046g
> Gold content per 1 chip - 0.018181818g
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Have you ever had your gold tested (XRF)?
Click to expand...


Of course. The purity was 997 last time (including all those IC chips from tests).

All gold from my tests was washed (3xHCl-3xdist.water-3xHCl boiled) and well dried before weighting. 

After collecting many of small gold samples from those tests i process them once again with AR and wash the gold again. Then i test the gold with XRF before melting.

After second AR treatment the only contaminant was very little of silver chloride.


----------



## Johnny5

Please help me understand this.




Tzoax said:


> -3xHCl boiled


You boiled the gold powder in HCl 3 times?



Tzoax said:


> and well dried before weighting


The weights you posted were of the powder?



Tzoax said:


> i process them once again with AR and wash the gold again


Then you boiled it again 3 times in HCl?



Tzoax said:


> Then i test the gold with XRF before melting.


Then you XRF the powder, and not the melted gold?



Tzoax said:


> After second AR treatment the only contaminant was very little of silver chloride


According to you, you posted the weights after the first wash, prior to the second wash, when you discovered the AgCl.


All quotes were taken in the order they were written, and nothing was assumed or taken out of context. So am I correct on these things above?


----------



## Tzoax

Johnny5 said:


> Please help me understand this.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> -3xHCl boiled
> 
> 
> 
> You boiled the gold powder in HCl 3 times?
> 
> 
> 
> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> and well dried before weighting
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> The weights you posted were of the powder?
> 
> 
> 
> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> i process them once again with AR and wash the gold again
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Then you boiled it again 3 times in HCl?
> 
> 
> 
> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> Then i test the gold with XRF before melting.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Then you XRF the powder, and not the melted gold?
> 
> 
> 
> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> After second AR treatment the only contaminant was very little of silver chloride
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> According to you, you posted the weights after the first wash, prior to the second wash, when you discovered the AgCl.
> 
> 
> All quotes were taken in the order they were written, and nothing was assumed or taken out of context. So am I correct on these things above?
Click to expand...


Results are after first AR treatment and first wash. One wash = 3xdistilled water + 3xHCl water + 3xdistilled water boiled. Because there are many of small tests results it would be much expensive to me to test it separately, i have no XRF scanner, so i pay to a mining company about 10 euros for one scan. But, considering there will always be some contaminants, i always process everyting together wirh AR/washing once again for two reasons:
1.That gold (along with a bit of contaminants) becomes homogeneous which is very important for XRF test
2. To make it more purer

* When i said little silver chloride, the solution was not 100% crystal clear, it was half-transparent. After one day very thin layer of silver chloride settled on the bottom. After decanting, the gold was dropped, XRF scanned and melted. And the result of XRF scanner was 997 gold purity. 

Alex


----------



## Johnny5

If what I said is true(and you did not disagree with what I said), then all of the numbers that you have posted so far on this thread, are more than likely very inaccurate.


----------



## FrugalRefiner

Johnny, do you have some yield data of your own you'd like to share?

I think Alexander has been pretty clear in what he's done and the numbers he's reported.

Take his numbers the way you wish, but let's not be too critical of a member who's willing to share those numbers.

Dave


----------



## kernels

This is one of the very best threads in this section, Alexander's results are appropriate for the source material and procedures that he follows. Johhny5, are you suggesting that Alex's results are low or high ?


----------



## Tzoax

Johnny5 said:


> If what I said is true(and you did not disagree with what I said), then all of the numbers that you have posted so far on this thread, are more than likely very inaccurate.



Johnny, i see your point but a very little of silver chloride that i "discovered" after second AR treatment of 100g of gold (from many of small batches) was so thin on the bottom of the beaker that it was almost transparent. And i disagree that it could be called "very inaccurate". I did second refinement just to make it "little more" purer. 

There will always be some "losses" after second AR refining, but they are so small so they can not affect at yields that much so they could be called "very inaccurate" results.

Anyway, because as we know that even two "same" IC chips could have different yields based on many factors, these tests i am doing are more like a direction what to expect from a certain type of IC chip. Of course that results will vary each time, but not much. And it is impossible to make "accurate" yields. But, i can say for example that one type of IC chips are always giving about 1g of gold per kilogram and another type will always give 2.2g of gold per kilogram. And that information is so important (to me) because i can estimate approximate value of boards (before i buy it) just by seeing it. It could be anything i never saw before - medical, telecom, military equipment....but i do recognize IC chips and i can calculate the value based on that.

Many times i had opportunity to buy a lot of boards that i never saw before. I couldn't estimate the yield/price that i could pay for it so i didn't. Last time (several years ago) i had opportunity to buy a van full of poker boards for 20 cents per board. Boards was loaded with IC chips...but i had no idea what to expect from it, so i didn't. Then i decided to test all types of IC chips so i could finally know. So i did, and now i just need couple of those "chances" to buy a good material. 

Back then, if i knew these results....(it is hard for me to think about all of those lost chances)...if there was any reliable data i could count on.....a lot of gold would be in my hands.

But...chances just come and go...if you don't buy it (as soon as possible) somebody else will, so as soon as i realized how important this is i started to test. I spent several years testing all kind of materials, and now i am sharing these informations here on GRF because i know there are people who will find it very helpful.

Alex


----------



## kurtak

Tzoax said:


> , and now i am sharing these informations here on GRF because i know there are people who will find it very helpful.
> 
> Alex



Alex

Just want to say - you have done an absolutely AWESOME job with providing the "Ball Park" data of yield to expect from the many types of chip 

Ball Park = a "very close" expectation - which is the very best ANYONE can provide for this type material - its the best you can do with this type material because of all the variation in chips that look "exactly" the same :!: 

Variation's such as year made - company made by - application chip is used for etc. etc. 

I can say this & I can say it because I have processed literally a couple thousand pounds of chip over the last 5 or 6 years --- & although chips can/will very plus/minus "some" from the numbers you have provided - that plus/minus is not going to very enough to make or break you buying chips based on your data

Your number certainly are NOT - "likely very inaccurate." --- but rather "very Ball Park" :!:  

Soooo - I want to "personally" THANK YOU for all the HARD WORK you put into providing this thread - I certainly have not seen anyone else do such a FINE JOB :!: 8)  :G :mrgreen: 

Kurt


----------



## philddreamer

Alex, thank you for all the hard work and for sharing your findings! :G 

Take care!
Phil


----------



## Johnny5

Point taken. I apologize.


----------



## Tzoax

Thank you all very much for support, and seeing a point of what i am doing here. I am not a professional, this is best what i can do (so far). Over time i learned a lot and still learning thanks to you - members of GRF, my experience grows and now i finally have 2 decimals scales.  

Like i said, i will repeat tests for every single type of IC chip i did plus some new types i never did with much more experience and knowledge including much more details, pictures, and more accurate 2 decimal scales.

I started to collect IC chips for testing. This is a list. When i collect about 1 kg of each type i will start testing.

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

Considering processors are also types of IC chips i am sharing with you my test results dating several years ago.

Keep in mind that i had less experience then now and my scales had only one decimal. At least these results can give some rough directions.




* These values are without processing kovar lids. The avg. weight of kovar lids are included. 
Results of processing kovar lids:




Alex


----------



## patnor1011

I see that few people here do use poormans AR and wanted to ask a question. What is the rate of consumption of nitrates? I mean that let's suppose you have 100g of concentrate and need to make poormans AR how much of nitrate do you use to dissolve it? That concentrate is from mixed IC so there is some amount of tiny pins and some amount of tin there too. I am asking as I tried it and ended up adding several soup spoons of sodium nitrate to about 0.4 l of HCl yet after like 5 minutes of fizzing, little foaming and solution being dark green all went quiet. I thought that reaction finished, it did not fizz even after additional spoon of sodium nitrate. The solution turned dark deep burgundy/brown/blackish like color so I know some gold dissolved and it looks like colloid. After decanting and washing remaining concentrate it looked like not much of it dissolved. I could still see most of the gold there and also some tiny pieces of metal. 

So now I do have to deal with about half a liter of solution with colloidal gold and pretty much the same amount of concentrate than before. Colloid I will boil off to about a half and add fresh HCl that should sort out that mess but so far I have spent about 70-80g of sodium nitrate and I wonder how much more will I need if I want to try it again.


----------



## richard2013

Patnor try these

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=33806&mode=view
I think you need to start with 1L HCL and add several 100ml HCL


----------



## Tzoax

patnor1011 said:


> I see that few people here do use poormans AR and wanted to ask a question. What is the rate of consumption of nitrates? I mean that let's suppose you have 100g of concentrate and need to make poormans AR how much of nitrate do you use to dissolve it? That concentrate is from mixed IC so there is some amount of tiny pins and some amount of tin there too. I am asking as I tried it and ended up adding several soup spoons of sodium nitrate to about 0.4 l of HCl yet after like 5 minutes of fizzing, little foaming and solution being dark green all went quiet. I thought that reaction finished, it did not fizz even after additional spoon of sodium nitrate. The solution turned dark deep burgundy/brown/blackish like color so I know some gold dissolved and it looks like colloid. After decanting and washing remaining concentrate it looked like not much of it dissolved. I could still see most of the gold there and also some tiny pieces of metal.
> 
> So now I do have to deal with about half a liter of solution with colloidal gold and pretty much the same amount of concentrate than before. Colloid I will boil off to about a half and add fresh HCl that should sort out that mess but so far I have spent about 70-80g of sodium nitrate and I wonder how much more will I need if I want to try it again.



First thing that comes to my mind is that never used sodium nitrate (NaNO3), i am using potassium nitrate KNO3 for poorman's AR. They are all nitrates but maybe there is some difference related to chemical reaction/consumption.

I never had problems with tin or colloidal gold processing concentrate from IC chips. First of all i remove the chips mechanically with chisel and after that i remove visible wires from the chips with scalpel. That way all the tin from solder will not be there from the start (before pyrolysis and incineration).

But if you removed IC chips with heatgun and there is a lot of tin in the mix, i think it should be removed before pyrolysis, because some of the tin (when pyrolizing) will just cause more troubles later. In that case i would leave IC's in copper II chloride solution to remove tin and other base metals (from visible legs) before pyrolysis (like many do).

You used 0.4l of HCl. Was that concentrated HCl? I am using 20% HCl and i add about 1l for the start. I add couple of KNO3 spoons until reaction slows down. After reaction stops (like in your case) i remove the solution, test it (there should not be gold), and when i replace the fresh HCl with new addition of KNO3 the gold starts to dissolve. After all visible gold (from the bottom of beaker) dissolves, i remove gold chloride solution, and add again just a little more of HCl/KNO3 just to make sure all of gold is dissolved.

When i collect more IC chips i will repeat everything with lot of pictures and i will measure how moch of concentrate i used, how much much of KNO3 i added etc.

Alex


----------



## patnor1011

I managed somehow. It is bit different like when using proper stuff but I have run out. So I used concrete cleaner for HCl sadly that one was only 12% HCl took a while to evaporate more than half of it but when it got down it worked better. My nitric is all but gone so I used 200g of sodium nitrate I bought off ebay a few years ago as an emergency measure. Anyway got 22g of nice tan gold powder but after 2 days of toiling and swearing I will leave it as it is and clean only when I get proper stuff again. That was concentrate from BGA IC and easier to do than what wait for me next, I got about 50g of concentrate from mixed IC but I am tired of improvising :mrgreen: 
Now only to sort out about 2l of a solution with some colloidal gold in it and I am done for the day.


----------



## Tzoax

patnor1011 said:


> I managed somehow. It is bit different like when using proper stuff but I have run out. So I used concrete cleaner for HCl sadly that one was only 12% HCl took a while to evaporate more than half of it but when it got down it worked better. My nitric is all but gone so I used 200g of sodium nitrate I bought off ebay a few years ago as an emergency measure. Anyway got 22g of nice tan gold powder but after 2 days of toiling and swearing I will leave it as it is and clean only when I get proper stuff again. That was concentrate from BGA IC and easier to do than what wait for me next, I got about 50g of concentrate from mixed IC but I am tired of improvising :mrgreen:
> Now only to sort out about 2l of a solution with some colloidal gold in it and I am done for the day.



Are you sure it is colloidal gold? If you made a concentrate from BGA chips (black tops only) there shouldn't be tin in it (at least i don't know there is tin and i never had similar problem with BGA chips).


----------



## Tzoax

Hello to everybody. I am preparing 8.7 kilograms of IC chips from the picture for new testing with 2 decimal scales...soon they will be incinerated.


----------



## cosmetal

Alex.

Looking forward to seeing your results and pics.

James


----------



## kernels

Nice Alex, look forward to following your progress!


----------



## Tzoax

Thank you all... today i pyrolized all of the IC chips with propane burner.

Before i started i separated them by type into jars like in the picture, i weighted them and i took pictures.




I used big stainless steel pan (left) for pyrolizing and little stainless steel pan (right) for cooling IC chips. That way i was able to continue burning while pyrolized IC chips are cooling. At the end all of the types of pyrolized IC chips was brought back to a belonging jar.




I pyrolized IC chips until there was no more smoke. A few pictures while pyrolizing.








The next step is incineration. I will incinerate them separately on a electric hotplate.

Alex


----------



## patnor1011

I do not want to sound anal about it but what you did is incineration. Pyrolysis is something different.


----------



## Tzoax

patnor1011 said:


> I do not want to sound anal about it but what you did is incineration. Pyrolysis is something different.



Thank you for correction Pat... 

In this first phase of burning IC chips which i used (and i named it pyrolizing) all organic materials was burned with propane burner...until there is no more smoke...but yet chips are not burned that much to become soft and white.

In second phase i called incineration i am using electric hotplate - where after couple of hours chips became soft, white, easy to make powder of them prior to sieving.


----------



## FrugalRefiner

As Pat said, you're not pyrolyzing. In pyrolysis, the chips would be heated without oxygen present. The epoxies and plastics break down into gasses, and when properly done, those gasses are used as fuel to further heat the material. Pyrolysis is complete when all the complex chemicals have broken down and what remains is mostly carbon and metals.

The material is then heated with oxygen present. The carbon and oxygen react leaving mostly ash and metals.

Unfortunately, the term pyrolysis is often misused.

Dave


----------



## niks neims

Tzoax said:


> In second phase i called incineration i am using electric hotplate - where after couple of hours chips became soft, white, easy to make powder of them prior to sieving.


 Please tell me more about this method: how hot does your hotplate get approximately? I doubt it gets red hot (500-700 c°)... And chips still turn powdery white? Very interesting i will definately try it next time i get my hands on some IC...


----------



## Tzoax

FrugalRefiner said:


> As Pat said, you're not pyrolyzing. In pyrolysis, the chips would be heated without oxygen present. The epoxies and plastics break down into gasses, and when properly done, those gasses are used as fuel to further heat the material. Pyrolysis is complete when all the complex chemicals have broken down and what remains is mostly carbon and metals.
> 
> The material is then heated with oxygen present. The carbon and oxygen react leaving mostly ash and metals.
> 
> Unfortunately, the term pyrolysis is often misused.
> 
> Dave



Thank you Dave for much detailed explanation. As soon as Pat corrected me i found difference in terminology on wikipedia. It was my mistake. I gave explanation why and what i was thinking of. 
The confusion part for me was how to make difference in terminology between phase 1 and phase 2 where in phase 1 i used propane burner to burn all organic materials, and phase 2 where i will use electric hotplate to make "total incineration" until chips become all soft and white.

If in both cases the process is called incineration, how could i name it - incomplete/complete incineration?


----------



## Tzoax

niks neims said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> In second phase i called incineration i am using electric hotplate - where after couple of hours chips became soft, white, easy to make powder of them prior to sieving.
> 
> 
> 
> Please tell me more about this method: how hot does your hotplate get approximately? I doubt it gets red hot (500-700 c°)... And chips still turn powdery white? Very interesting i will definately try it next time i get my hands on some IC...
Click to expand...


I am using 2000W hotplate like in the picture, and you can see how IC chips look like. For me it is much better way for incinerating IC chips because they really become soft and easy to make powder. They become red hot like hotplate does. I used to put them directly on a hotplate and cover them with metal plate. After couple of hours i remove them, wait to cool, shake inside of jar, sieve, and return larger parts of chips again if they don't 
crack by shaking inside of jar.


----------



## UncleBenBen

Tzoaz, I think of your step 1 as a controlled combustion. I do it in much the same way, where I control the flame to the point that it burns up the nasties in the initial burn. So that there is very little, if any, smell of burning plastic. Then I continue to heat until the carbon is mostly gone to ash.

Not quite as efficient as a good pyrolysis set up, but it can be done with the minimal amount of time and materials.


----------



## Tzoax

UncleBenBen said:


> Tzoaz, I think of your step 1 as a controlled combustion. I do it in much the same way, where I control the flame to the point that it burns up the nasties in the initial burn. So that there is very little, if any, smell of burning plastic. Then I continue to heat until the carbon is mostly gone to ash.
> 
> Not quite as efficient as a good pyrolysis set up, but it can be done with the minimal amount of time and materials.



I never tried to make pyrolysis set up, i guess i just used to incinerate IC chips this way - with electric hotplate. One electric hotplate burner did the job for years...until small cracks appears on its surfice and burner became much weaker... like in this thread where i had doubt that maybe there is some of the gold bonding wires still there...i made test and there is no gold - http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=25300

And now i have new hotplate burner....and it is much better than one before... after just couple of minutes it becomes red hot...




And it works much faster....after 15-20 minutes i remove them, after they cooled i shake them inside of the jar, sieve them and repeat the process until it is done...usually 3 times until all of the residues are wires and silicon dies.




When i put the IC chips on a hotplate i cover them with metal plate (made from CD/DVD optical drive plate).




This way i can process 1kg of IC chips for about 3-4 hours.


----------



## richard2013

Tzoax,

In the first phase how did you manage not to breathe the toxic smell and fumes from the burning plastics?


----------



## g_axelsson

Incinerating or pyrolysis, what's the difference? Not so hard actually.

Pyrolysis : Heating organic materials without oxygen until they break down and only leaves coal. An example is making charcoal from wood. The smoke from pyrolysis is often flammable and contains light molecules as well as carbon monoxide and water.

Incineration : Burning with oxygen. This will turn carbon into carbon dioxide. Burning charcoal is a form of incineration. Properly done all carbon is removed and we are left with the ashes.

If you put a pan on the hotplate and put a lid on then it is pyrolysis, but when you take the lid off and turn those IC:s into ash it is incineration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

richard2013 said:


> Tzoax,
> 
> In the first phase how did you manage not to breathe the toxic smell and fumes from the burning plastics?



By controlling the flame - like on this picture:



https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=36991&mode=view



I cover the bottom of pan with IC chips, then i add a lot of heat with this big propane burner by adding high gas pressure - ... and there is no or very little smoke.... but if i remove the burner it will start to smoke immediately. So i just continue burning with high gas pressure until IC chips are carbonized. I think this is happening because of lack of oxygen...and this is exactly why i named it pyrolization... there was no cover on the pan, but the flame is so strong that IC chips are not fuming.

Maybe a controlled combustion is the right term like UncleBenBen said:



UncleBenBen said:


> Tzoaz, I think of your step 1 as a controlled combustion. I do it in much the same way, where I control the flame to the point that it burns up the nasties in the initial burn. So that there is very little, if any, smell of burning plastic. Then I continue to heat until the carbon is mostly gone to ash.



Now...i am sieving the ash. After 3 times incinerating on a hotplate and sieving this is what was left:




There are very few of white ash chunks....then i manually remove them-process them again. After that i remove the iron wires with a magnet, and this is result - a fine powder that is ready for making concentrate:




And finally i separate silicon dies from wires/heatsinks.


----------



## UncleBenBen

richard2013 said:


> In the first phase how did you manage not to breathe the toxic smell and fumes from the burning plastics?



Like Tzoax my main concern was eliminating the toxic smoke in the initial burn. It took a little practice to get it right, but I had good success with this little setup I had posted about here...

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=24866&p=262884&hilit=Red+bricks#p262884


----------



## theitalianhenchman

Tzoax said:


> I finished testing. First beaker - 0.01g of gold, second beaker (with dissolved silver) - no gold.
> 1232.jpg
> 
> My conclusion is that solder balls should be processed with HCl simmer boiling/incineration (like i did at first test) and there is no point melting it, it will just reduce gold content (some of the gold will be left in residues) and based on poor results of this second test - 0.01g it is obvious that something is wrong. I think it really needs incineration for better results.
> 
> I am still saving solder balls and now i know how i will process them in the future.





I know that is a little late, but I think you don't get any gold because that kind of chips do not contain gold at all, so you made no mistake it is just that the gold is not present, there is just a little flash on a corner but that's it.

I see you are preparing new batch of chips; will you do even one with only BGA chips from ram? It will be interesting to see how they yield.

Keep up the good work, and compliment for this very helpfull thread!


----------



## kernels

theitalianhenchman said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> I finished testing. First beaker - 0.01g of gold, second beaker (with dissolved silver) - no gold.
> 1232.jpg
> 
> My conclusion is that solder balls should be processed with HCl simmer boiling/incineration (like i did at first test) and there is no point melting it, it will just reduce gold content (some of the gold will be left in residues) and based on poor results of this second test - 0.01g it is obvious that something is wrong. I think it really needs incineration for better results.
> 
> I am still saving solder balls and now i know how i will process them in the future.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I know that is a little late, but I think you don't get any gold because that kind of chips do not contain gold at all, so you made no mistake it is just that the gold is not present, there is just a little flash on a corner but that's it.
> 
> I see you are preparing new batch of chips; will you do even one with only BGA chips from ram? It will be interesting to see how they yield.
> 
> Keep up the good work, and compliment for this very helpfull thread!
Click to expand...


I'm fairly sure he did do BGA chips from ram early on, on page 1.

The circuit boards are generally flash Gold plated before the BGA chips are reflowed on, the very thin Gold plating dissolves into the solder during the reflow process, that is what he was trying to recover by dissolving away the Tin.


----------



## theitalianhenchman

kernels said:


> I'm fairly sure he did do BGA chips from ram early on, on page 1.
> 
> The circuit boards are generally flash Gold plated before the BGA chips are reflowed on, the very thin Gold plating dissolves into the solder during the reflow process, that is what he was trying to recover by dissolving away the Tin.




That bga where from different sources, not only ram, as he writed some comments after, I'm curious because some people says that from ram bga it's up to 5grams per kg, while other say it is barely 1g/kg. Now I understand that it varies from manufacter, age, and so on, but a so big difference seems too much.

Thanks for the explanation; I didn't know that the board were gold flashed and I thought that the only gold from the solder comes from the bonding wire beeing soldered to the board.


----------



## kernels

theitalianhenchman said:


> kernels said:
> 
> 
> 
> I'm fairly sure he did do BGA chips from ram early on, on page 1.
> 
> The circuit boards are generally flash Gold plated before the BGA chips are reflowed on, the very thin Gold plating dissolves into the solder during the reflow process, that is what he was trying to recover by dissolving away the Tin.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That bga where from different sources, not only ram, as he writed some comments after, I'm curious because some people says that from ram bga it's up to 5grams per kg, while other say it is barely 1g/kg. Now I understand that it varies from manufacter, age, and so on, but a so big difference seems too much.
> 
> Thanks for the explanation; I didn't know that the board were gold flashed and I thought that the only gold from the solder comes from the bonding wire beeing soldered to the board.
Click to expand...


No worries, bonding wires are never soldered to boards as far as I know, I believe they use a ultrasonic welding process to attach bonding wires to the die and then to the pads / legs inside an IC. 

I have processed a lot of BGA from RAM over the last year or so, it has dramatic variation, normally I expect over 2g/kg, best I've got is over 6g/kg. The biggest variation that I get with any e-waste.


----------



## Tzoax

I had a very little free time last couple of weeks...but i am back now, and currently i am separating gold bonding wires from the concentrate - the remaining concentrate is incenerated/grinded/washed again until all of the (the most of) carbon is gone. So in next week first yields results will be there. On this pictures you are seeing 4.5g of gold bonding wires collected (so far) out of concentrate from 536.6g of BGA chips.


----------



## Tzoax

First test - *Big* BGA IC chips - from graphic cards and motherboards (south/north bridges).
All of the fiber (green) bases was previously removed with heat gun.




I just prepared materials for testing on the way described in the next picture. The reason i separated everything is that i will process iron first, then (when dissolved) i will pour aqua regia (from iron beaker) to another beaker with silicon dies, when done - from that beaker to another with concentrate, and finally i will dissolve gold bonding wires in the last beaker. Maybe all of this sounds crazy but...i wonder will this affect on yields... since (doing this way) i think i reduced chance for something go wrong to minimum. Maybe those small things i changed will affect on yields, maybe not, but i think it is worth to try.


----------



## cosmetal

Tzoax,

I am still learning. So, please be patient with my questions regarding this portion of your excellent thread.  

How did you remove the carbon from the concentrates? You said it was “incenerated/grinded/washed again “. Was all of the carbon removed as you were separating the gold bond wires with your gold pan?

When you wash the cons (concentrates), are you using a dilute HCL wash, DH20, or plain H20 from the tap?

Regarding your process, If I understand correctly, you will:

Within the first beaker, you dissolve your iron in AR. Once done, you will transfer this solution to your second beaker which is holding the silicon dies. Are you planning on filtering this solution before transfer to the second beaker?

The second beaker holds your silicon dies. If necessary, will you add more AR or do you plan on trying to use only the original AR+Iron solution to dissolve the silicon dies? Once this second iron+dies solution is created, you will transfer this to a third beaker. Are you planning on filtering this solution before transfer to the third beaker?

The third beaker is holding your cons (concentrates). Again, if needed, more AR is added to create the third solution. Are you planning on filtering this solution before transfer to the fourth, and final, beaker?

The fourth beaker holds your gold bond wires. If necessary, with the addition of more AR, a fourth solution is made. This solution is filtered and the gold is dropped.

I am very interested in your results.

By accident, I created a situation where I had to battle through a batch of incinerated IC powder that contained a mixture of carbon powder, iron, copper, silicon dies, cons and bonding wires. All created due to my impatience. I started with 600 gms of RAM ICs (DIP and BGA type) and, so far, have only been able to retrieve 0.50 gm of gold powder.

James


----------



## Tzoax

James,



cosmetal said:


> How did you remove the carbon from the concentrates? You said it was “incenerated/grinded/washed again “. Was all of the carbon removed as you were separating the gold bond wires with your gold pan?



I repeated inceneration/grinding/washing 5 or 6 times...just to make sure there is no more carbon there - i know because the last time i repeated process the washing water shows not any color - it have to be black/gray color of water if carbon is present. Another check was with microscope - there is no carbon ash visible - only this material on the picture.






cosmetal said:


> When you wash the cons (concentrates), are you using a dilute HCL wash, DH20, or plain H20 from the tap?


 
For washing/making/reducing concentrate am using warm tap water, spoon, spray bottle (for water) and detergent.
I add one spoon of concentrate (at a time), fill the beaker with water mix it with spoon, add little detergent, mix again, wash spoon (possible gold bonding wires sticked) with spray bottle, and i spray a little more water on top layer of liquid from beaker to "drop down" possible gold bonding wires that might floating there. I repeat this 5-6 times until water is clear, then i remove this concentrate to another beaker, add another spoon and so on.



cosmetal said:


> Regarding your process, If I understand correctly, you will:
> 
> Within the first beaker, you dissolve your iron in AR. Once done, you will transfer this solution to your second beaker which is holding the silicon dies. Are you planning on filtering this solution before transfer to the second beaker?
> The second beaker holds your silicon dies. If necessary, will you add more AR or do you plan on trying to use only the original AR+Iron solution to dissolve the silicon dies? Once this second iron+dies solution is created, you will transfer this to a third beaker. Are you planning on filtering this solution before transfer to the third beaker?
> 
> The third beaker is holding your cons (concentrates). Again, if needed, more AR is added to create the third solution. Are you planning on filtering this solution before transfer to the fourth, and final, beaker?
> 
> The fourth beaker holds your gold bond wires. If necessary, with the addition of more AR, a fourth solution is made. This solution is filtered and the gold is dropped.


Yes, you understood it correctly.
First I will decant AR from one beaker to another, then just in case i will make just a little more of AR just to make sure all the gold is dissolved. After that i will wash beaker with HCl and then water and again add all of that to the next beaker. This is very little of material, so there will be very little of chemicals. There is no need to filter it at all stages, i will filter final AR from the last beaker.



cosmetal said:


> By accident, I created a situation where I had to battle through a batch of incinerated IC powder that contained a mixture of carbon powder, iron, copper, silicon dies, cons and bonding wires. All created due to my impatience. I started with 600 gms of RAM ICs (DIP and BGA type) and, so far, have only been able to retrieve 0.50 gm of gold powder.



I would incinerate the all of it again, sieve it, remove iron legs with magnet, wash, and then repeat everything so there in minimum carbon left, then AR.

Thanks for posting, if you have troubles with it you can post pictures here.
I hope i explained this well, if you have any other question please ask.

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

While i was incinerating silicon dies i noticed that braze from most of silicon dies changed color to brownish-yellow:




I have seen this many times while incinerating, but i thought that this color will remain....but as soon i remove silicon dies from hotplate it changes color back again instantly - to gray. 




Does anyone know what type of braze behaves like that and why?


----------



## Tzoax

I processed everything like i described. 
At the second stage (silicon dies) - the brazes peels off (in form of foils) like in the picture. And it took a while - it seems like reaction is not progressing.




At the end - i neutralized the AR solution with urea, waited to cool and filtered it. But some of the silver chloride went through filter paper and now i am waiting that silver chloride settles down in the form of white sediment so i could decant AR solution and continue.
I am sure that source of this silver is from the braze of silicon dies.




So today i will have results.


----------



## Tzoax

Here is the result of gold yields from processing 536.6g of Big BGA IC Chips.

Dropping gold with SMB...




Interesting thing happened (to me - for the first time) - while i was washing the gold powder (3xWater/3xHCl/3xWater) i noticed that as soon i added HCl to the gold powder - the solution becomes pale purple colored. After several washings the solution became colorless. But....i can not explain why it happened this time. It looked very much like colloidal gold - when tin reducing gold to purple color - but there was no tin at all. I think it is related with silver...




Washed and dried gold powder.






And finally result:




So from 536.6g of BGA IC's i recovered 5.68g of gold. 
It is about 10.58g of gold per 1kg of this kind of IC chips.
I expected a little bit more...but i think that 10+g of gold per kg of material is a good result either.


----------



## mls26cwru

That is very close to my averages for the chip tops as well. You're going to have a nice little button there!


----------



## cosmetal

Tzoax,

Very well executed plan. Thank you for your detailed explanations and multiple pictures.  

You wrote:

*"i wonder will this affect on yields... since (doing this way) i think i reduced chance for something go wrong to minimum. Maybe those small things i changed will affect on yields, maybe not, but i think it is worth to try."*

It appears that it didn't increase your yields as we both had hoped. I wanted to see if the silicon dies would up the gold. I wonder if this method (plan) had an effect on increasing other PM content?

James


----------



## Tzoax

mls26cwru said:


> That is very close to my averages for the chip tops as well. You're going to have a nice little button there!



Thanks, when i finish all of the chips i prepared for testing i hope a nice little gold bar will see the light of the day.. :G :mrgreen: 



cosmetal said:


> It appears that it didn't increase your yields as we both had hoped. I wanted to see if the silicon dies would up the gold. I wonder if this method (plan) had an effect on increasing other PM content?



I did made test of just silicon dies, it is on this same thread, this is a link - http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22951&start=90#p261522

I processed only 18.2g od silicon dies at that time, and there was gold, but there was so small amount that my old 0.1 scales could not detect the weight. This time (on this last test with BGA chips) i was thinking maybe silicon dies with braze was made with a more gold than braze from other types of IC chips...but it seems they are the same. 

So, from now on - when i test the IC chips i will avoid processing them with silicon dies, it will not affect (considerably) to yield results, it only gives a trouble because of the silver - first problem is a time to (partially) dissolve braze from silicon dies - it is very slow, then - not all silver will dissolve because AR could dissolve only "some" of the silver, then the color of dissolved silver in AR is also yellow - like gold chloride - so many times i thought it was gold dissolved.....but at the end - all of that silver chloride is the biggest "problem" - in other words - it saves a LOT of time when processing IC chips without silicon dies. Eventually - when i collect some more considerable amount of silicon dies i will test them again.

Alex


----------



## mls26cwru

I have over 2 lbs of silicon chip dies that I hope to process sometime soon. I will post the numbers if I ever make it to that point... I was playing around with the idea of smelting them, but not sure how well it will work since the brazing nubs are so small. I am assuming I could crush them and add borax, litharge, and some flourospar and it should be like a straight forward fire assay fusion. I'm still reading up on it though, so anyone more experienced with smelting, any advice would be appreciated.


----------



## cosmetal

Alex,

I must admit that this last week is the first time I had available to really "dig" into your thread in detail.

Again, thank you so much for your methodical and detailed work and explanations!

Please keep up the great work which is so valuable to us newbies :!:  :!: 

James


----------



## rickzeien

cosmetal said:


> Tzoax,
> 
> Very well executed plan. Thank you for your detailed explanations and multiple pictures.
> 
> You wrote:
> 
> *"i wonder will this affect on yields... since (doing this way) i think i reduced chance for something go wrong to minimum. Maybe those small things i changed will affect on yields, maybe not, but i think it is worth to try."*
> 
> It appears that it didn't increase your yields as we both had hoped. I wanted to see if the silicon dies would up the gold. I wonder if this method (plan) had an effect on increasing other PM content?
> 
> James


Is it possible that even though the yield did not go up the purity did?

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk


----------



## modtheworld44

Tzoax

Just out of curiosity,what do you do with all the extra ash waste when you remove it from your gold concentrates?Thanks in advance.



modtheworld44


----------



## Tzoax

cosmetal said:


> Alex,
> I must admit that this last week is the first time I had available to really "dig" into your thread in detail.
> Again, thank you so much for your methodical and detailed work and explanations!
> Please keep up the great work which is so valuable to us newbies :!:  :!:
> 
> James



Thank you James, it is my pleasure to share results and experience about processing IC chips. It is a large field, with many possible ways of processing it, there are many types of IC chips, and exchanging results and experiences about processing it surely helps a lot to anyone interested in this subject. 



rickzeien said:


> Is it possible that even though the yield did not go up the purity did?



The only difference that i made this time (processing IC chips this way) was that i decanted AR from concentrate and silicon dies before dissolving gold bonding wires (i was hoping it will affect the yield but it didn't). The purity is always on a high level at the end (after washing), so i doubt that it makes difference. Last time i checked the purity was 997. 



modtheworld44 said:


> Tzoax
> Just out of curiosity,what do you do with all the extra ash waste when you remove it from your gold concentrates?Thanks in advance.
> modtheworld44



Thank you for question - it is very interesting subject. Now - i save everything (just in case). I always had feeling that when making concentrate (washing ashes with water) - when decanting water (with ashes) some on the gold bonding wires could be lost.
At first i didn't pay attention to it - i had no experience - a "feeling" how and when it should be decanted. So i start to collect all of the decanted ashes into a big container, and when ashes settled - i inspect the ashes with microscope (after concentrating heavier particles at the bottom by panning) and at first there was some of the gold bonding wires.
But after some time (when i start using detergent and water spray, also improving other details) there was no more gold bonding wires "escaping" from mixture while decanting.
Finally - at this last time - i tested the speed of pure gold bonding wires (from the picture above - gold bonding wires in the spoon ) falling through the water - just to observe how fast they will sink and will some of them stay floating on the surface... also i observed how they reacts on stirring water with spoon.... 
And they are falling pretty fast...couple of seconds maximum. 

So - here is my little "tricks" how to avoid a loss of gold bonding wires while decanting:

-i am using hot water when mixing. Maybe it have no sense but i have feeling that ashes mixes much better and faster in hot than in cold water.

-i am always mixing one (maximum one and half) soup spoon of ashes at a time. This way i can much better "control" concentrate.

-i am using 350ml beaker

-after stirring ashes with spoon (pretty well) i add a little of detergent and stir again. When i remove the spoon i spray it with water (using spray bottle), and i also spray a surface of water.

-i tap a beaker with fingers couple times (on a side) to drop down some of the possible gold bonding wires sticked on the walls of the beaker

-i give it about 10 seconds, then i slowly decant water with ashes to a container - no more than 1/3 of volume (for the first time)

-then i refill the beaker with water, repeat everything from above, and this time i decant about half of the volume. Each time i decant more and more of water

-after 5-6 times of decanting - water becomes clear so i remove the remaining concentrate to another beaker and repeat everything


----------



## Tzoax

I found that there is very little data about *SMD transistors* here on the forum. For instance - about *SOT-23 package*. They are everywhere on all types of PCB's -especially on laptop's motherboards and graphic cards. I recently start to collect them and i am planning to test them.




I found documents about metal content inside of them - and according to this - one transistor *SOT-23 package* have 0.00008275488g of gold. Weight of one transistor is 0.00872g. That means that *1kg* of this type of transistors will have *9.49g of gold*.

You can do math yourself. Remember to totalize gold from gold bonding wires and gold from dice.




Then, there is *SOT-323 package - 9.47g of gold per kilogram.*




*SOT-89 package - 3.68g of gold per kilogram.*




And this is type of transistors that contains *no gold*.





I think SOT-23 package transistors is a pretty interesting material to test considering they are often used on PCBs.


----------



## kernels

I would love to see the result of these Tzoax, unlikely to bother collecting them, but that seems like a surprisingly high yield.


----------



## FrugalRefiner

That's an interesting find!

But if I did the math right, it'll take over 100,000 to make a kilo.  

Still, it's one more source of gold.  

Dave


----------



## niks neims

Tzoax said:


> i am planning to test them.




Great! I have wondered about them myself! Can`t wait to see your results!

Too bad they are so tiny, TO-220 is much larger!

Any idea about TO-263 package https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TO-263
or
MOSFET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET,

They seem to be common on MB as well... Sadly I suspect they also do not have any Au :/

-Artūrs


----------



## patnor1011

I have always collected them and processed with regular IC. I think I mentioned that few times in the past.


----------



## Tzoax

niks neims said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> i am planning to test them.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Any idea about TO-263 package https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TO-263
> or
> MOSFET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET,
> 
> They seem to be common on MB as well... Sadly I suspect they also do not have any Au :/
> 
> -Artūrs
Click to expand...


I checked several sources for TO-263 (D2PAK) package and unfortunately nowhere is mentioned gold bonding wires - they use aluminum bonding wires for that package.




Also, i collected some of the transistors mainly from motherboards. When i checked couple of them (by model) i found that they are DPAK package - which also does not contain gold bonding wires. There are also D2PAK packages.




But - anyway will process these transistors from the picture just to be sure.

Alex


----------



## g_axelsson

As there are so many different components from countless manufacturers and over decades, there is always the odd exception in electronic components. But in general, high power applications uses thicker aluminium bond wires to handle the larger currents. I wouldn't be surprised to see both gold, silver and palladium in trace amounts even in the power transistors batch.

Göran


----------



## niks neims

writing on a hunch here, correct me guys, if you think I am wrong:

If transistor in question have some kind of heat-managment (bolted to the heatsink like TO-220 or soldered to the main PCB like TO-263 for some form of heat management) there is likely no gold bond wires - aluminium is used instead and the heat management is used to counter the much higher than gold electric resistance of aluminum (and thus much higher heat expenditure)?

-Artūrs


----------



## geedigity

> Postby niks neims » February 16th, 2018, 4:26 pm
> writing on a hunch here, correct me guys, if you think I am wrong:
> 
> If transistor in question have some kind of heat-managment (bolted to the heatsink like TO-220 or soldered to the main PCB like TO-263 for some form of heat management) there is likely no gold bond wires - aluminium is used instead and the heat management is used to counter the much higher than gold electric resistance of aluminum (and thus much higher heat expenditure)?



I have processed large transistors consisting of TO3, TO66, and other odd ball packages with metal caps and heat sinks. More than a few different types had gold bonding wires, and these were high current transistors.


----------



## g_axelsson

The heat is mostly generated in the die, a transistor could be viewed as a variable resistor. If the bond wires adds too much to the energy dissipation it's easy to either increase the diameter or add more wires in parallel.
The resistance of the bond wires are usually in the milli-ohm range.

The resistivity of gold is 2.4 x 10-8 Ohm metres while aluminium have 2.8 x 10-8 Ohm metres, just 15% higher resistance.

Göran


----------



## niks neims

huh, 

OK, I learned something today 

Still those transistors are fastened so tight to the motherboards, that removing them, even the golden ones, is usually not an option for my cherry-picking operation. I think, I`ll stick with BGA & larger IC, let the end refiner of boards get transistors together with MLCC & pins 

-Artūrs


----------



## Tzoax

kernels said:


> I would love to see the result of these Tzoax, unlikely to bother collecting them, but that seems like a surprisingly high yield.



Hein, i just found several documents about even better yields - 193.2g of gold per kilogam for this type of component. I thought that it was mistake, so i found several documents that confirms that, and even on a manufacturer's page it can be checked. Bad news is that they stopped using gold bonding wires that were replaced with copper bonding wires at 2010.



FrugalRefiner said:


> That's an interesting find!
> 
> But if I did the math right, it'll take over 100,000 to make a kilo.
> 
> Still, it's one more source of gold.
> 
> Dave



Dave, does *193.2g of gold per kg* of a certain component type sounds better?  


This is so far highest yield about any component i know about. And the strange thing is that it was not mentioned here on GRF - not even once. Any guesses?


----------



## shmandi

Tzoax said:


> Dave, does *193.2g of gold per kg* of a certain component type sounds better?


It is hard for me to belive. I crushed several of transistors like that and tried to measure bonding wire. I think my (very) rough calculation was around 5-6 micro grams per wire. So it would take 100.000 transistors for just 1 gram of gold. Also visually it looks 1 copper leg tenths of times bigger than gold bonding wire.
For some comparison you can print photo of transistor you posted any draw thin line with sharp pencil from one leg to middle and another leg to middle. I don't think that you will be able to imagine 20% gold in those 2 lines.
But I am aware that there are many different types, so maybe some have more gold. But 20%?
Small SMD LEDs you can find in cellular phones look like much better yielding than SMD transistors. Somewhere I read yield could be around 5%.
Similar types than on link: https://www.dhgate.com/store/product/4000pcs-lot-0805-smd-super-bright-led-white/98788152.html


----------



## g_axelsson

I would say... because they are just tiny and most would not contain that much gold. That's 20% by weight in bond wires and doesn't sound plausible.

Every transistor contains 2 or maximum 3 bond wires, one per connection. I rather spend my time on picking one BGA or flat pack with hundreds to thousands of connections, each one connected with a bond wire.

A similar proportion goes for connectors... the smallest connectors with the most pins contains the highest amount of gold per weight. As pins gets smaller the thickness of the plating has to stay the same to work, therefore the relative amount of gold goes up. But in grams the smaller connectors contain less gold as the surface area is smaller.

By the way, do you have a link to the document describing 20% gold by weight?

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

shmandi said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> Dave, does *193.2g of gold per kg* of a certain component type sounds better?
> 
> 
> 
> It is hard for me to belive. I crushed several of transistors like that and tried to measure bonding wire. I think my (very) rough calculation was around 5-6 micro grams per wire. So it would take 100.000 transistors for just 1 gram of gold. Also visually it looks 1 copper leg tenths of times bigger than gold bonding wire.
> For some comparison you can print photo of transistor you posted any draw thin line with sharp pencil from one leg to middle and another leg to middle. I don't think that you will be able to imagine 20% gold in those 2 lines.
> But I am aware that there are many different types, so maybe some have more gold. But 20%?
> Small SMD LEDs you can find in cellular phones look like much better yielding than SMD transistors. Somewhere I read yield could be around 5%.
> Similar types than on link: https://www.dhgate.com/store/product/4000pcs-lot-0805-smd-super-bright-led-white/98788152.html
Click to expand...


I know - it was hard to believe for me either - now i am preparing pictures, documents with http links and you will see that this component have almost 20% of gold by weight. Sad thing is that i never collected them, i always thought that there is no value so it all ended soldered on the boards when i sold them to scrapyard (before i scrap IC chips, fingers, pins and mlcc's.). You will believe when you see official data about this on manufacturer's website... i need some time to prepare the links and pictures.

It is also possible that some/many of people know about this and keep this as "secret", i don't know...the name of this component is not ever mentioned here. It is a small component - but few pieces will payoff for example a whole PCI card.

Alex


----------



## kernels

I'm guessing that those parts will be very small package SMD LEDs ?


----------



## g_axelsson

Sorry, I thought you talked about SMD transistors still. My bad.

Eagerly waiting for the post and the links. 

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

g_axelsson said:


> I would say... because they are just tiny and most would not contain that much gold. By the way, do you have a link to the document describing 20% gold by weight?
> 
> Göran



Göran, while i am preparing pictures and links please do the math yourself in case i am wrong, here is the picture:






kernels said:


> I'm guessing that those parts will be very small package SMD LEDs ?



No, it isn't. But it is a very small package.


----------



## kernels

Wow, in that case I'm looking forward to hearing the answer, 

One more guess . . . 

Very small TVS (transient voltage suppression diodes), they come in small packages and have to handle very large current spikes.


----------



## Tzoax

kernels said:


> Wow, in that case I'm looking forward to hearing the answer,
> 
> One more guess . . .
> 
> Very small TVS (transient voltage suppression diodes), they come in small packages and have to handle very large current spikes.



Nope, it's not. I remember well that some of the telecom boards i had contained hundreds of them by board - unfortunately i gave those too to a scrapyard. Maybe i have some more of these boards at home, i will try to find them tomorrow. And of course i will start collecting these for testing.


----------



## g_axelsson

The math checks out... but man, 13 mg components, don't sneeze, you will blow away a fortune. 

75 components per gram, 75.000 to get a kilo, but what a kilo to refine. They spent 10 cents per component in just gold, no wonder they developed a cheaper process.

The question then becomes... how common are the high gold models? 

Göran


----------



## g_axelsson

Looking closer at those numbers, there's something iffy with that data sheet. What is the chance that the bond wires of gold weighs the same as the copper ones? Down to 0.4% precision. I would like to see hard data, in other words what comes out of the beaker in the end. I suspect someone faked (or copied) some numbers in the rush to finish a document needed before going to market.

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

g_axelsson said:


> The question then becomes... how common are the high gold models?
> 
> Göran



It is used in cellphones, PDA's, computers, printers, digital cameras, disk drives and so on... -of course according to them. I am preparing link for those infos either, don't worry.... just don't sneeze anymore, ok?  

And data is real, i watched 3 different documents (made different year) about this data and numbers are same. That was the first thing i thought - it was a mistake. But it isn't. Soon you will see.


----------



## Tzoax

The name of this package is CHIPFET. It was never mentioned here on the forum before - when i tried to search it by this name.

It was and still is manufacturing by ON Semiconductor. Here on this link you can see obsolete package (that contained gold bonding wires) and a newer package with copper bonding wires.

http://www.onsemi.com/PowerSolutions/MaterialComposition.do?searchParts=NTHC5513




The transition from gold bonding wires to copper bonding wires happened at 2010. Also on the bottom of this PDF document you can see several affected models:

NSS35200CF8T1G
NSS12601CF8T1G
NSS20601CF8T1G
NSS40601CF8T1G
NSS40600CF8T1G 

Link for this PDF this:

https://www.onsemi.com/pub/docs/pcn/FPCN16501.pdf




This is a link for the first model - NSS35200CF8T1G
Here you can see more details about where it is used, schemes, diagrams and so on.

https://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/NSS35200CF8T1G-D.PDF




On this link you can see today's price of chipfets (with copper wires).It is about 0.5 euros for 1 piece.


https://eu.mouser.com/Semiconductors/Discrete-Semiconductors/Transistors/MOSFET/_/N-ax1sf?P=1z0xullZ1z0z7ptZ1yzxao2Z1yrzaht&pop=3r74r




Here you can see that Package/Case is ChipFET-8

https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ON-Semiconductor/NTHC5513T1/?qs=ZXBb0xZ9WeBEPMIgTlVWZw==

On the first link where is data about yields - you will see obsolete model that contained gold - NTHC5513T1
This is a link about the same model:

https://www.mouser.com/ds/2/308/nthc5513-d-1194434.pdf

So, when you see something like this, save it, if it is made before 2010 there is a chance it contains 193g of gold per kilogram. 





Alex


----------



## shmandi

I don't have exactly the same package transistor. The one on photo is 6 pin, 2mmx1mm package. 
Not really focused, but you can see bond wire in middle of photo. Just for size comparison with other parts.


----------



## shmandi

This one is the same size package but 5 pin. Bond wires are whole lenght.
I am not saying that certain ChipFets don't contain that much gold, I just wont belive it until I see it. Maybe there is mistake in document and bond wire weight should be in µg instead mg.


----------



## shmandi

This is photo of LED I mentioned in one of previous posts. Size is 1mmx1.5mm, so weight is probably around 1mg.


----------



## Tzoax

shmandi said:


> This one is the same size package but 5 pin. Bond wires are whole lenght.
> I am not saying that certain ChipFets don't contain that much gold, I just wont belive it until I see it. Maybe there is mistake in document and bond wire weight should be in µg instead mg.



Great pictures. I thought that it was mistake too...but i found several documents about chipfets from different years and the numbers are same. This is from 2003.




I compared those results by several years and numbers are still the same, i think it is not mistake... if it is - the mistake is present 15+ years.

Another thing is - when i compare my results from specific type of components i processed with those data - it is always close to those data (80-90%). 

I think i located couple of them on this picture - it is a cellphone board.


----------



## cosmetal

All,

It appears that similar results have been reported before on GRF back on Aug 14, 2014 within an OP by ahmadbayoumi http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=21061

Specifically, within solar_plasma's Aug 19, 2014 response, solar_plasma refers to a document entitled "Testing black chips and SMD Packages on their Raw Gold Content", by Roy Eugster, Switzerland, April 2013. A copy is attached and can be found online at https://www.scribd.com/document/248694489/Testing-Black-Chips-and-SMD-Packages-on-Their-Raw-Gold-Content Eugster shows a yield of 229 gms/kg on his tested SOIC and SOP packages. :shock:

I couldn't find any information on Roy Eugster. Has anyone heard of him before? If solar_plasma is still active on GRF, perhaps he could add some more information.

James


----------



## Tzoax

cosmetal said:


> All,
> 
> It appears that similar results have been reported before on GRF back on Aug 14, 2014 within an OP by ahmadbayoumi http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=21061
> 
> Specifically, within solar_plasma's Aug 19, 2014 response, solar_plasma refers to a document entitled "Testing black chips and SMD Packages on their Raw Gold Content", by Roy Eugster, Switzerland, April 2013. A copy is attached and can be found online at https://www.scribd.com/document/248694489/Testing-Black-Chips-and-SMD-Packages-on-Their-Raw-Gold-Content Eugster shows a yield of 229 gms/kg on his tested SOIC and SOP packages. :shock:
> 
> I couldn't find any information on Roy Eugster. Has anyone heard of him before? If solar_plasma is still active on GRF, perhaps he could add some more information.
> 
> James



James, it is actually 2.29g of gold not 229g because 0.229% of 1000g is:
0.229/100=x/1000
x=0.229*1000/100=*2.29*

And between those packages there is not *chipfet package* i mentioned.


----------



## shmandi

I found few that look similar. I will look at them tomorrow under microscope.


----------



## cosmetal

Tzoax said:


> cosmetal said:
> 
> 
> 
> All,
> 
> It appears that similar results have been reported before on GRF back on Aug 14, 2014 within an OP by ahmadbayoumi http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=21061
> 
> Specifically, within solar_plasma's Aug 19, 2014 response, solar_plasma refers to a document entitled "Testing black chips and SMD Packages on their Raw Gold Content", by Roy Eugster, Switzerland, April 2013. A copy is attached and can be found online at https://www.scribd.com/document/248694489/Testing-Black-Chips-and-SMD-Packages-on-Their-Raw-Gold-Content Eugster shows a yield of 229 gms/kg on his tested SOIC and SOP packages. :shock:
> 
> I couldn't find any information on Roy Eugster. Has anyone heard of him before? If solar_plasma is still active on GRF, perhaps he could add some more information.
> 
> James
> 
> 
> 
> 
> James, it is actually 2.29g of gold not 229g because 0.229% of 1000g is:
> 0.229/100=x/1000
> x=0.229*1000/100=*2.29*
> 
> And between those packages there is not *chipfet package* i mentioned.
Click to expand...


Boy, that's embarrassing!  I was always better with geometry.

Any info on when (historically) the ChipFETS entered the scene? The oldest doc I found was from EE Times dated 07/18/2007 (attached)

James


----------



## Tzoax

shmandi said:


> I found few that look similar. I will look at them tomorrow under microscope.


That's great, i can't wait to see pictures. Here is how internal components and bonding wires should look like:

https://www.vishay.com/docs/71127/71127.pdf






cosmetal said:


> Any info on when (historically) the ChipFETS entered the scene? The oldest doc I found was from EE Times dated 07/18/2007 (attached)



The above PDF is from 2003. I will try to find some earlier documents.


----------



## kernels

Those pictures are not internal components / bonding wires, they are the pad layout on the PCB (top / bottom layer) where you solder the component.


----------



## cosmetal

All,

This is (to me) an absolutely fascinating section of Tzoax’s original post. Thank you, Tzoax, for continuing your work.

Of course, I have many, many questions. And I tried to find those answers on my own. But, again, I need experienced help in that quest.

So, here goes:

•I knew about MOSFETs and MISFETs (did you know that a MOSFET is also a MISFET but a MISFET is not a MOSFET? :shock: ). But I did not know about ChipFETs. In my search for their history, I also discovered that there are BioFETs and FlowFETs and, I am sure, there could be more.

•Has anyone researched these other FETs?

Peace,
James

(I will never post a simple arithmetic calculation again when I have the flu! :roll: )


----------



## shmandi

Here are some candidates that I found. According to marking code I don't think any of them is exactly the same as in your datasheets. First 4 are 8 pin, last is 6 pin. All are cca. 3x2x1.2mm


----------



## shmandi

Here are in the same order as on previous photo.
No. 2 has thinner and les bond wires.
No. 1 and 3 could have good yield to weight ratio as they have shorter (copper) leggs.
On last 3 photos there is (my) hair for thickness comparison.


----------



## Tzoax

kernels said:


> Those pictures are not internal components / bonding wires, they are the pad layout on the PCB (top / bottom layer) where you solder the component.


 Hein, thanks you for explanation, i was thinking that those 4 wires in the middle represents gold bonding wires from inside of package.



cosmetal said:


> All,
> 
> This is (to me) an absolutely fascinating section of Tzoax’s original post. Thank you, Tzoax, for continuing your work.
> 
> Of course, I have many, many questions. And I tried to find those answers on my own. But, again, I need experienced help in that quest.
> 
> So, here goes:
> 
> •I knew about MOSFETs and MISFETs (did you know that a MOSFET is also a MISFET but a MISFET is not a MOSFET? :shock: ). But I did not know about ChipFETs. In my search for their history, I also discovered that there are BioFETs and FlowFETs and, I am sure, there could be more.
> 
> •Has anyone researched these other FETs?
> 
> Peace,
> James
> 
> (I will never post a simple arithmetic calculation again when I have the flu! :roll: )



Thank you James, it took me couple of seconds to realize that you made a mistake in calculation...but for that few first seconds i felt amazing - that really "charged my batteries", so thank you for that.  

All of the time i am trying to confirm to myself that i can rely on data from manufacturers. Knowing that there are many manufacturers and many changes through years i needed to test the most of common IC's to see how it matches with those data - and to be sure i can approximately predict gold content before i buy something, or when i am cherry picking. So far i am satisfied - all of the tests i made is lower than data from manufacturers by 10-20%, but i think it is normal since i am still learning and improving my skills. At the end i am aware how much gold i can extract for most common types of IC's and i think it is one of essential knowledge that anyone interested about refining should have. Based on that knowledge i can save time in the future by avoiding low gold content IC's, i can buy boards from telecom, medical and military equipment knowing what to expect etc.

I recently started to pay attention about those smallest IC chips and transistors and now i see it is a whole new world. There are so many of packages, and the yields are surprising.



shmandi said:


> Here are in the same order as on previous photo.
> No. 2 has thinner and les bond wires.
> No. 1 and 3 could have good yield to weight ratio as they have shorter (copper) leggs.
> On last 3 photos there is (my) hair for thickness comparison.



Amazing pictures, thank you shmandi.

Those packages are "SOT23-8 thin".







I have data for the same package - with 3 legs. When you calculate it - it is about 1.7g ofgold per kg. So this package with 6 legs should have even better yields. And i think it will have to be even better yields than that because it is "thin" package.


----------



## shmandi

Two of them (1 and 3) have almost no legs and they are very close to package of ChipFets.
I will keep on looking for similar package transistors, maybe I find one that is full of gold


----------



## Tzoax

shmandi said:


> Two of them (1 and 3) have almost no legs and they are very close to package of ChipFets.
> I will keep on looking for similar package transistors, maybe I find one that is full of gold



Chipfet packages does not have legs at all, they have 6 pads on bottom-side. And they are smaller than SOT23 package. I think they should look like these i found on cellphone board. When i scrapped them off with a screwdriver - 4 pads (from one side) left behind on a board, but it is obvious that there were 8 pads, and it looks much more like chipfet.







I don't have such a good microscope like you have. I will try to burn them and see whats inside.


----------



## Tzoax

This is best shots i made with my phone and microscope. 

Gold bonding wires were still connected to a dice.




On this picture one gold bonding wire was still connected to a dice and a pad.




Does this first images look like those bonding wires will have 19% of total weight?


----------



## kernels

Awesome work mate, love this thread!


----------



## shmandi

Tzoax said:


> Chipfet packages does not have legs at all, they have 6 pads on bottom-side. And they are smaller than SOT23 package. I think they should look like these i found on cellphone board. When i scrapped them off with a screwdriver - 4 pads (from one side) left behind on a board, but it is obvious that there were 8 pads, and it looks much more like chipfet.


Those two (no.1 and 3) have only pads. And also dimensions same as in datasheet of chipfets.
Another one I found is probably the most gold so far. But is not chipfet as I see only one transistor junction inside. As it is probably power mosfet, the wires inside are much thicker than in ordinary transistors or ICs. You can also see 3 parallel wires between dye and pin. 
I don't think is close to 20%, but could be few % of weight. Just a guess of course.
If you have any normal digital camera photos are much better through microscope than phone camera. I use some old cheap Nikon and does the job.


----------



## g_axelsson

That is a really nice find, more than one bond wire to the same pad to keep the resistive losses down and not burn the wires with too high current. Nice thick wires.

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

kernels said:


> Awesome work mate, love this thread!



Thank you Hein. I started to make application that will make some things much easier to find / learn and estimate - related to smd components.



shmandi said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> If you have any normal digital camera photos are much better through microscope than phone camera. I use some old cheap Nikon and does the job.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Unfortunately i don't have any digital camera, but i will have to buy one... Really nice and detailed pictures, great work! I have somewhat better camera on a second cellphone, i will try to make better pictures tomorrow.
> 
> 
> 
> niks neims said:
> 
> 
> 
> Any idea about TO-263 package https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TO-263
> or
> MOSFET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET,
> 
> They seem to be common on MB as well... Sadly I suspect they also do not have any Au :/
> 
> -Artūrs
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


Artūrs, i have some good news for you - i found some "TO" packages that do contains gold. It is best to process them altogether like Patnor said. Some packages doesn't contain gold, but it would be very time consuming to separate them - i think it is best to process these together, unless you are cherry picking.


----------



## shmandi

g_axelsson said:


> That is a really nice find, more than one bond wire to the same pad to keep the resistive losses down and not burn the wires with too high current. Nice thick wires.
> 
> Göran


I found some power Mosfets in laptop battery protection circuit (8 pin type) that have around 20 thick gold wires in parallel.


----------



## Tzoax

shmandi said:


> Those two (no.1 and 3) have only pads. And also dimensions same as in datasheet of chipfets.



You have right about dimensions of chipfets. 




I measured this package i found on laptop motherboard and dimensions are same like chipfet. 
It have 6 pads on the bottom and a same shape like chipfet package.






I managed to take out these 3 gold bonding wires that were still connected to a dice to take a picture and to compare thickness with a hair.

I am not sure that this is a chipfet package, but surely - there is a gold inside of it.


----------



## niks neims

Tzoax said:


> Artūrs, i have some good news for you - i found some "TO" packages that do contains gold. It is best to process them altogether like Patnor said. Some packages doesn't contain gold, but it would be very time consuming to separate them - i think it is best to process these together, unless you are cherry picking.



Hey, thank you man, that is good news! I did not know that before  AND they look similar enough to those very common on motherboards, I will try to dismantle & check some of them next time I am depopulating 

Weird coincidence: Recently, while searching for refiners/traders near me, for the first time, I actually stumbled upon a Lithuanian e-scrap trader (novitera.lt) that is buying "Plastic case transistors" spesifically...; not too much, though - only 12 eur/kg... I guess it makes sense since so many types are made without Au bond wires....

Could try recover them myself, yield of 3.6 g Au/KG is nice enough even for an ICs... For a component weight of 6.85g it would mean they yield about ~ 0.80 eur each (for reference, by my math, average plastic top type BGA (~4g netto * 5g Au/kg) is worth about 0.70 eur each....), and I seem to recall to have seen few types of motherboarts where there are plenty of those little buggers - 10 or more!! I would think it definitely qualifies them for cherry-picking.... only thing that I am not shure about is "Brominated Compounds - 31.22 mg" - sounds unhealthy... :/ Does anyone have any expirience working with that kind of material... shure, pyrolization and incineration of epoxy first, but after that? they are very, very high in copper - 68% of mass... Pyro&Inci->wash->AP->HCL->AR->$$$? Any other suggestions?

-Artūrs


----------



## Tzoax

Unfortunately the above package where i made pictures is not a chipfet package. I should check the markings first. The marking of that component is *AAUAH*. I found one of many good websites to check these markings/codes and to see exactly what type of component that is - and more importantly - information about package. After clicking at first two letters of code (in this case *AA*) a new screen appeared to continue searching all component markings starting with AA.
http://www.s-manuals.com/smd




Then i found exactly what i was needed - *AAU***. That represents all components starting with AAU and any of 2 letters that comes after that. So, this component i was hoping that was chipfet - is actually *Linear Voltage Regulator*, and the package is *SOT-26*.




So i tried to find more information about this package - SOT-26 and i found it contains only 0.6g of gold per kg according to this document:




This is first time i read codes/markings from components and i think this is very good way to identify component before testing. 

I found that chipfet markings starts with *C1*.




After all, it seems that this type of package is not too common in PC's. 

Another component i found to be interesting for checking is *SOD-123 package diodes*. Allegedly there is 25g of gold per kg. I never processed diodes. I will try to find couple of them (by markings) and to check them. It is crucial to check markings first because package *SOD-123FL* contains no gold.




Alex


----------



## Platdigger

niks neims, Bromine is not so bad. Go to the dead sea at certain times you can breath the stuff.
Of course like anything, too much is too much.


----------



## niks neims

Platdigger said:


> niks neims, Bromine is not so bad. Go to the dead sea at certain times you can breath the stuff.
> Of course like anything, too much is too much.




Isn`t it? How come I am always reading warnings here about brominated fire suppressants? So You`d suggest those TO-247 can be burned in similar setup as standart IC`s ?

-Artūrs


----------



## Platdigger

Well, the toxics that are released when you burn or even roast any of these chips are about as nasty as you can get.


----------



## Tzoax

niks neims said:


> Hey, thank you man, that is good news! I did not know that before  AND they look similar enough to those very common on motherboards, I will try to dismantle & check some of them next time I am depopulating
> 
> Weird coincidence: Recently, while searching for refiners/traders near me, for the first time, I actually stumbled upon a Lithuanian e-scrap trader (novitera.lt) that is buying "Plastic case transistors" spesifically...; not too much, though - only 12 eur/kg... I guess it makes sense since so many types are made without Au bond wires....
> 
> 
> -Artūrs



Artūrs, i just checked one motherboard transistor for gold content.

First i found model - in this case it is *L1085DG*.




Then i found datasheet PDF about this model *to find out exact package*.
As you can see this model is made in couple of packages - TO-252, TO-263 (2-lead), TO-263 (3-lead) and TO-220. So from this diagram we can see that in our case model matches with *TO-252 package*.
http://www.datasheetspdf.com/pdf/790945/Niko-Sem/L1085DG/1






I incinerated it and detected gold bonding wires inside. One more reason to consider there are gold bonding wires - at least inside of these smaller size transistor packages - TO-252.


----------



## g_axelsson

Platdigger said:


> niks neims, Bromine is not so bad. Go to the dead sea at certain times you can breath the stuff.
> Of course like anything, too much is too much.


That is such a wrong statement. It all depends on what compound it is in. Elemental bromine does not occur naturally and would have similar effects like chlorine gas. Organic compounds with bromine in it's structure is too numerous to mention, but some can disrupt hormones while other are both toxic and carcinogenic. What is produced when we incinerate plastics with bromated compounds is impossible to tell. With an afterburner you will probably end up with mostly HBr but there will always be some other combinations going up in that smoke. To say that it is safe to breath is far from the truth.

Göran


----------



## Platdigger

All I know is I have seen pictures taken at the dead sea and the cloud or the mist they were in was said to be bromine. I don't think it is all the time.

As far as breathing anything from an incineration of any of this electronic stuff of course I would never say to even get one breath of that..stuff.


----------



## Tzoax

Currently i am preparing mixed small BGA chips for another yield test.













It takes too much time to manually remove silicon dies and this fiber/wool like material.




Next time i am processing this kind of IC chips i will grind them to ashes without separating anything - i just realized i don't accomplish anything by separating it.


----------



## kernels

Yep, I just finished a batch of these a few weeks ago, ball-milled after pyrolization, yield was 3.6g/kg, I have had everything between 2.x and 5.x g/kg from these. Looking forward to seeing your result.


----------



## UncleBenBen

Tzoax, are you giving those BGAs a run through some HCl before firing to remove the solder?


----------



## Tzoax

kernels said:


> Yep, I just finished a batch of these a few weeks ago, ball-milled after pyrolization, yield was 3.6g/kg, I have had everything between 2.x and 5.x g/kg from these. Looking forward to seeing your result.



Thats great, thanks for info, did you had any problems with this "fiber wool like" material after ball milling? 



UncleBenBen said:


> Tzoax, are you giving those BGAs a run through some HCl before firing to remove the solder?



No, i remove solder balls with chisel and process it separately (and testing yields). So far i collected about 350g for next test. In my opinion it makes sense because of two reasons - first because when i take off BGA/small BGA chips with chisel from any PCB - there is always some of BGA solder balls that stays soldered on both sides - PCB pad + BGA pad - in other words if i include solder balls weight to "start material weight" i would have to take off solder balls from PCB and include it to BGA's - and because the both methods requires same amount of work i choose to separate solder balls from any of BGA/small BGA chips at start and look at them like different refining materials - and that way i already solved "tin problem" and made BGA chips more "cleaner" material. 

And second reason is that (based on my own results when processing BGA solder balls) - solder balls needs longer and different treatment than BGA chips - processing it together makes it more harder and complicated.

My result was 1.42g of gold / kg of solder balls when i first time tested it:
https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22951&start=90#p267815


----------



## patnor1011

I do soak them in HCl that take care of solder just fine. 
That wool like mushy fiber material is a pain in the $$ to deal with. You cant really separate it as bonding wires get stuck in it. I do incinerate it completely with torch. Takes a while but they burn to ash.


----------



## Tzoax

patnor1011 said:


> I do soak them in HCl that take care of solder just fine.
> That wool like mushy fiber material is a pain in the $$ to deal with. You cant really separate it as bonding wires get stuck in it. I do incinerate it completely with torch. Takes a while but they burn to ash.



Yes, i checked it with microscope and many of gold bonding wires are tangled there... that is why next time i will burn these with torch like i did last time. This time i burned IC's with torch and then i finished incineration on electric hotplate - obviously that is reason why there is so much of that material left - thank you. 

Other reason i don't process BGA solder balls together with BGA chips - when tin from solder dissolves in HCl - form of gold that is released (from it) in solution could easily be lost during washing with water (since gold from solder is not heavy like gold bonding wires). I don't know form of gold that is in solder - it could be fine powder or small flakes - but in any case it is easy to lost during washing - i am not sure if this is true, it just seems logic.

Next reason is other contaminants from solder like lead, silver etc....that just complicates things later. Of course - it is not that big problem to get rid of silver chloride, lead chloride and other metal chlorides from solder that are created, but i prefer to avoid complications and problems as much as i can and keep starting material clear as possible.

Another reason is that processing small BGA chips without solder balls is finished fast in AR - about an hour, when i processed solder balls it lasts much longer - many hours of simmer boiling, filtering hot HCl (and water) solution to remove lead chloride, another incineration, grinding etc. When i imagine i would have to do all of that with concentrates (of BGA IC chips) present - it feels like much greater and complicated job to me.


----------



## g_axelsson

Tzoax said:


> Other reason i don't process BGA solder balls together with BGA chips - when tin from solder dissolves in HCl - form of gold that is released (from it) in solution could easily be lost during washing with water (since gold from solder is not heavy like gold bonding wires). I don't know form of gold that is in solder - it could be fine powder or small flakes - but in any case it is easy to lost during washing - i am not sure if this is true, it just seems logic.


The gold in the solder is alloyed with the tin. Gold is easily dissolved in molten tin, when the solder solidifies gold and other minor metals "precipitates" as tiny particles at the crystal boundaries between the tin crystals. When the tin dissolves in acid the tiny particles of gold is freed from the solder and forms a black sludge, like black gold particles that never wants to settle from a dirty drop.

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

g_axelsson said:


> The gold in the solder is alloyed with the tin. Gold is easily dissolved in molten tin, when the solder solidifies gold and other minor metals "precipitates" as tiny particles at the crystal boundaries between the tin crystals. *When the tin dissolves in acid the tiny particles of gold is freed from the solder and forms a black sludge, like black gold particles that never wants to settle from a dirty drop.
> *
> Göran



And that is exactly main reason why solder balls should be processed separately in my opinion. Thank you for explanation.

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

I prepared concentrate and i rinsed it with water, this is picture from the bottom of beaker.




Then i added silicon dies and fiber "wool like" material (that i previously removed) and i rinsed all of it with water again. It took me many hours to manually separate silicon dies and fiber, next time i will grind everything to ashes because this type of IC chips does not contain internal plates and wires (they have but they are very thin and small) and it just could be milled to powder, rinsed and processed. Now material is ready for AR - and i don't have to worry about tin and lead issues because i removed solder balls manually at start.


----------



## cosmetal

g_axelsson said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> Other reason i don't process BGA solder balls together with BGA chips - when tin from solder dissolves in HCl - form of gold that is released (from it) in solution could easily be lost during washing with water (since gold from solder is not heavy like gold bonding wires). I don't know form of gold that is in solder - it could be fine powder or small flakes - but in any case it is easy to lost during washing - i am not sure if this is true, it just seems logic.
> 
> 
> 
> The gold in the solder is alloyed with the tin. Gold is easily dissolved in molten tin, when the solder solidifies gold and other minor metals "precipitates" as tiny particles at the crystal boundaries between the tin crystals. When the tin dissolves in acid the tiny particles of gold is freed from the solder and forms a black sludge, like black gold particles that never wants to settle from a dirty drop
> 
> Göran
Click to expand...


Goran,

Is this the AuSn 80/20 solder you have been referring to in other posts?

Thanks, 
James


----------



## g_axelsson

cosmetal said:


> g_axelsson said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> Other reason i don't process BGA solder balls together with BGA chips - when tin from solder dissolves in HCl - form of gold that is released (from it) in solution could easily be lost during washing with water (since gold from solder is not heavy like gold bonding wires). I don't know form of gold that is in solder - it could be fine powder or small flakes - but in any case it is easy to lost during washing - i am not sure if this is true, it just seems logic.
> 
> 
> 
> The gold in the solder is alloyed with the tin. Gold is easily dissolved in molten tin, when the solder solidifies gold and other minor metals "precipitates" as tiny particles at the crystal boundaries between the tin crystals. When the tin dissolves in acid the tiny particles of gold is freed from the solder and forms a black sludge, like black gold particles that never wants to settle from a dirty drop
> 
> Göran
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Goran,
> 
> Is this the AuSn 80/20 solder you have been referring to in other posts?
> 
> Thanks,
> James
Click to expand...

No, this is gold dissolved from ENIG into the solder. Usually < 0.5g/kg or the solder joint becomes brittle. For exact numbers of real world data just check Tzoax's previous posts in this thread.

I might be off on the numbers, I just pulled it from my memory.

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

James, the source of gold in BGA solder balls cames from gold plated pads from PCB. When BGA IC chip is soldered to gold plated pad - solder/gold alloy is made.










I think that 80/20 solder is reffered to *braze* used to connect silicon die to *ceramic* chip.

Alex


----------



## g_axelsson

Actually, it is a solder (as has been discussed in another thread http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=26762&p=284049#p284049 ) and was used to seal the lid on ceramic capsules, melting point 280 C. To braze the die to the ceramic body an Au/Si braze was used.

Göran


----------



## cosmetal

Tzoax said:


> James, the source of gold in BGA solder balls cames from gold plated pads from PCB. When BGA IC chip is soldered to gold plated pad - solder/gold alloy is made.
> 
> 2.png
> 
> 1.png
> 
> 3.jpg
> 
> I think that 80/20 solder is reffered to *braze* used to connect silicon die to *ceramic* chip.
> 
> Alex



Alex,

Excellent illustration and pictures. Very much "a picture is worth a thousand words."

James


----------



## cosmetal

g_axelsson said:


> Actually, it is a solder (as has been discussed in another thread http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=26762&p=284049#p284049 ) and was used to seal the lid on ceramic capsules, melting point 280 C. To braze the die to the ceramic body an Au/Si braze was used.
> 
> Göran



Goran,

Your "thousand words" contain a "million words" worth of expert knowledge. Rest assured that I am not implying that you are "long-winded."  

With my feeble mind, sometimes I need to read your posts at least twice before they "sink in."

Never change . . .

James


----------



## patnor1011

Let me rephrase. 
I do not really think it should be "processed". I mean there is so little gold it won't pay for the cost associated with trying to recover it. HCl used to dissolve that tin will cost more than any gold recovered from that solder. 
I simply put them in AP and let them in till all tin is dissolved. Then I remove IC and continue with what process is decided. As for the little bit of gold left over from dissolving solder, it can sit in AP till there will be enough there to warrant any recovery.


----------



## Tzoax

g_axelsson said:


> Actually, it is a solder (as has been discussed in another thread http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=26762&p=284049#p284049 ) and was used to seal the lid on ceramic capsules, melting point 280 C. To braze the die to the ceramic body an Au/Si braze was used.
> 
> Göran



Sure it is, thank you for correction.



cosmetal said:


> Alex,
> 
> Excellent illustration and pictures. Very much "a picture is worth a thousand words."
> 
> James



Thank you James, i am planning to buy USB microscope in near future.



patnor1011 said:


> Let me rephrase.
> I do not really think it should be "processed". I mean there is so little gold it won't pay for the cost associated with trying to recover it. HCl used to dissolve that tin will cost more than any gold recovered from that solder.
> I simply put them in AP and let them in till all tin is dissolved. Then I remove IC and continue with what process is decided. As for the little bit of gold left over from dissolving solder, it can sit in AP till there will be enough there to warrant any recovery.



As i remember you made x-ray test and result was 2,2g of gold / kg of solder balls...
https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22951&start=150#p270023


patnor1011 said:


> Sample I got xrayed was 2,2g/kg but that was just tin balls not a piece of copper traces. All melted together. I still have quite a lot of it. :wink:



My result was 1.42g/kg.

But, after all - does it payoff is determined individually by many factors.

This is a top view of beaker with warm AR solution. You can see that wool like fiber material gets on top surface of solution. After reaction is done i repeated one more time just in case if there is still some of the gold dissolved.




When reaction started i took a snapshot of the bottom of beaker to capture image of gold bonding wires.




After neutralizing solution i cooled it down and filtered it with charmin plug. I think the most of it is silver chloride.




After first filtration there was still very little of silver chloride so i repeated filtration one more time and now i have crystal clear AR gold bearing solution that is ready for gold dropping. Of course i added some water to help SMB drop.


----------



## Tzoax

I finished second test of mixed small BGA IC chips.

Out of 240.5g of IC chips i recovered 1.35g of gold.













Link for details about first test i made with this kind of IC chips:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22951#p241264

Comparing results from two tests:

*Test No. 1:* 233.7g of IC chips - 1.1g of gold - *4.71g/kg*
*Test No. 2:* 240.5g of IC chips - 1.35g of gold - *5.61g/kg*

The difference between this two tests was that in Test 1 i measured starting material with solder balls (that was still soldered to IC's) and in Test 2 i measured weight of starting material without soldered balls (i previously removed them with chisel and i am processing solder balls separately - like separate material).

In short - my results are next - if starting material is weighted and processed with solder balls - 4.71g/kg, and if starting material is weighted and processed without solder balls - 5.61g/kg.

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

Another difference between these two tests i forgot to mention is that in Test 1 i removed silicon dies - i didn't process them, and in test 2 i processed them.

Alex


----------



## mls26cwru

I am just finishing my test up tonight as well on this same type of material... I just have to melt the gold down. I'll add my results and test parameters and a pic or two so we can have another data point!


----------



## Tzoax

mls26cwru said:


> I am just finishing my test up tonight as well on this same type of material... I just have to melt the gold down. I'll add my results and test parameters and a pic or two so we can have another data point!



That's great news Mike. In the name of all of us looking forward to see your results - thank you for sharing. 

Alex


----------



## kernels

Nice work Alex, those are very high yields for those ICs! I struggle to get them into the 4's consistently. There seems to be a lot of variation in those small BGA packages.


----------



## Tzoax

kernels said:


> Nice work Alex, those are very high yields for those ICs! I struggle to get them into the 4's consistently. There seems to be a lot of variation in those small BGA packages.



Thank you Hein. Yes, it seems there are lot of variations of BGA and small BGA IC chips...but there is a confident prediction about their gold content/yields - at least ball park yields - for (big) BGA chips (black tops) in my case there is always about 10+ g of gold/kg. And small BGA's is about 5g/kg (processed with solder mask and without solder balls). I think that if small BGA's are processed without solder mask - only black tops - the results would be pretty same/similar like big BGA IC chips.

Alex


----------



## mls26cwru

Okay, here are the results:

1.6g for the chips in the picture below. I used mostly small BGA from server boards...i pulled out a couple that had metal legs, so they did not get processed. There are almost no RAM chips used in this batch.

Now here is the kicker because I had a brain fart... I forgot to measure the weight before I removed the solder in an HCl bath. After that, I dried them and got a weight WITHOUT solder of 203g. 

So final yield on chips alone: 7.9g/Kg or 3.6g/lb. (chip dies and solder was not processed)

If anyone knows an average weight% of solder to chips of this sort, we can make some corrections... otherwise I will get another batch in the works soonish and figure something out.


----------



## Tzoax

Amazing results Mike! 

In my last test i also weighted material without solder balls, and i think that most obvious reason for such a difference in yields (5.61g/kg and 7.9g/Kg) is because of ratio of RAM BGA's - in my batch the most of BGA chips was from RAM memories, and in your batch there are almost no BGA RAM chips - comparing size of BGA chips - your batch contains much larger BGA chips than my batch - which lead me to conclusion - RAM BGA chips are lower yield than rest of larger BGA's (from your batch).

More tests like this - better ball park yields prediction. Thank you for sharing.

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

I just bought 24 telecom server boards - 19.4 kg. I paid them 105 euros - 4.34 euros each board - or 5.37/kg. I did paid a lot for them...maybe i will not reclaim the value...but i am intending to process all of the IC's from them and see the gold yields from these telecom boards. 

This is list and pictures of boards with weight and quantity.

1. 7 boards - 800g piece
2. 1 board - 400g piece
3. 4 boards - 500g piece
4. 1 board - 900g piece
5. 3 boards - 1100g piece
6. 1 board - 500g piece
7. 4 boards - 1050g piece
8. 3 boards - 950g piece


----------



## Tzoax




----------



## cosmetal

Tzoax said:


> I just bought 24 telecom server boards - 19.4 kg. I paid them 105 euros - 4.34 euros each board - or 5.37/kg. I did paid a lot for them...maybe i will not reclaim the value...but i am intending to process all of the IC's from them and see the gold yields from these telecom boards.
> 
> This is list and pictures of boards with weight and quantity.
> 
> 1. 7 boards - 800g piece
> 2. 1 board - 400g piece
> 3. 4 boards - 500g piece
> 4. 1 board - 900g piece
> 5. 3 boards - 1100g piece
> 6. 1 board - 500g piece
> 7. 4 boards - 1050g piece
> 8. 3 boards - 950g piece
> 
> 1.jpg
> 
> 2.jpg
> 
> 3.jpg
> 
> 4.jpg
> 
> 5.jpg



Alex,

If known, and not too much trouble, can you list the manufacturer's name and the actual, or approximate, manufacture date of the boards?

Thanks!
James


----------



## Tzoax

cosmetal said:


> Alex,
> 
> If known, and not too much trouble, can you list the manufacturer's name and the actual, or approximate, manufacture date of the boards?
> 
> Thanks!
> James



Sure, i will post it tomorrow - for date manufactured is not a problem - it is in printed in code of almost any IC chip on board. I just have to figure out where (if it is anywhere) printed model of board....or manufacturer name. So far all printed markings i checked related just to components nearby... i will try to find it. 

I think i found one model on one board (board from picture No. 8 )- based on markings i found - 123202-h it seems it is Digital cellular telecommunications system (Phase 2+);
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS);
Circuit switched data bearer services
(3GPP TS 23.202 version 9.1.0 Release 9)

http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/123200_123299/123202/09.01.00_60/ts_123202v090100p.pdf

I also found on IC chip's code - they are manufactured at 2010. 

Tomorrow i will find models / manufacturers / date manufactured for rest of the boards.

I will also note mlcc's weight from those boards when i depopulate them.

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

I haven't found manufacturer but i checked date made on IC's - they are from 2010/2011. 
Today i depopulated some of the BGA IC chips - 257g without solder balls / with solder mask. There are also BGA IC's with heatsink and small BGA's - i will depopulate them also and weight them, like the rest of non BGA chips.


----------



## g_axelsson

"Solder mask" is the green (or other color) coating on top of the conductors on the outer layers on a PCB. What you are calling "solder mask" I would call "PCB", "Printed Circuit Board" or "substrate". It's also been called "green bottom" if I'm not totally wrong.

Göran


----------



## Tzoax

g_axelsson said:


> "Solder mask" is the green (or other color) coating on top of the conductors on the outer layers on a PCB. What you are calling "solder mask" I would call "PCB", "Printed Circuit Board" or "substrate". It's also been called "green bottom" if I'm not totally wrong.
> 
> Göran



Thank you for explanation Goran. I will remember that. 

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

53.2g of small BGA's.




96.2g of BGA's with heatsink/metal plate.




I will separate black tops from green bottom/PCB substrate from all of 3 types of BGA's and i will note ratio between them.


----------



## Tzoax

I excluded this type of BGA's from the weight because they are flip chips - they don't contain gold:




Ratio between black tops / substrate:




small BGA: Black Tops: 33.2g - 62.4% Substrate: 20g - 37.6% Total: 53.2g
Metal Top BGA: Black Tops: 5.5g - 5.7% Substrate: 90.7g - 94.3% Total: 96.2g
small BGA: Black Tops: 118.3g - 55% Substrate: 97.4g - 45% Total: 215.7g

Total black tops from all of (gold containing) BGA's: 157g


----------



## Tzoax

There is total 13.7g of ceramic resonators:







I am planning to test those too...but i'm afraid that this is very small amount of material to test, unless the yields are pretty high. Does anyone have some ball park yields about ceramic resonators?

Alex


----------



## Grelko

Tzoax said:


> I excluded this type of BGA's from the weight because they are flip chips - they don't contain gold:



I'm sure you just put the DSP chip there as a reference to show what the "flip chips" look like, but there's a chance that some people might think those are "flip chips" also, just because it's in the picture.

Very nice work by the way, thank you for taking the time to do this.


----------



## Tzoax

Grelko said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> I excluded this type of BGA's from the weight because they are flip chips - they don't contain gold:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm sure you just put the DSP chip there as a reference to show what the "flip chips" look like, but there's a chance that some people might think those are "flip chips" also, just because it's in the picture.
> 
> Very nice work by the way, thank you for taking the time to do this.
Click to expand...


Thank you Grelko. Those "DSP" chips really are flip chips - on the bottom of that picture is how that IC chip looks like when it is "opened" - both internal sides of it. At first i thought it is a regular BGA gold containing IC chip, but when i opened one - that "black top" is not IC chip but some sort of heatsink. It just look like gold containing BGA chip.

By the way, i am still depopulating boards - so far i depopulated 210g of MLCC's and 320g of IC chips (non BGA).


----------



## Grelko

Tzoax said:


> Thank you Grelko. Those "DSP" chips really are flip chips - on the bottom of that picture is how that IC chip looks like when it is "opened" - both internal sides of it. At first i thought it is a regular BGA gold containing IC chip, but when i opened one - that "black top" is not IC chip but some sort of heatsink. It just look like gold containing BGA chip.



Now, that's interesting. I'll need to go through my chips again. I've seen that same DSP while I was depopulating. They sure looked like regular BGA's to me.


----------



## Tzoax

I depopulated the most of of MLCC's from the boards - 255.7g.




And there is 406.2g of mixed non-BGA IC chips (132.5g of small IC's and 273.7g is the rest)




Now i am collecting fully gold plated pins from these connectors. I never processed them - i have no idea about yields - i assume they have about 2g / kg.


----------



## Tzoax

There is total of 187.2g of those fully gold plated pins only from that type of connector. The rest of pins from boards (white connectors) are partial gold plated.


----------



## Tzoax

I incinerated some of the IC's...




And i remember i said i will test transistors (mixed transistors from motherboards) so i have incinerated 348.3g of them to make a test...i hope i will recover some visible gold from them.


----------



## Tzoax

Out of 348.3g of transistors - 204.5g are copper plates with wires, and 113.8g is powder. That means the weight of emission of smoke/burnt particles is 30g.




I made concentrate out of powder and this is a picture of gold bonding wires from mixed transistors out of all kind of motherboards.


----------



## Tzoax

Reaction of concentrate from transistors (with AR) was very vigorous and long - i did recover some of gold but it was too small amount to get some data.

Now i have some really interesting samples of most common IC chips for testing. I will begin with this type of BGA IC chips - NVidia GeForce BGA IC chips (with internal heatsinks) - they are most common on older AGP graphic cards.




There are several versions of NVidia IC chips - coming with different sizes and with or without internal heatsinks. This type is most common, the side length of square is about 2.85cm and having shiny circle on the chip means it have internal heatsink.




For this test i will use 36 peaces of this kind of IC's.






Total weight of 36 peaces is 116.4g - so average weight of one piese of ICchip is 3.23g (just a chip - without green bottom solder mask).




This type of BGA IC chips is very interesting for testing because they are heavy (3.23g) and they are very common in AGP graphic cards.... Knowing that average gold yield for BGA's are 10+ g/kg (black tops) i wonder how this kind of BGA's fits into that proportion.


----------



## archeonist

I'd love to see your result. I guess these will have less gold than the normal bga, but we'll see. You deserve a statue for your work


----------



## cosmetal

archeonist said:


> I'd love to see your result. I guess these will have less gold than the normal bga, but we'll see. You deserve a statue for your work



Naw . . .

More like the Nobel Prize in eWaste Recovery and Refining!  

James


----------



## Tzoax

Thank you guys, i hope these tests will improve knowledge about gold content in specific types of IC's. 

Internal heatsinks weight: 62.7g. That is 1.74g per chip...or 53.86% of total weight of chips.






Incineration is complete - today i will start making concentrate.


----------



## Tzoax

This is look of concentrate after first incineration / water rinsing. Gold bonding wires starts clumping together and becomes visible with naked eyes. I see there are some of unburned parts of chips so i will repeat incineration / crushing / water rinsing to make much better concentrate - to "get free" gold bonding wires still trapped inside those unburned / uncrushed particles and to rinse as much as i can carbon / ash material to avoid absorbing gold chloride in AR solution in later steps.


----------



## Tzoax

Final incineration...




After final water rinsing i added HCl in a beaker with concentrate and after little mixing around - a pile of gold bonding wires formed.




And it looks pretty promising to me... a group of gold bonding wires are about 2cm long.




It is time for KNO3 addition in small portions (making a poorman's AR).


----------



## kurtak

Alex

Just want to say that I always enjoy seeing when you add something new to this thread 8) :mrgreen: :G 

Kurt


----------



## Tzoax

Kurt, thank you very much - in a meanwhile i collected a bunch of all kind of BGA's - so now i can test them separately - soon we will have some comparison related to gold content between Intel, ATI, VIA and nVidia BGA's - and i am sure there will be many surprises.

After all of the gold dissolved, solution was cooled and filtered...




After adding little water and a few grams of SMB...




Gold powder formation...




I will leave it over night to completely settle down.


----------



## Tzoax

Gold powder completely settled down...




Gold powder after washing (3xwater - 3xHCl - 3xwater)...







And finally results...




0.39g of gold out of 116.4g (36 pieces) of this kind of BGA's...

That is 3.35g of gold for 1kg of material... or 0.0108g of gold per chip.

I'm surprised...even small types of BGA's have better yields...i have considered those like high yield BGA's based on their size but...it seems they are not.



archeonist said:


> I'd love to see your result. I guess these will have less gold than the normal bga, but we'll see.



Yes, you have right.... i expected better yields for this kind of BGA's....but on the other side - that also means there are some other type of BGA's that have more than 10-11g of gold per kg - this kind of BGA's only degraded yields - and still ... when processing mixed lot (including this type and other types of BGA's with internal heatsinks) results are about 10g/kg - so there must be some type of BGA's that bring yields up....and if i had to guess i would say it is Intel BGA's ...but we will see..


----------



## LT_golden

Tzoax said:


> This is my little contribution to the site, I have tested various types of chips for gold content using these steps:
> ...



Hi Tzoax,

This is awesome beyond words. I believe I speak for both myself and many others when I say that your "little contribution" has turned into a de facto end-all go-to page for all things on what types of materials produces what amount of gold.

This is awesome. You're awesome. Thank you. Can I PayPal you some money? :lol:


----------



## kernels

Hi Alex, good to see you still going strong! Your meticulous work is fantastic. 

Yes, your yield on those BGAs seems a bit low, but I have never tried processing only the ones with integrated heatsinks, might be the cause of the low yield. I would still have expected 5+g per kg.


----------



## Tzoax

LT_golden said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> This is my little contribution to the site, I have tested various types of chips for gold content using these steps:
> ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Tzoax,
> 
> This is awesome beyond words. I believe I speak for both myself and many others when I say that your "little contribution" has turned into a de facto end-all go-to page for all things on what types of materials produces what amount of gold.
> 
> This is awesome. You're awesome. Thank you. Can I PayPal you some money? :lol:
Click to expand...


Thank you very much LT_golden, you reminded me of this saying:
*"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."*

In other words - instead of sending me some money you could share some data from processing specific material - it would bring much more pleasure and benefit to me and to all other members who is interested in gold content...so - when/if you are processing some types of IC's - you are welcome to share your results here - it is very rare that people are willing to share their data but....if you are interested in contribution of knowledge - that is a best way to thank me - to become a part of it. 



kernels said:


> Hi Alex, good to see you still going strong! Your meticulous work is fantastic.
> 
> Yes, your yield on those BGAs seems a bit low, but I have never tried processing only the ones with integrated heatsinks, might be the cause of the low yield. I would still have expected 5+g per kg.



Hi Hein! Thank you, nice to see you. I was very surprised with low yield of those but...now i am preparing some INTEL BGA's (which does not have internal heatsinks) for testing - and i really expect much more gold than 10g/kg. This 4 types of INTEL IC's are most common in PC and laptop motherboards:
1. Weight of IC chip: *1.91g* /// side length: 3cm
2. Weight of IC chip: *1.5g* /// side length: 2.6cm
3. Weight of IC chip: *1.19g* /// side length: 2.4cm
4. Weight of IC chip: *0.8g* /// side length: 1.9cm




I am going to test all of those 4 types separately - and with that i will cover most common INTEL types of BGA's. 

I will start from the left - with biggest ones - (1.91g, 3cm).

For this test i will use 23 Intel BGA IC chips of this kind - total weight is 44g.


----------



## Palladium

Very concise thread and great work!


----------



## Tzoax

Palladium said:


> Very concise thread and great work!



Thanks Palladium. A cold weather is slowing me down a bit (it is about -7C) so a incineration is going slow...especially because i am using electric hotplate for that - eventually all of the BGA's are going to become white, fluffy - incinerated properly...and ready for making concentrate..


----------



## Tzoax

I removed as much as i can silicon dies (trying to keep them in one piece - to avoid crushing them - i will add them to concentrate at AR stage). I broke IC's to smaller pieces and continue to incinerate. This is how they look after incineration.




I crushed the IC's with spoon - this is picture of crushed IC's and silicon dies by side.




After several water rinsing/crushing - this is top look of concentrate inside of beaker. Gold bonding wires are forming and could be seen in concentrate.




This is the same - dried concentrate. Weight of this concentrate is 12.2g. 

So, after first round of incineration/water rinsing - this concentrate contains 27.72% out of starting material (44g).... or - the volume is reduced by 72.27% out of starting material.

On a top right side of the picture - i separated a few parts of broken silicon dies and a group of gold bonding wires.




And i separated this group - just to see this beauty... 8) 




I see there are still some epoxy ash particles that are not incinerated properly...so i will make one more round of incineration/crushing/water rinsing.


----------



## FrugalRefiner

Tzoax said:


> And i separated this group - just to see this beauty... 8)


Angel's Hair. 8) 

Dave


----------



## Tzoax

Incinerating final concentrate....




After several crushing/water rinsing - i added 50ml of HCl to try to clean the concentrate even further.

Immediately after adding HCl to concentrate - solution turns to yellow/green color like in the pictures.







I am considering to add this step (washing IC''s concentrate with HCl) in future processing because i noticed that after adding HCl - gold bonding wires are much more tending to clump together, and obvious color change of solution meaning some of base metals went to solution, so adding this step will make concentrate even more cleaner.

I am not sure what dissolved base metal gave this yellow/green color to solution. I think it is from copper (a little of incinerated copper (copper oxide) - which would explain how quick it went to solution).


----------



## Tzoax

After all of gold dissolved - this is look of neutralized and decanted AR solution... even it is not filtered it looks pretty clear - so making good concentrate have multiple benefits.




This is look of remaining material (silicon dies and crushed material) after removing AR solution.
Note that it looks like there is more of gold bonding wires in the center of a beaker - but it is just a sand from outside of the beaker...and bigger particles that looks like not crushed/not incinerated epoxy is really a small parts of crushed silicon dies.




After cooling down and filtering - solution is ready for adding SMB... This is look of first 5 minutes of dropping gold - at speed x5...




Currently - gold powder is settling down...


----------



## Tzoax

Washing gold powder...




Drying gold powder...




Results...




0.65g of gold out of 44g (23 pieces) *Intel (type 1)* BGA chips.

44 / 0.65 = 1000 / x
x = 1000 * 0.65 / 44
x = 14.77

*Yield: 14.77g/kg*

23 / 0.65 = 1 / x
x = 1 * 0.65 / 23
x = 0.028

*1 piece of IC chip: 0.0282g of gold*

By today's price of gold that is: *1.125 US Dollars* or *0.988 Euros* ... *for 1 chip*.

Not so bad info for cherry pickers... :shock: 8) 

I will take a few days off...and then i will continue with other 3 types of Intel BGA's.


----------



## cosmetal

*"I will take a few days off...and then i will continue with other 3 types of Intel BGA's."*

You deserve some time off. 

Thank you for your continued hard work and shared information!

James


----------



## Tzoax

cosmetal said:


> You deserve some time off.
> 
> Thank you for your continued hard work and shared information!
> 
> James



James, i can't wait to continue... i will rest for this weekend - and i will continue in monday. And thank you again for resolving mystery of "little elf shoe" here... https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=27544#p290938

I forgot to add some more data about this last test i made (Intel BGA - type 1). Actually it is *492-pin BGA* chip - so naming this class of BGA's like that is more precise terminology and easier to remember/recognize it.
They are found on older motherboards - i saw many Socket 370 (and older than that) motherboards having 492-pin BGA chip. 




And again, *14.77g of gold /kg and 0.0282g of gold per chip *for this type of BGA's - brings this BGA type of chip at *first place for gold content* based on my tests (so far).

Alex


----------



## kernels

Wow, that is a great result, probably the most meticulous work I've seen. I average somewhere between 10 and 12g per kg for the "black tops", but I usually mix the ones with internal heatsinks with the others which will bring the yield down a bit. Lovely to watch you work mate.


----------



## Tzoax

kernels said:


> Wow, that is a great result, probably the most meticulous work I've seen. I average somewhere between 10 and 12g per kg for the "black tops", but I usually mix the ones with internal heatsinks with the others which will bring the yield down a bit. Lovely to watch you work mate.



Hein, thank you...i am sure there will be many more of surprises - there are many more types of BGA's to test.
I have a next candidate for testing. It is a type that in most cases comes together with previous one i tested - 492-pin BGA. More precisely - on Pentium III and older motherboards Intel 492-pin BGA is the Northbridge...and our next candidate is *Intel 324-pin BGA - Southbridge*.
*Weight of IC chip: 1.19g /// side length: 2.4cm*




I don't have many of them - only 12 pieces...but it will be enough for test.










After this test - all motherboard BGA's yields - especially Pentium III and older, that contains Intel (Southbridge - 324-pin BGA and Northbridge 492-pin BGA) will be known, of course "ballpark" known. 

I don't know is this the case in other countries - but here - there are two classes of motherboards - first class is Socket 370 motherboards and older (higher selling price) and a second class is Socket 462 and newer (lower selling price of motherboards). I am convinced that it is related to higher yield of among all other components --- especially BGAchips... and after this test i will be able to prove it - if gold content of Intel Southbridge - 324-pin BGA is anywhere similar like gold content of Intel Northbridge - 492-pin BGA (*14.77g of gold /kg and 0.0282g of gold per chip*) - thats it - the main reason for "higher yield" of motherboards starting from Socket 370 and older ones.

Another thing i would like to mention is that i started to make more details and pictures about processing IC's...and after some time - it would be hard to read/find some results through pages and pages of this thread...so if anyone think it is excessive and i should post only my results (not including pictures and details of processing) just let me know. Also - if sending many pictures and gifs are spending too much of server's resources please let me know.

Alex


----------



## Tzoax

First incineration...







After separating (as much as i could) silicon dies and first crushing...




After several water rinsing... (gold bonding wires are grouping in top left corner of concentrate)




After drying concentrate...




I see there are still some unburned/ not properly crushed particles - so i will do another round of incineration/crushing/washing concentrate.


----------



## kurtak

Tzoax said:


> Another thing i would like to mention is that i started to make more details and pictures about processing IC's...and after some time - it would be hard to read/find some results through pages and pages of this thread...so if anyone think it is excessive and i should post only my results (not including pictures and details of processing) just let me know. Also - if sending many pictures and gifs are spending too much of server's resources please let me know.
> 
> Alex



Alex

You are doing an "awesome" job :!: :!: :!: 

Posting details & pictures of you processing is ALWAYS a good thing 

It is threads like this one (& the many other "such" threads write by other "dedicated" members of which there are to many to name) that makes this forum so great

THANK YOU for continuing with this thread

Your work is :G 

Kurt


----------



## Tzoax

On a moment i felt like there there are not much interested members about this subject... but then again - when i look back - i see many positive comments. Thank you Kurt, and thanks to all other members supporting my work - for seeing a point of my tests and for keep adding wind at my back.

After final incineration/crushing/washing - this is a look of final concentrate inside of beaker... gold bonding wires looks long and thick - even with naked eyes.




Dissolving gold in AR...







After all of gold dissolved i decanted AR solution in another beaker...then i added a fresh HCl and a little more of KNO3 (making poorman's AR) into concentrate - to get in solution as much of possible gold ions trapped inside of concentrate.. then i decanted solution while still very hot to another beaker. Finally - i rinsed the concentrate with fresh water and again - add a solution in another beaker... Then i heat this solution and neutralize NOx with little of urea (until it stops foaming). I ended with 100ml of AR solution...




After cooling - it is ready for filtering... I am using "charmin plug" filtering with wet tissue wipes (previously washed with water) - inserting it tight into funnel's tube like in the picture.


----------



## Tzoax

Washing gold powder...




Drying gold powder...




Result...




0.14g of gold out of 14.31g (12 pieces) Intel 324-pin BGA chips.

14.31 / 0.14 = 1000 / x
x = 1000 * 0.14 / 14.31
x = 9.78

*Yield: 9.78g/kg*

12 / 0.14 = 1 / x
x = 1 * 0.14 / 12
x = 0.0116

*1 piece of IC chip: 0.0116g of gold*

That is a lower yield than i was hoping....but still it is not that bad.


----------



## Dr.xyz

That yield was expected, it's logical to assume that one solder ball equals one bond wire and southbridge chips have 1.5x less balls. Also die size is smaller, so bond wires should be slightly shorter.


----------



## Tzoax

Dr.xyz said:


> That yield was expected, it's logical to assume that one solder ball equals one bond wire and southbridge chips have 1.5x less balls. Also die size is smaller, so bond wires should be slightly shorter.



Sure...i was hoping that gold bonding wires would be more thicker - it is also an important factor - and a little harder to assume.

Some interesting ratios...


----------



## Dr.xyz

Also would be logical to expect thinner wires, not thicker. They carry same signals, and shorter wires can be made thinner and still have the same resistance as longer thicker wire.


----------



## Tzoax

Dr.xyz said:


> Also would be logical to expect thinner wires, not thicker. They carry same signals, and shorter wires can be made thinner and still have the same resistance as longer thicker wire.



This is bottom view of NVidia GeForce4 BGA chip that i tested earlier.




It have about *702 solder balls* (if i counted it right - i couldn't find anywhere data about it on internet)

Results of test:* 0.0108g* of gold per chip. 

That is 0.0108 / 702 = *1.538e-5g of gold per one gold bonding wire*.

So...comparing with 3.600e-5g and 5.477e-5g of gold used per one gold bonding wire result is surprisingly low - 1.538e-5g. 

Could your assumptions/logic may be implemented even for this type of BGA? *That would help a lot. * Thanks in advance.
https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22951&start=330#p289895


----------



## Tzoax

I always wondered how much of gold are in *ceramic resonators*.

I have never processed them separately. They are very lightweight and hard to collect some decent amount for testing gold content.

I have about 12g of them. Do you think making a test with such small sample is a good idea?


----------



## niks neims

Tzoax said:


> I have about 12g of them. Do you think making a test with such small sample is a good idea?



YES! Love your thread, man!


----------



## Tzoax

niks neims said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> I have about 12g of them. Do you think making a test with such small sample is a good idea?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> YES! Love your thread, man!
Click to expand...


I just found some more of it - now i have 26.1g of them... Ok - i will test them.

I will process them straight to AR (just like ceramic CPU's).


----------



## mls26cwru

I would advise against an initial AR leach... you have a decent amount of tin and the caps are steal... and on the inside there is a good amount of silver. 

I would suggest HCl leach followed by a Nitric leach (with a good rinse in between obviously). Then AR when all the silver is gone... And the gold yield is decent per pound... around the 0.75g/lb if I recall correctly. I would have to dig through my numbers though.

M


----------



## archeonist

niks neims said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> I have about 12g of them. Do you think making a test with such small sample is a good idea?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> YES! Love your thread, man!
Click to expand...


Yes! Very good idea!! I am collecting those for a while now, I suspect a good amount of gold in them.


----------



## Tzoax

mls26cwru said:


> I would advise against an initial AR leach... you have a decent amount of tin and the caps are steal... and on the inside there is a good amount of silver.
> 
> I would suggest HCl leach followed by a Nitric leach (with a good rinse in between obviously). Then AR when all the silver is gone... And the gold yield is decent per pound... around the 0.75g/lb if I recall correctly. I would have to dig through my numbers though.
> 
> M



Mike, thank you for advice and for sharing your results. I always processed them together with other similar components (hybrid ceramic IC's etc) straight in AR and never had a problem with tin (metastannic in AR/ filtering) or silver. 

I thought that the source of silver in ceramic resonators is in thin foil (quartz resonator)- and i thought that it is very very small amount of silver that could not cause any problem relating with silver (partially dissolved in AR or AgCl) in AR. 

On this picture parts of gold bonding wires could be seen behind quartz resonator.



There are many of different packages of ceramic crystal resonators. Here are some types...




So, i opened few pieces to peek inside and see some gold bonding wires...








Plus - i think that good amount of gold would come from gold braze used to seal the steel cap.
Also, i saw some tiny MLCC's in some of the packages...so i am still considering Mike's advice...

For sure - i will make HCl leach as Mike said - prior anything - it will take out the most of tin out.

But...i am still thinking about next step - straight to AR or like Mike advices - washing/nitric/filtering/AR...

This is why is hard for me to decide which way to choose:
In case of using HCl leach followed by a Nitric leach - i think that good rinsing would not be enough to rinse all HCl and some of gold could went to solution after adding nitric - so maybe incineration is a better option (after water rinsing). 
After nitric leach - small gold particles/powder from braze and gold plating would be free and after filtering that solution i will have a filter paper with small gold particles/powder that should be incinerated again / or the whole filter paper could be added to AR solution later.
In other words - i am afraid that using this method - i could lose gold somewhere between those steps...maybe when incinerating - some of fine gold powder could be blown to the air or something like that....

Anyway - i am still thinking. And i will process it like most of experienced members would advice. Mike, thank you - your advice is taken. Does anyone else thinks it is a better way than going straight to AR based on your experience with ceramic resonators?

Alex


----------



## cosmetal

*"Does anyone else thinks it is a better way than going straight to AR based on your experience with ceramic resonators?"*

I certainly am no expert at ceramic resonators as I only "discovered" their gold content in June 2018: https://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=26993

That being said, I am still a firm believer that in any type of design or methodology, that "less is more". No doubt that you will experience sample loss if you follow HCl leach > wash or incinerate > HNO3 leach > AR finish. But would that loss be greater than any loss that could be experienced with a straight to AR process with the potential of Ag/Sn struggles? Who knows? And being so small and few, it would be very hard to do two separate process experiments.

I vote for straight to AR. But, I would "crack" the little buggers first with a small ball peen hammer for faster AR processing.

Peace,
James


----------



## Tzoax

cosmetal said:


> *"Does anyone else thinks it is a better way than going straight to AR based on your experience with ceramic resonators?"*
> 
> I certainly am no expert at ceramic resonators as I only "discovered" their gold content in June 2018: https://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=26993
> 
> That being said, I am still a firm believer that in any type of design or methodology, that "less is more". No doubt that you will experience sample loss if you follow HCl leach > wash or incinerate > HNO3 leach > AR finish. But would that loss be greater than any loss that could be experienced with a straight to AR process with the potential of Ag/Sn struggles? Who knows? And being so small and few, it would be very hard to do two separate process experiments.
> 
> I vote for straight to AR. But, I would "crack" the little buggers first with a small ball peen hammer for faster AR processing.
> 
> Peace,
> James




Great images James... wish i have USB microscope - if Santa doesn't bring me one - it will be the first thing in the next year for me - to buy one.  So far- i was using cellphone camera plus magnifying glasses.




In my experience i never had problem when processing them altogether with some other ceramics straight to AR.

And steel caps were dissolving pretty fast in AR as i remember - even without crushing ceramics.

Tin will not be a problem - first thing i do will be a simmer boil with HCl until the tin dissolves and i will decant solution. 

Thank you for advices James.
I am planning to process ceramic resonators in about 24 hours from now - so until then - there is some time to think more about it - so any comment is welcome - anyway - one way or another - the cat will be skinned tomorrow... and i am looking forward to see results!


----------



## mls26cwru

I guess with a small sample size, you would be okay with straight AR... i did a bit more than a pound and a half. Tin was definitely an issue, and there was enough silver to be a neucance in my test run... enough to cover material. Since it's a small amount, i think you would be okay.


----------



## zoltan

If somebody want to refine ram chips, here is my finding. The chip with small epoxy area from the bottom its mostly flip chip technology. And the ram chips with larger epoxy area have gold bond wiring. If i am wrong, please forgive me. I just want to save yours hand. Sorry for my English.


----------



## kurtak

zoltan said:


> If somebody want to refine ram chips, here is my finding. The chip with small epoxy area from the bottom its mostly flip chip technology. And the ram chips with larger epoxy area have gold bond wiring. If i am wrong, please forgive me. I just want to save yours hand. Sorry for my English.



:lol: :lol: :lol: Sorry but a just have to laugh because I read this post right after posting this

:arrow: http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&p=291651#p291651

Kurt


----------



## Tzoax

Just a quick update with images....i will write details when i finish everything...still working on it...
Great idea Kurt! But those are VERY rare RAM sticks...i would need some time to collect them for test.

Start material...


After hot HCl...the most of tin is gone...


AR stage - reaction sterted....


----------



## Tzoax

This is residue...


----------



## Tzoax

Braze foils floating - they look nice.




After all of metals dissolved i neutralized solution and decanted it to another beaker so solution cools down and all silver chloride is settled down.

*Because silver is dissolved in AR solution - adding water will make AgCl immediately. So because i used some water to rinse beaker - i will wait for AgCl to completely settle down - then i will continue.


----------



## zoltan

To Kurtak, these (no gold wires) are from tv board and have epoxy top.


----------



## Tzoax

zoltan said:


> If somebody want to refine ram chips, here is my finding. The chip with small epoxy area from the bottom its mostly flip chip technology. And the ram chips with larger epoxy area have gold bond wiring. If i am wrong, please forgive me. I just want to save yours hand. Sorry for my English.



Zoltan, thank you. I think that gold bonding wires are inside of epoxy...




...solder ball from image that you captured is used to connect two parts of IC chip....

....also there are Package on package (PoP) packages like in these pictures and solder balls you captured are used to connect upper and lower parts of IC(s).


----------



## Tzoax

When silver chloride settled down - solution was decanted into the charmin plug filter...and AgCl was "washed" with fresh HCl to collect all of the solution into the filter.

AgCl....




Filtered solution is clear and now is ready for adding SMB....




I added SMB and ---solution is becoming dark brown - gold is dropping down...


----------



## Tzoax

Dropping gold was slow - so i left it about 1 day to settle down.

Even it looks like there is much of gold - it is really a very thin layer of gold - if i point a light in reverse direction - it looks semi-transparent. 










Now i need to remove solution carefully - decanting would "pull" some of gold with it - so i am using plastic syringe (without needle of course) in situations like this. I will carefully remove solution with syringe - and remaining gold powder will be ready for gold washing.


----------



## Tzoax

Gold powder after removing solution...




Washing gold powder with water/HCl...






Look of dried gold under magnifying glass...




It is very small amount of gold.... 

It is ready for weighting... i don't know what is minimum detection of weight on my scales...so just in case, i will add 1.00g of gold on scales and add this gold on top of that...to avoid not detecting it - it looks like pretty small amount of gold.


----------



## Tzoax

And here is result...

I added 1.00g of gold into beaker...




After adding gold powder...




So - result is *0.05g* of gold out of *26.1g* of ceramic resonators.

0.05 / 26.1 = x / 1000
x = 0.05 * 1000 / 26.1
x = 1.915

So, *1kg* of mixed ceramic resonators have around *1.9g* of gold.

*Since i made test with very small sample - result is not very accurate - but at least it can give some clue about yield.

Alex


----------



## niks neims

... The more you know 

Thank you!

Whats next?


----------



## cosmetal

Alex,

Thank you for "biting the bullet" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bite_the_bullet for us with these ceramic resonators.

Your time and meticulous methods are always appreciated!  

James


----------



## Tzoax

Thank you all for support... winter is coming - so i will spend much time doing my other hobby - programming. I have about 1kg of mixed kovar/copper wires from IC's - with some of gold bonding wires tangled between....so i have this idea how to separate them mechanically - with couple of electro-motors and USB microscope. I would make computer application that recognize gold color (gold bonding wires) and as soon it does - it will activate EM and separate gold bonding wires in separate container. Of course - some of kovar/copper wires will go through - but it can be repeated again....anyway - there is much more details...but here on this picture is my basic idea.


----------



## FrugalRefiner

Very much along the lines of sophisticated sorting I've seen in the food industry. Some of it operates at speeds beyond what the eye can detect. I'll be interested to see how it works for you.

Dave


----------



## stella polaris

How does the gold actually goes of the legs? Is the wire 100% complete or is a part remaining on the leg/dice?


----------



## Tzoax

stella polaris said:


> How does the gold actually goes of the legs? Is the wire 100% complete or is a part remaining on the leg/dice?



After the incineration of IC chips - the gold bonding wires are coming off silicon dies and legs - *in crushing stage*.

But...some of gold bonding wires are tangled/meshed together with legs - so they are not coming through sieve - or they are still soldered to legs.

Many people are processing legs - to take out those remaining gold bonding wires and possible AG and Pd...
...but it is taking too much of acids and majority of gold is already processed before that stage (concentrate) so the yields will not be high - so it is question if that procedure is worth of time and chemicals.

I just checked out mu legs with magnifying glasses and the most of gold bonding wires i saw was not "free"-detached/tangled - but still connected to legs.


----------



## stella polaris

What about tumble the legs together with something that can knock of the wires? (no ball milling)
I can image that an old washing machine could be used for that. (adapted drum) Some bolts and nuts added to knock the wire of.

But perhaps some gold would still be remaining on the legs. Do the gold go of clean in the leg joint?

Edit:Worth a try to find out; Put legs in a larger pet bottle, add some bolts and put on some latino music. Shake loose and see if they come of.


----------



## Tzoax

stella polaris said:


> What about tumble the legs together with something that can knock of the wires? (no ball milling)
> I can image that an old washing machine could be used for that. (adapted drum) Some bolts and nuts added to knock the wire of.
> 
> But perhaps some gold would still be remaining on the legs. Do the gold go of clean in the leg joint?



That would surely help...but still - gold bonding wires tends to tangle with/around legs - especially longer gold bonding wires ... soon i will buy USB microscope and i will do some really good images related to this...
and i will inspect leg joints to check what remains on them when gold bonding wires are separated - that is also one of the thing that i am interested in --- are gold bonding wires just brakes - and leave some part of it still attached....or gold bonding wires are completely separated and leave only small gold residue. I will make experiment with gold bonding wires that are still attached to legs and i will separate each bonding wire at a time and observe (and make photos/videos) what is remaining on legs.


----------



## stella polaris

Do you have the feeling that they get so hard entangled that they do not seperate by shaking or vibration?


----------



## Tzoax

stella polaris said:


> Do you have the feeling that they get so hard entangled that they do not seperate by shaking or vibration?



I don't have to got feeling about that - those wires i have now - had a pretty good multiple shake (inside a glass jar) and was sieved 3-4 times...and still here they are - gold bonding wires are still there - some are tangled and some are still connected to legs. 

I think that using too much force (like washing machine with bolts) will be not so good idea because gold is very soft - and gold bonding wires could be "merged" to other metals so hard that it would be even more harder to separate them...but i could be wrong - i never tried that.


----------



## stella polaris

I have been thinking of this problem for some time. IC gives a lot of legs and i do not want to spend acid or cut them of. Maybe a small fraction of sharp quarts would do the job better than bolts. ( cheap and easy to deal with) Then pan the gold out.


----------



## patnor1011

If force is applied and some bolts and stuff then some wires will get smeared on pins. 
I think that the best approach will be some leach to go after gold only. Dissolving pins is going to cost too much in resources used and time.
I suggest cyanide leach as that may be the fastest and cheapest method to tackle pins.


----------



## stella polaris

patnor1011 said:


> If force is applied and some bolts and stuff then some wires will get smeared on pins.
> I think that the best approach will be some leach to go after gold only. Dissolving pins is going to cost too much in resources used and time.
> I suggest cyanide leach as that may be the fastest and cheapest method to tackle pins.



Cyanide leach is a good one. But were i live and on the scale i will recover gold it is not the easiest.

Tricky to get hold of. Tons of regulations and a hazard involved (Cyanide). Personally I would prefer a mechanical solution. 

When i say tumble it should not be confused with ball milling. I mean a slow, gentle movement that would shrubb the gold of. Perhaps even with water added to slow things down.

The idea of bolts was that the helical ridge would scrape the gold of. Not hammering nor cruching as if fast or longer distances of falling involved. It simply must be needed less force to cut or scrape the gold of than to smash it into the legs so hard it would stick. (Bended around the leg is an other problem i do not consider here)

The bolts or screws used should preferably be without head and quite small. This to expose maximum of ridge. Then, during a slow gentle tumbling, these ridges would scrape the gold of. A non noisy operation.

Quarts could be an other option. A sharp quarts sand could cut of the gold. Later to be recovered by panning. 

Think a slow moving washing machine. If the gold get smashed then lower the speed and use smaller bolts/screws. Adding water could defently be an idea.


----------



## rickzeien

Maybe a rock tumbler/polisher would do the trick. The sand Idea sounds like it might work.

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## stella polaris

rickzeien said:


> Maybe a rock tumbler/polisher would do the trick. The sand Idea sounds like it might work.
> 
> Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk



rickzeien you understand what I am thinking of. I started to be worried :lol: 
What about this?

Leg/quarts sand mix (+ water?) Then add a concrete vibrator or other type of vibrator.


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## rickzeien

It's a good hypothesis. Only way to know is trials : )



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## patnor1011

You need to realize how small and tiny these wires are. There is no way you can accomplish what you want mechanically. Maybe with some use of ultrasound but mechanically it simply can't be done in my opinion and experience. I still do have few metal pots, rods, spoons with gold from bonding wires smeared on them
If you can't get and use cyanide you can try ferrocyanide leach like ecogoldex or straight ferrocyanide. That can be bought freely. Work slower but it does the job. There are some other leach agents I personally not used but are worth exploring as they are much wiser to use than trying to dissolve metallic parts from IC.


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## rickzeien

I think that patnor1011 knows much much more than I do. Probably best to follow his advise on this.

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk


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## geedigity

Has anyone considered using liquid nitrogen (if easily obtainable and inexpensive in your area)? I would first freeze the legs (using a standard refrigerator/freezer) in an attempt to lower the ambient temperature of the material so less liquid nitrogen is boiled away when it is first tumbled. This process should make the tin solder fairly brittle, although antimony as an additive to the solder may keep it malleable even at low temperatures. One benefit would be that no extra waste is created. Just thinking here, and I have never tried this process for removing gold wires from legs. One item to consider is the quantity of gold recovered may not justify the cost of the liquid nitrogen.


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## Dr.xyz

Wires are not soldered but welded. If they were soldered just some heat would release them.


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## patnor1011

rickzeien said:


> I think that patnor1011 knows much much more than I do. Probably best to follow his advise on this.
> 
> Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk



This was always a team effort. I do not hide stuff I have no reason for it I just wanted to share things even if they did not work for me. 
Perhaps we all do have different standards - meaning that everyone does have a different approach to question "what is enough" or "when is enough". 
The classic procedure we use (incinerating-grinding-washing) liberate most of the gold. If someone wants all of it then going after what was left on metallic parts like legs is a logical step. If you really want all of it then this could be considered as an added cost and in some cases (low-value IC with many legs) cost of recovery may exceed recovered value. In my case and current gold price it was not worth it but they are stashed for later so one day in future me or someone may get what was left behind. 
Same goes for wafers from inside, there is some gold on them too.


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## geedigity

Dr.xyz said:


> Wires are not soldered but welded. If they were soldered just some heat would release them.



Good point. However, it would still stand to reason that the metal(s) used to bond the gold wire to the leg would become more brittle. Remains to be tried and I may look at this when I process my next batch of chips.


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## Dr.xyz

There are no other metals, only legs and gold ultrasonic welded together.


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## patnor1011

I do not think that is a correct statement. Some IC do have just legs (pins) but most of them do have various other stuff in them like some sort of let's call it "shielding" or "placeholders". I have seen tons of various odd-shaped metallic parts inside IC.


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## g_axelsson

The odd formed metal parts found inside chips are either the lead frame or an integrated heat spreader. Heat spreaders are most common in plastic BGA chips and can have all kinds of shapes, squares, rounded, star formed... Lead frames for plastic chips (not the metal lead) are a metallic structure which the chip is first mounted on and then after the plastic is cast around bond wires and the lead frame, the frame is cut off and the legs of the IC is formed from the remaining metal sticking out of the plastic.

Göran


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## stella polaris

patnor1011 said:


> I still do have few metal pots, rods, spoons with gold from bonding wires smeared on them



Could it be from the crushing of the IC chips? The crushing of the chips can be the reason the gold is smeared out. But if the gold is smeared out during tumbling/shrubbing the legs you have a point. If not then its like comparing apples and pears.

It might be so that crushing is not the way to go. Just because the gold gets smeared out.


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## Tzoax

I just bought a USB microscope. I made a couple of random photos of gold bonding wires. It is little tricky to make a focus....but it is a huge difference comparing with my previous pictures made with magnifying glass...
Now i can make a couple of tests with them.


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## rickzeien

Tzoax said:


> I just bought a USB microscope. I made a couple of random photos of gold bonding wires. It is little tricky to make a focus....but it is a huge difference comparing with my previous pictures made with magnifying glass...
> Now i can make a couple of tests with them.
> 
> View attachment 4
> 
> View attachment 3
> 
> View attachment 2
> 
> View attachment 1


Really nice photo's. I am grateful for you sharing all your great work!

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk


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## Tzoax

rickzeien said:


> Really nice photo's. I am grateful for you sharing all your great work!


 Thank you rickzeien! I just made one test to see what would happen when gold bonding wire is detached from leg... I found this one for test:




The other side of leg:




Different light angles...:


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## Tzoax

So i tried to take off the gold bonding wire from leg and after this first attempt - the wire braked like in the picture...




After second attempt...




It is clear that gold bonding wire braked again because it could be seen that there is still some small amount of gold left on leg...


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## cosmetal

*"I just bought a USB microscope. I made a couple of random photos of gold bonding wires. It is little tricky to make a focus....but it is a huge difference comparing with my previous pictures made with magnifying glass..."*

Welcome to the world of USB microscope photography!

Have you tried playing around with your camera's photograph resolution and image size?

Try using a higher resolution along with a smaller image size. 

Good start though!  

James


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## Dr.xyz

Those USB microscopes are utter garbage, image sensor is something like VGA and software tries to make pictures full HD or even bigger with poor results.


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## glorycloud

Trust the Fin's to rain on someone's parade. :lol:


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## cosmetal

rickzeien said:


> Maybe a rock tumbler/polisher would do the trick. The sand Idea sounds like it might work.
> 
> Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk



Now I'm in trouble . . . you just added to my "things to try" list.

I recycle, repurpose and refine ewaste (yes, I just melted my first button!  ). My wife and I also make jewelry (no, not from ewaste :shock: ).

Being retired, I always try to stretch my "for hobby/play" money as far as possible. If for some reason I can't make my own equipment, one thing I always do is buy the best equipment I can and try to have multiple uses for it.

One thing I recently bought was an Extreme Rebel 17 tumbler http://extremetumblers.com/products.html 
that was initially designed for use as a brass cartridge tumbler/polisher for those shooters that reload their own ammo.

I am an Industrial Designer and can honestly say that if I was going to design a small tumbler, it would be built like this "beast". I have used it as a mini-ball mill using various diameters of SS ball bearings to crush a load of incinerated ICs. Worked like a charm. Cleaned it (rubber liner can be removed), and then used it to tumble hard stones and crystals for jewelry. For the stones, I use various grades of silicon carbide grit along with ceramic tumbling media. The grit is commercially available in small quantities and sizes. Such as 60/90 grit, 120/220 grit, etc.

When I get done with my current load of stones (it takes 4+ weeks running 24/7 to properly tumble stones to a high polish), I am going to try a small load of incinerated ICs and then a small load of un-incinerated ICs using a coarse silicon carbide grit instead of SS ball bearings.

Legs and lead frames are usually made from a Kovar/Type 41 alloy that has a very high tensile strength. My hypothesis is that the epoxy on the un-incinerated ICs should abrade first then the softer metals and Kovar last. The process could be stopped before the steel is ground leaving only epoxy dust comingled with any Sn, Al, Cu, Au, Ag, Pd, etc. and, of course, fractured SiC. My theory is that the softer metals should be reduced to a "sand" and not "smeared" by any dropping force. The whole process could be done in a dust cabinet to mitigate any free-floating dust which may escape when the tumbler is opened. The tumbler is designed to be used as a wet media tumbler and seals extremely well. Final processed volume should be reduced dramatically thereby making final wet refining less chemically intense.

Go ahead and pick me apart - I'm a "big boy" and can take constructive criticisms and especially constructive suggestions.

Peace all,
James  

BTW, never use sand - way too contaminated.


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## cosmetal

Dr.xyz said:


> Those USB microscopes are utter garbage, image sensor is something like VGA and software tries to make pictures full HD or even bigger with poor results.



Sorry, IMHO, no.

You get what you pay for.

Peace,
James


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## anachronism

James

A cement mixer with varied steel balls in it works wonders. :lol: :lol: 

Nick and I call ours the RVEC - sounds so much better than cement mixer.... (Rotary Value Enhancement Concentrator)

For years I refused to go near one.


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## rickzeien

anachronism said:


> James
> 
> A cement mixer with varied steel balls in it works wonders. [emoji38] [emoji38]
> 
> Nick and I call ours the RVEC - sounds so much better than cement mixer.... (Rotary Value Enhancement Concentrator)
> 
> For years I refused to go near one.


It's all in the branding... What if the big Mac was sold as fried dead cow parts sold real cheap. Not the same market appeal as Two all beef patties ....

LOL

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk


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## jimdoc

fried dead cow parts, mixed with cardboard, sold real cheap


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## Platdigger

And hormones right? Don't forget the hormones.


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## anachronism

Platdigger said:


> And hormones right? Don't forget the hormones.



Haha I spat my coffee all over my screen.


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## cosmetal

anachronism said:


> James
> 
> A cement mixer with varied steel balls in it works wonders. :lol: :lol:
> 
> Nick and I call ours the RVEC - sounds so much better than cement mixer.... (Rotary Value Enhancement Concentrator)
> 
> For years I refused to go near one.



Jon,

Catchy name . . . you and Nick should slap a trademark on it before Harbor Freight re-brands a line of their cement mixers. :lol:  :lol:  

Cheers,
James


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## Tzoax

cosmetal said:


> *"I just bought a USB microscope. I made a couple of random photos of gold bonding wires. It is little tricky to make a focus....but it is a huge difference comparing with my previous pictures made with magnifying glass..."*
> 
> Welcome to the world of USB microscope photography!
> 
> Have you tried playing around with your camera's photograph resolution and image size?
> 
> Try using a higher resolution along with a smaller image size.
> 
> Good start though!
> 
> James




Thank you James, i made those pictures in 640x 480 resolution that is default. All other resolutions are not really better resolution but just zoomed in. I bought very cheap Chinese USB microscope - i payed it about 20$. 
Anyway i am really satisfied with it - at least i can see gold bonding wires much clearer than before. If there is a need i will buy a better microscope.

On this test i used one gold bonding wire that i placed on CD ROM metal case, and i made pressure on it wirh screwdriver many times - and i used much of force. 
Gold bonding wire:



So, after multiple pressures the majority of gold remained in a form of foils...



But at some places - a very tiny gold particles sticked on metal.


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## FrugalRefiner

I bought one much like yours, and I'm satisfied with it as well. I take my pictures at a high resolution and large image size, then use a free program called IrfanView to crop the image, readjust the image size, and save at a resolution that produces a good image with a small file size.

Dave


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## Tzoax

FrugalRefiner said:


> I bought one much like yours, and I'm satisfied with it as well. I take my pictures at a high resolution and large image size, then use a free program called IrfanView to crop the image, readjust the image size, and save at a resolution that produces a good image with a small file size.
> 
> Dave



Thats great, i am cropping and resizing images in "Paint" application that is included in any of version of Windows. One of the great tools is to sharpen image - for that when needed i am using any of free online photo editor websites. 
Now i started to make my own application that is controlling USB microscope camera (that part i already finished - i can control microscope camera), so i will make automatic color recognition (that will include all shades of gold color) and the last part is to make tiny assembly line and a way to separate gold bonding wires (when detected).. I will try to make it and see how it works.


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## Tzoax

For better understanding - this is example how i am planning to detect gold bonding wires - by color. That will also include all of gold plated legs. Something like "optical separation". Legs would going on and as soon microscope camera detect gold color - legs/gold bonding wires would be redirected to separate container.


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## FrugalRefiner

Very cool!

Dave


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## anachronism

Colour sorting is a big thing in ewaste separation at a commercial level. There's some really interesting gear out there to do large volumes.

That given it works within tolerances so it's never perfect.


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## patnor1011

Tzoax said:


> For better understanding - this is example how i am planning to detect gold bonding wires - by color. That will also include all of gold plated legs. Something like "optical separation". Legs would going on and as soon microscope camera detect gold color - legs/gold bonding wires would be redirected to separate container.
> 
> gif colors.gif



It is a cool idea to have fun but I can't see any real potential. I mean we talk about gold bonding wires which are so small you can't even see them properly. Also, IC does have hundreds of legs. How long do you think it will take to visually inspect material from just one IC? Multiply that then with hundreds of them required to process to make just 1 gram of gold. 
Your camera will detect gold colour on nearly every leg as most of them are plated on the tip where bonding wire is usually attached.


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## stella polaris

Tzoax said:


> rickzeien said:
> 
> 
> 
> Really nice photo's. I am grateful for you sharing all your great work!
> 
> 
> 
> Thank you rickzeien! I just made one test to see what would happen when gold bonding wire is detached from leg... I found this one for test:
> 
> 1.jpg
> 
> The other side of leg:
> 
> 2.jpg
> 
> Different light angles...:
> 
> 3.jpg
> 
> 4.jpg
> 
> 5.jpg
Click to expand...


Anyone that knows what material the silvershiny part on the legtip is made of? Is it a tin soldering or? If tin it could be an idea to seperate the gold in a temperature that holds the tin melted.


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## Platdigger

Gold and tin form an alloy. You will not separate with temperature.
Pure tin melts at 449.5F.
An alloy of 80% gold 20% tin melts at 532F.
This being a eutectic alloy, meaning the melting point is the same as the solid point.
Still trying to get my head around that one by the way.


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## g_axelsson

Eutectic just means that it will solidify all at once and not crystallize out another alloy at first. Eutectic alloys melts just like ice, it stop at a fixed temperature until all is either molten or solid.
An alloy that isn't eutectic will start to solidify one type of alloy rich in one component while the melt is getting richer in the other component, you get more and more solids while the temperature drops, until the liquid between the crystals reaches the temperature where it will solidify again... and the opposite when melting. In other words, there is a temperature span where there is both molten and solid metal.

That said, I strongly doubt that the ends on the lead frame is tin plated, it would form a physically weak bond, also have a huge risk of melting during soldering. My guess on the plating is gold on nickel, nickel or palladium.

Göran


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## stella polaris

Platdigger said:


> Gold and tin form an alloy. You will not separate with temperature.
> Pure tin melts at 449.5F.
> An alloy of 80% gold 20% tin melts at 532F.
> This being a eutectic alloy, meaning the melting point is the same as the solid point.
> Still trying to get my head around that one by the way.



Well, the trick is to get the gold of the leg. For sure you are interested of a possible gold/tin alloy to come of as well. If it is tin heat might help get the gold ( and alloy) of the leg. Then you can take care of the tin/gold alloy separated from the leg. The silver shiny surface have been put on for some reason. If you can separate it from the leg the gold will follow. So the question remains. What is it the leg is tipped with?

Edit: The metal that its tipped with is that that holds the gold on to the leg. Since its a tiny amount of metal it must be possible to remove it. If Nickel as Göran suggest perhaps a Nickel electrolyte can take it of. If Palladium who would not like to collect it? Since a tiny amount even a crude electrolyte might do the job. The gold falls of and the palladium is collected.


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## Tzoax

patnor1011 said:


> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> For better understanding - this is example how i am planning to detect gold bonding wires - by color. That will also include all of gold plated legs. Something like "optical separation". Legs would going on and as soon microscope camera detect gold color - legs/gold bonding wires would be redirected to separate container.
> 
> gif colors.gif
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is a cool idea to have fun but I can't see any real potential. I mean we talk about gold bonding wires which are so small you can't even see them properly. Also, IC does have hundreds of legs. How long do you think it will take to visually inspect material from just one IC? Multiply that then with hundreds of them required to process to make just 1 gram of gold.
> Your camera will detect gold colour on nearly every leg as most of them are plated on the tip where bonding wire is usually attached.
Click to expand...


You got the point...with this cheap USB microscope it would definitely not be possible to make efficient color separation...and it is only because a very low refresh rate of cheap microscope cameras - sometimes it takes several seconds to show another picture frame, and sometimes it just freeze on one image...with investing in a more expensive camera (or many cameras) it is possible to make it efficient but i don't have such tendencies.

Currently i am testing *silicon dies gold content* for second time - but with different method.
First time i processed them *directly to AR* and the result was *0.71g/kg*.

Now i used nitric acid to dissolve as much of silver i could, then i filtered the solution. And now it is ready for AR. I am making this experiment to see which way is better in a term of yields.

This is couple of pictures of silicon dies under microscope after nitric (nitric acid/distilled water - 50:50) treatment and filtering - a gold traces are beautiful.


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## rickzeien

Those are some great pics. Thanks

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## Tzoax

I started with 196.1g of silicon dies. After processed with nitric acid i filtered the solution two times to capture all small particles and i processed those filters (charmin plugs) separatel.




This is another beaker with silicon dies.




AR solution...




Filtered AR solution




Dropped gold after mixing...




Particles are very small so i will wait until tomorrow to give a time for all of gold to settle down.


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## Tzoax

Washing gold powder...




Drying gold powder...




Gold powder




Gold powder under microscope




Result:




Out of 196.1g of silicon dies i refined 0.16g of gold - that is *0.81g of gold / kg of silicon dies*.

The result is slightly better then my previous test when i processed silicon dies directly to AR - *0.71g/kg*.

One way or another - there is gold and yield is not that bad for silicon dies. Only difficulties are that silicon dies have large volume - so more acid will be needed and there is a lot of silver so knowing how to deal with silver / silver chloride is beneficial.


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## niks neims

That is some great info! Thank you, Tzoax!

Any idea about the Ag yield? about the same weight as Au (so - negligible value) or more?


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## Tzoax

niks neims said:


> That is some great info! Thank you, Tzoax!
> 
> Any idea about the Ag yield? about the same weight as Au (so - negligible value) or more?



I would say there is much more silver than gold in silicon dies (based on silver / silver chloride i could see) but i never tested the weight of silver due to much of work for such a small income. Next time i process silicon dies i will collect more of them and i will include silver yields as well, thanks for idea.


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## Tzoax

Finally i got some of *medical equipment*. In this test i will compare my previous results from PC's and compare it with medical equipment results - and see the difference in yields - are IC chips from medical equipment contains more of gold than from PC's?

I dismantled ultrasound boards from medical *ultrasound - (Siemens Acuson Sequoia 512)* and i classified the IC chips. I prepared this type of IC's model for test: *Acuson 55471*.













As i already tested this same package from PC's boards here: https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22951#p240808 ...i will compare a new results with it:

Total weight of chips - 576.5g
Number of chips - 109pcs
Avg weight by 1 chip - 5.288990826g
Gold recovered - 0.7g
Gold content per 1kg - 1.214224g
Gold content per 1 chip - 0.006422018g


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## bvdsluis

Hi Tzoax,
Your thread is amazing, a lot of information and inspiration. Almost every day I check the board and your thread. At this time I only collect base material like chips, fingers and pins. I live in Holland and everything is overregulated including e-waste and chemicals.

So the collecting of “raw material” is slow. I’m collecting for 3 years now but don’t have kilos of chips, fingers and pins. So it will take some time before I will start to recover and refine. In the meantime I study, study, study and make notes. I have for every material and process a document that I update with information I pick-up from this board. There are a lot of great posters with deep knowledge and you are one of them.

Thanks to people like you I keep motivated to continue collecting “raw material”.
In the meantime I make some small money with the leftovers like aluminum, steel, low grade boards (boards after cherry picking), copper and copper wires.

Thanks for sharing your recover and refine adventure with the board.

Bob


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## Tzoax

bvdsluis said:


> Hi Tzoax,
> Your thread is amazing, a lot of information and inspiration. Almost every day I check the board and your thread. At this time I only collect base material like chips, fingers and pins. I live in Holland and everything is overregulated including e-waste and chemicals.
> 
> So the collecting of “raw material” is slow. I’m collecting for 3 years now but don’t have kilos of chips, fingers and pins. So it will take some time before I will start to recover and refine. In the meantime I study, study, study and make notes. I have for every material and process a document that I update with information I pick-up from this board. There are a lot of great posters with deep knowledge and you are one of them.
> 
> Thanks to people like you I keep motivated to continue collecting “raw material”.
> In the meantime I make some small money with the leftovers like aluminum, steel, low grade boards (boards after cherry picking), copper and copper wires.
> 
> Thanks for sharing your recover and refine adventure with the board.
> 
> Bob



Bob, thank you very much - i am really glad to see that my "experimenting" with IC chips helps other people like you for better understanding of this huge topic. 

People are generally greedy when it comes to gold refining - at least almost all people that i know personally. They are hiding their "secret recipes" for gold refining and their results. When i started to be interested in gold recovery it was impossible for me to find out any information about it...until i found this forum. 

Gold recovery (for hobby) attracts many people...but it really requires certain personal attributes to be successful in it and to understand it which is also very important. It requires curiosity, intelligence, patience, skill, persistence, and of course a lot of time of studding. And not many people have it - so they give up eventually.

So whenever i learned something new thanks to other people here - it really gave me enlightenment feeling. My point is - sharing knowledge is priceless - especially in this huge field of gold recovery - it is a only way for deeper knowledge - which is a key thing here in my opinion.

I am sure there are other ways you can find some e-scrap...even if it is overregulated. If you have newer motherboards you can always make some replacement for older ones with PC services or individuals that are repairing them. That way you can change one newer motherboard for 2 or 3 older ones. Have you tried with ads?
I am repairing computers, so when i finish a job i always give opportunity to customer that he can pay me in some old e-scrap instead of money - and most people always have something that they not need.
Anyway, it is very small amount of material for 3 years of collecting - you should find some way to collect it faster. Do you have some pictures of material you collected so far?

Alex


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## Tzoax

While i was incinerating IC chips from ultrasound machine mentioned above i noticed very interesting thing - a whole lower surface of those IC's is *gold plated*. First i thought it was heat spreader but it seems it is just some thin gold coating. Does anyone know what is purpose of this layer?
I am not really sure it is really gold but for sure looks like it.










If it is gold - is there a way to recover it? Is it possible to separate it from the ash? While water rinsing - are those gold foils heavier than ash? Is it ENIG gold plating? Here is some questions so if anyone have some thoughts or experience with this problem (IC chips ashes with gold foils in it) please share it if you will.

This is picture of gold bonding wires, i managed to measure a length - it is about one mm. This package is *QFP160* and it have *160 gold bonding wires per chip* - or about *1.6cm* of total length of gold bonding wires per chip. So i had *64* IC's - that is about 102cm of total lenght of gold bonding wires i am dealing in this batch - just for interesting fact.


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## anachronism

What do these chips look like before incineration?


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## Tzoax

anachronism said:


> What do these chips look like before incineration?



They are totally black - epoxy on both side. The plating is on bottom of IC chips - just beneath a very thin layer of epoxy - even after incinerating it is visible (without crushing).


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## Tzoax

I just saw - this gold? plating is on top side of IC chips - not on down side. So it is most likely related with markings on top surface of chips. 

Anyway - this is how they look after first sieving, i will repeat incineration/sieving until all epoxy ash goes through the sieve. They are all non-magnetic.


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## bvdsluis

Tzoax said:


> I am sure there are other ways you can find some e-scrap...even if it is overregulated. If you have newer motherboards you can always make some replacement for older ones with PC services or individuals that are repairing them. That way you can change one newer motherboard for 2 or 3 older ones. Have you tried with ads?
> I am repairing computers, so when i finish a job i always give opportunity to customer that he can pay me in some old e-scrap instead of money - and most people always have something that they not need.
> Anyway, it is very small amount of material for 3 years of collecting - you should find some way to collect it faster. Do you have some pictures of material you collected so far?
> 
> Alex



Hi Alex,

Thanks for your nice words and ideas. Guess what, I put an advert and just like that I got a response the same day. I got an offer to buy 160 VIA EPIA ML 8000 c3 800mhz boards (68 kilo) together with the power supply (224 kilo) for 50 euro. I have attached the motherboard image. 

I see at least 2 gold tip chips (VIA CLE266 North Bridge and VIA VT8235 South Bridge) and an VIA C3™ EBGA processor 800 MHz Processor according to the specification I have found on the internet.
The North- and South Bridge are good candidates for a good yield, I’m not sure about the VIA C3 Processor. What do you think, is this a good buy? I believe the power supply (224 kilo) only will fetch 30 euro plus at the scrap yard.




Bob


----------



## Tzoax

I have just the same motherboard - the BGA processor with heatsink on top have gold bonding wires also, but i never tested how much. Most often there are several layers ob some kind of foils beneath the metal cap, i just take off epoxy (with gold bonding wires inside) and process it with other BGA's. And sometimes - with similar types of chips gold is in one of those foils i mentioned, and it is more often orange colored half transparent, and you can see gold bonding wires with naked eyes - i process these directly in AR with foils,

Those boards are small (Mini ATX format) but they are good - you have 3 BGA's and about 10 more reular IC's per board, I am paying them about 1.3 euros per piece. I usually take off BGA's and sell them for 0.8 euros,

So, roughly estimating - there is about 4g of black tops per board, so 160 motherboards will have about 640g of black tops - that is minimum 6.4g of gold - or 240 euros just from BGA;s. On your place i would take just BGA's and sell 160 boards without them for about 120 euros.

So yes, i think it is a perfect deal - buy them before someone else does. 

You can test power supplies, i doubt they are all malfunctioned - and sell them for 5-10 euros per piece. You can test them with power supply tester - and with it you can check all voltages from power supply very fast,
I have one like this - it is cheap and does the job.




Alex


----------



## Tzoax

This is remaining material after third incineration/crushing/sieving. I removed the most of silicon dies and heat spreaders. Silicon dies are on the top left side of image, and heat spreaders on down left side. In a mix of remaining material i see a little more of unburned epoxy so i will repeat process once again.




Silicon die.




Heat spreaders are very light and look interesting under microscope.


----------



## bvdsluis

Tzoax said:


> Those boards are small (Mini ATX format) but they are good - you have 3 BGA's and about 10 more reular IC's per board, I am paying them about 1.3 euros per piece. I usually take off BGA's and sell them for 0.8 euros,
> 
> So, roughly estimating - there is about 4g of black tops per board, so 160 motherboards will have about 640g of black tops - that is minimum 6.4g of gold - or 240 euros just from BGA;s. On your place i would take just BGA's and sell 160 boards without them for about 120 euros.
> 
> So yes, i think it is a perfect deal - buy them before someone else does.
> 
> Alex



Hi Alex,

Thanks a lot for your analyze and calculations I learn a lot from you.
I bought the 160 boards for 40 euros. The power supplies were gone. At your place you get a nice price for the boards without the BGS’s.

At my place I have 3 options:
If I sell the boards as is (including aluminum and battery) I receive 1 euro per kilo (68 kilo = 68 euro total). 
If I remove the aluminum and battery I receive 2,80 euro per kilo (net 48 kilo = 134 euro total). 
If I remove the BGA’s the boards will be low grade, 025 euro per kilo (net 48 kilo = 12 euro total)

So the best option is take the BGA’s and other chips and sell the boards as low grade. The gold in the BGA’s will bring the profit when I’m ready to process.

Thanks,

Bob


----------



## Tzoax

After another incineration, crushing and sieving - the residue was copper based legs. I decided to process them also. I never did that before when i made my tests - because i considered that there are very few of gold bonding wires left in there. 




So i added about 100ml of fresh 16% HCl over copper legs and the solution was colored green immediately - Copper II chloride solution was formed. And it happened so fast because after incinerating IC's - all copper legs was oxidized - making copper oxide - which on contact with HCl produces copper II chloride right away. 

I repeated decanting and adding fresh HCl two more times - when it seems the solution was saturated (settling down of copper I chloride white powder on the bottom of the beaker).




It was very fast reaction - i was very surprised how fast i was watching the copper is going into solution.




On my big surprise the whole process was over in a few hours. There was just a little more of copper wires undissolved - but very little of it. So final concentrate (just from legs) look like this:




So i took magnifying glasses and saw much more of gold bonding wires than i thought there will be. Those wires went 7-8 times of sieving before this...and still - there are considerable amount of them still with legs "residue".




So the bad news is that all my tests so far was wrong - there is considerable amount of more gold in all types of IC's i tested so far, so count on that. And the good news are that i learned a very important things and my results will be more accurate in the future because i will include kovar/copper legs into gold yields.

Now i will make concentrate out of ash and when i am done i will merge the concentrate from ash with concentrate from legs and get my first accurate result.


----------



## cosmetal

Tzoax wrote:
*"And the good news are that i learned a very important things and my results will be more accurate in the future because i will include kovar/copper legs into gold yields."*

Two questions, please:

1.) By "legs", I assume you are talking about that portion of the leadframe still encased within the unincinerated epoxy package as it appears you remove the exposed portions of the legs before incineration. Is this correct?
2.) If correct, what do you use (or how do you) remove the exposed portion of the legs prior to incineration? Grinding wheel, sander, nippers, etc.?

Thanks,
James


----------



## Tzoax

cosmetal said:


> Tzoax wrote:
> *"And the good news are that i learned a very important things and my results will be more accurate in the future because i will include kovar/copper legs into gold yields."*
> 
> Two questions, please:
> 
> 1.) By "legs", I assume you are talking about that portion of the leadframe still encased within the unincinerated epoxy package as it appears you remove the exposed portions of the legs before incineration. Is this correct?
> 2.) If correct, what do you use (or how do you) remove the exposed portion of the legs prior to incineration? Grinding wheel, sander, nippers, etc.?
> 
> Thanks,
> James



James, yes - i always remove the "legs" that are on outer side of (unincinerated) ic chps (one exception is the smallest types of IC's). 

That helps me because that way i have less metals involved and no solder for further treatment, They are also taking less volume without legs and easier ti incinerate.

If IC chips have such a tiny legs like this QFP160 package (which i am processing now) - then i use scalpel - this one (still have couple more unused blades inside for replacement):




If legs are thick - then i bend them 2-3 times in two directions with hands - until they break off. 

I am aware that i don't have to do this, and that there are other ways to remove legs like using CuCl2 - but old habits lasts long. I even used to wash them with water - just to be cleaner - i stopped doing that - so i am in a progress. :lol:


----------



## Tzoax

I am making concentrate out of ashes. After water rinsing i washed concentrate with HCl two times - and removed much of copper (source of copper - copper legs that went through the sieve).

This is bottom view of a beaker with concentrate:


----------



## anachronism

Excuse me for asking this but why dont you dissolve all the legs in HCL before you even begin the process?


----------



## patnor1011

Not possible to remove all. He cut out an exposed part like I used to do too. What remains is inside epoxy about 6-8 times longer than the exposed part and cant be easily removed before incineration.


----------



## anachronism

patnor1011 said:


> Not possible to remove all. He cut out an exposed part like I used to do too. What remains is inside epoxy about 6-8 times longer than the exposed part and cant be easily removed before incineration.



OK Pat. At least the exposed bit is cut off. I had visions of the whole thing being processed with all the legs.


----------



## Tzoax

anachronism said:


> Excuse me for asking this but why dont you dissolve all the legs in HCL before you even begin the process?



If you are thinking why i don't dissolve the outer legs *before* incineration - because HCl will not dissolve copper - it will remove only tin from solder - leaving solid state chlorides from other components of solder (sivler, lead...) - and at the end it would end up like IC chips without tin - contaminated with silver and lead chlorides - altogether with intact legs. Another reason is that legs can be from different materials (kovar, copper alloys...) which complicates it even more. But - then again - it is a good way to chemically remove tin - it will just need a good water rinsing of IC's after process. In my case - it is easier for me to remove solder mechanically than this way. Of course - if i had a large quantity of IC's then it would have sense.

If you are thinking why i don't dissolve the outer legs *before* incineration but for prolonged time - giving a time for *CuCl2* formation / or adding already existing Copper II Chloride so it can dissolve tin and outer legs - because like above - not all legs are made on copper base - if they are iron based adding HCl to them will make iron chloride that dissolves Iron in the same manor like copper II chloride dissolves copper. So - in other words - if IC's are not separated to magnetic (kovar, iron based...) and non-magnetic (copper based) and processed together - that solution will be worthless for future using. But it will still work - i don't use it because of time needed for process and later water rinsing - but most important reason is that - like Patnor explained - it will not dissolve legs for inside anyway....instead - it will dissolve at certain depth of holes where wires was - making a "pocket" in which acids will be accumulated - making it much harder to rinse - and after - while incinerating - making fumes even more deadly.

If you are thinking why i don't dissolve the outer legs *after* incineration - because carbon adsorption of metal ions - that way i would have metal ions inside of IC's incinerated epoxy all the way at the end - final concentrate. And i always incinerate 3-5 times before that - so i like when ashes don't have metal ions while i am doing that. But at the end of process - when all internal legs are exposed and oxidized, and when all the ashes are gone (with water rinsing) - it is much easier to deal with them. Simply adding HCl will much easily dissolve all internal wires...and outer wires too (in case i didn't remove them mechanically). That way i process smallest types of IC's (without mechanically removing outer legs) - and i never had problems.

It is not that much important to remove outer legs in either way - it just make a IC's a little bit "cleaner" - everything works perfectly well even without it.



anachronism said:


> I had visions of the whole thing being processed with all the legs.



I always take pictures of IC's before i process them - if you take a look at them you will see that outer legs are removed. Thank you for asking - sorry for the long answer - i hope my explanation is understandable.



This is how final concentrate from ashes looks like. 

Bottom view:




Top view:



t
This is side view when i concentrate the concentrate on side by shaking the beaker:







And this is all that was left from IC's - inside of left beaker is concentrate from ashes, inside right beaker is concentrate from copper legs, and i still have silicon dies and internal heat spreaders. 




I will mix everything in one beaker and i will add HCl again to try to dissolve heat spreaders - very thin and light copper plates that are already oxidized by incineration.


----------



## Tzoax

After mixing concentrate from ashes, concentrate from copper legs and silicon dies with heatsinks - it is ready for AR. This is picture of AR dissolving metals - on top you can see copper legs/wires floating and dissolving.




Gold is dissolving at last - so at this moment (while gold is still not dissolved) this is a picture of gold bonding wires at the bottom of the beaker.




There was some silver chloride at the end of reaction. So after neutralizing solution and filtration (charmin plug method) this is how solution looks after.




After adding SMB - gold is dropped out from solution (but still not visible) and the blue color is copper || chloride. 




After mixing and after few minutes gold starts to be visible. Now it is just time needed for gold powder to settle down.


----------



## Tzoax

Washing gold powder




Drying gold powder




Microscope image




At the beginning there was 347.8g of IC's.




And here is the result:





x = 0.17 x 1000 / 347.8 = *0.48g of gold per kilogram of this kind of IC's*.....

That is way lower than the same packages (QFP160) that i tested with PC's IC's.
I really expected much more because it was IC's from medical equipment - from ultrasound machine.
I even processed everything (not only concentrate from ashes, but copper legs, silicon dies and heatsinks)...but still - very little of gold comparing to same package from PCs - 1.21g/kg 
https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22951#p240808

Other details:

Total weight of chips - 347.8g
Number of chips - 64
Avg weight by 1 chip - 5.43g
Gold recovered - 0.17g
Gold content per 1kg - 0.48g
Gold content per 1 chip - 0.00265625g (by todays price - *0.11$* or *0.1€*)


----------



## cosmetal

Tzoax wrote:

*"x = 0.17 x 1000 / 347.8 = 0.48g of gold per kilogram of this kind of IC's.....

That is way lower than the same packages (QFP160) that i tested with PC's IC's.
I really expected much more because it was IC's from medical equipment - from ultrasound machine.
I even processed everything (not only concentrate from ashes, but copper legs, silicon dies and heatsinks)...but still - very little of gold comparing to same package from PCs - 1.21g/kg 
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22951#p240808

Other details:

Total weight of chips - 347.8g
Number of chips - 64
Avg weight by 1 chip - 5.43g
Gold recovered - 0.17g
Gold content per 1kg - 0.48g
Gold content per 1 chip - 0.00265625g (by todays price - 0.11$ or 0.1€)"*

Possibly caused by the difference in IC manufacturing dates? 

James


----------



## Tzoax

cosmetal said:


> Possibly caused by the difference in IC manufacturing dates?
> 
> James



It could be... i found assembly date *07 - 00*...

And i found the code on IC's nearby that says it is manufactured in 47th week of 1999......i thought that even that is considered "old" enough to consider much gold richer components especially for medical equipment...but it isn't... 




Maybe it is because the manufacturer - Acuson. Here is some details about them:

_*"As per the transaction announced on September 27, 2000, Acuson Corporation was acquired by Siemens AG. Acuson Corporation is engaged in the manufacture, worldwide marketing, and servicing of products for the radiology, cardiology, vascular, ob/gyn applications, and hospital network information systems that generate, display, archive, and retrieve medical diagnostic ultrasound images. The markets for Acuson products are North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, South America, and the Middle East. The company sells its products primarily to hospitals, private and governmental institutions, healthcare agencies, medical equipment distributors, and doctors' offices. The company was founded in 1979 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California."*_

Since this is the very last components that they made (before Siemens acquired them) is it possible that it is the reason for very low precious metal content inside? I am assuming that they were near bankrupt at the last days and they had a very good reasons to be economic.


----------



## Tzoax

I am considering which type of chips i will test next...and i remember that once long time ago i said i will test this type - very small IC chips with 3 legs like in the picture:




Laptop motherboards, graphic cards and other PC components are loaded with them, they are everywhere. They are tiny....but i want to see are those worth for cherry picking - what is estimate value of one IC chip of this kind.




I checked a few markings and i found it is *SOT-23 package*. 







And i checked what i could expect from them - about *1.7g of gold / kg*.




So i think those will be next.


----------



## bvdsluis

Tzoax said:


> I am considering which type of chips i will test next...and i remember that once long time ago i said i will test this type - very small IC chips with 3 legs like in the picture:
> 
> Laptop motherboards, graphic cards and other PC components are loaded with them, they are everywhere. They are tiny....but i want to see are those worth for cherry picking - what is estimate value of one IC chip of this kind.
> 
> I checked a few markings and i found it is *SOT-23 package*.
> 
> 
> And i checked what i could expect from them - about *1.7g of gold / kg*.
> 
> So i think those will be next.



Hi Alex,
I was about to ask if you still had plans to see if it was worth the time and effort. Since you showed in your post that these tiny components could contain gold I started to collect them but it takes a lot of patient/effort because to get a bit of volume it will take time.

I just take them off, in the beginning I did some checks with the numbers but you cannot check them all. I have broken a few and I have seen gold in one, you need a bit of luck, if you break it at the wrong place, you will not see anything. You could incinerate of course but I’m not at that stage at the moment.

Good luck with your new experiment and let’s hope this is a new good source for gold.

Bob


----------



## Tzoax

Bob, thank you. Sure there are a gold bonding wires inside of them, i was planning a long time ago to test them... I just burned one SOT-23 triode and i took a picture with microscope.




So it all depends how much of gold they have, i just weighted them - it takes about 100 triodes for 1 gram.
So, for example - if 1kg yields 1 g of gold - by today's price of 37€/kg - each gram would be 0.037€. 
On a picture of laptop motherboard above - there are about 50 pcs of triodes on one side - so it is approximately 100 pcs or 1g of triodes per laptop motherboard. So...roughly - it would take about 30 laptop boards to collect triodes that worth 1€. And you can finish that in a few minutes per board - so half an hour / hour.

A good things are:
-they are very easily taking off the PCB's
-they are everywhere
-no one will mind if they are missing from the board (when selling)
-most likely the yields are quite better than 1g of gold/kg
-there are also many other small IC's like this one (but different package)so you can collect them too along with this particular kind

But, at the end it all depends on - is your time worth doing this for 1, 2 or 3 euros per hour.


----------



## niks neims

awesome work Tzoax, but when you are talking about manually removing components each worth about 0.00037 EUR, the line between genius and crazy gets kind of blurry 

If you are still looking for ideas what to test next, I wouldn`t mind finding out if there is any gold in these kinds of chips from brown boards:

1)Little IC's in the middle of an optical mouse - there's definitely some gold there, you can brake the chip open and see the gold bond wires with a naked eye, but what would the yield be, Is it worth removing?

2)Connector/plug on the edge of a floppy board - worth breaking off? what's the value, per?

3)Little 4-sided IC's on the "green" side (or underside) of the floppy boards - any gold there at all, worth cutting off?

4)Actually many so called brown-boards (from, TV, etc) have these kinds of chips on their, usually green-colored underside - worth cutting off?

5)Also many brown-boards have some rather large, bulky DIP IC`s, they can be cut off easily enough with a knife, but what's the chance of gold bonding wires being there?

All these type of low-grade boards I currently sell in one category, by the ton, to a local copper manufacturer, no gold is being recovered there and there are absolutely no requirements for intact IC's, I can`t shake the feeling that I am missing out on possible value if I leave these on... I`ve heard that there are some buyers for the category of separated "floppy boards", And of course, I realize I can just sell picked off IC`s (and connectors) separately, weigh them, time myself removing them and draw these conclusions myself... But it is not even close to the same level of satisfaction that would come from knowing for sure how much gold is in each of these type of components


----------



## vgecas

Tzoax said:


> While i was incinerating IC chips from ultrasound machine mentioned above i noticed very interesting thing - a whole lower surface of those IC's is *gold plated*. First i thought it was heat spreader but it seems it is just some thin gold coating. Does anyone know what is purpose of this layer?
> I am not really sure it is really gold but for sure looks like it.



because these chips came from medical equiment i would make a guess that this coating acts as a electromagnetic shield.


----------



## Sta7ik

Hi! Its a great job.
Can we see results for type3 and 4?
Results for BAG SIS and VIA is interesting too.
Thank you for advise.




Tzoax said:


> LT_golden said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tzoax said:
> 
> 
> 
> This is my little contribution to the site, I have tested various types of chips for gold content using these steps:
> ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Tzoax,
> 
> This is awesome beyond words. I believe I speak for both myself and many others when I say that your "little contribution" has turned into a de facto end-all go-to page for all things on what types of materials produces what amount of gold.
> 
> This is awesome. You're awesome. Thank you. Can I PayPal you some money? :lol:
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Thank you very much LT_golden, you reminded me of this saying:
> *"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."*
> 
> In other words - instead of sending me some money you could share some data from processing specific material - it would bring much more pleasure and benefit to me and to all other members who is interested in gold content...so - when/if you are processing some types of IC's - you are welcome to share your results here - it is very rare that people are willing to share their data but....if you are interested in contribution of knowledge - that is a best way to thank me - to become a part of it.
> 
> 
> 
> kernels said:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Alex, good to see you still going strong! Your meticulous work is fantastic.
> 
> Yes, your yield on those BGAs seems a bit low, but I have never tried processing only the ones with integrated heatsinks, might be the cause of the low yield. I would still have expected 5+g per kg.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Hi Hein! Thank you, nice to see you. I was very surprised with low yield of those but...now i am preparing some INTEL BGA's (which does not have internal heatsinks) for testing - and i really expect much more gold than 10g/kg. This 4 types of INTEL IC's are most common in PC and laptop motherboards:
> 1. Weight of IC chip: *1.91g* /// side length: 3cm
> 2. Weight of IC chip: *1.5g* /// side length: 2.6cm
> 3. Weight of IC chip: *1.19g* /// side length: 2.4cm
> 4. Weight of IC chip: *0.8g* /// side length: 1.9cm
> 
> A.jpg
> 
> I am going to test all of those 4 types separately - and with that i will cover most common INTEL types of BGA's.
> 
> I will start from the left - with biggest ones - (1.91g, 3cm).
> 
> For this test i will use 23 Intel BGA IC chips of this kind - total weight is 44g.
> 
> B.jpg
> 
> C.jpg
> 
> D.jpg
Click to expand...


----------



## gaurav_347

niks neims said:


> awesome work Tzoax, but when you are talking about manually removing components each worth about 0.00037 EUR, the line between genius and crazy gets kind of blurry
> 
> If you are still looking for ideas what to test next, I wouldn`t mind finding out if there is any gold in these kinds of chips from brown boards:
> 
> 1)Little IC's in the middle of an optical mouse - there's definitely some gold there, you can brake the chip open and see the gold bond wires with a naked eye, but what would the yield be, Is it worth removing?
> 
> 2)Connector/plug on the edge of a floppy board - worth breaking off? what's the value, per?
> 
> 3)Little 4-sided IC's on the "green" side (or underside) of the floppy boards - any gold there at all, worth cutting off?
> 
> 4)Actually many so called brown-boards (from, TV, etc) have these kinds of chips on their, usually green-colored underside - worth cutting off?
> 
> 5)Also many brown-boards have some rather large, bulky DIP IC`s, they can be cut off easily enough with a knife, but what's the chance of gold bonding wires being there?
> 
> All these type of low-grade boards I currently sell in one category, by the ton, to a local copper manufacturer, no gold is being recovered there and there are absolutely no requirements for intact IC's, I can`t shake the feeling that I am missing out on possible value if I leave these on... I`ve heard that there are some buyers for the category of separated "floppy boards", And of course, I realize I can just sell picked off IC`s (and connectors) separately, weigh them, time myself removing them and draw these conclusions myself... But it is not even close to the same level of satisfaction that would come from knowing for sure how much gold is in each of these type of components




We process roughly 30 tons of this materia per month . There is gold in those ics and chips . Roughly 300-350 milligram per kg . We haven't rerun our slags yet but we expect there should be more. If I may ask what is the current selling price to your refiner? Based on this answer I will be able to offer you more insight on these boards. 

Regards,
Gaurav


----------



## rickzeien

"Roughly 300-350 milligram per kg"

Seems high. Can you confirm?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk


----------



## gaurav_347

rickzeien said:


> "Roughly 300-350 milligram per kg"
> 
> Seems high. Can you confirm?
> 
> Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk



Yes I can confirm. We have been recycling the same material from last one year. About 300 tons till now. There is probably more gold in them. We haven't re run our slags till now. From one ton of such boards you will get anywhere 12 - 14kgs of ics and chips mixed. Ics covering 96 percent of the total weight. That's roughly 3.6 to 4 grams of gold and about 20 grams of silver just from these ics/chips . In your previous comments you mentioned that you sell these boards to a refiner. Could you please post a payout/assay report. Or you can just dm me if you are not comfortable posting here. I can give you more insight into these boards if you are interested. 

Regards, 
Gaurav


----------



## rickzeien

gaurav_347 said:


> rickzeien said:
> 
> 
> 
> "Roughly 300-350 milligram per kg"
> 
> Seems high. Can you confirm?
> 
> Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes I can confirm. We have been recycling the same material from last one year. About 300 tons till now. There is probably more gold in them. We haven't re run our slags till now. From one ton of such boards you will get anywhere 12 - 14kgs of ics and chips mixed. Ics covering 96 percent of the total weight. That's roughly 3.6 to 4 grams of gold and about 20 grams of silver just from these ics/chips . In your previous comments you mentioned that you sell these boards to a refiner. Could you please post a payout/assay report. Or you can just dm me if you are not comfortable posting here. I can give you more insight into these boards if you are interested.
> 
> Regards,
> Gaurav
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I have not processed these boards before. 

I see where I made my error. I had misread your post and thought the amount of gold was per kg of boards not per kg of SMD. 

Rookie mistake on my part. Thanks for clearing that up. 



Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk


----------



## Mano2876

Hello
Tomorrow I will be processing 1kg of such a bga mix. What do you think the yield will be?
Of course, I will write how much gold I got
https://iv.pl/images/5ee0d523c41c64b78bc827e41a5864c3.jpg


----------



## Rival metals

This information you will not find anywhere else. This is great... thank you for the effort.
Terence


----------



## patnor1011

Mano2876 said:


> Hello
> Tomorrow I will be processing 1kg of such a bga mix. What do you think the yield will be?
> Of course, I will write how much gold I got
> https://iv.pl/images/5ee0d523c41c64b78bc827e41a5864c3.jpg



That depends on what they come from. I have seen BGA with very little gold - I was told they came from TV's.
Generally, you should expect about 5g of gold from a kilo of them.


----------



## Trinity358

Dear Tzoax,
My mix Ic gold recovery is it perfect result? 
Advice me please 

Thanks.

https://youtu.be/E7IH5mR1VJ8


----------



## Trinity358

Here is my BGA chip result, top and bottom part combined I recovered gold, 4.05g form 800g BGA chip. Please answer me, is it perfect result of gold...
Billow is my BGA chip gold recovery Link...
https://youtu.be/4ralBp6MGRw


----------



## Martijn

Looks pretty pure, but I can't really tell from the video. It's too far away to see. You could post a picture of it close up.
Some comments:
Your process is very dangerous. 
Wet ashing, toooo much nitric, BFRC coming straight for you shortening your life span, no fume control. No catch basin.... and lots more room for improvement on safety. 
You can save a lot on acids. 
A hot ait gun inside the beaker while laying on its side could blow out gold powder. 
How do you handle the toxic waste? 
And warn viewers of the dangers in your video. Not to repeat at home. 
Be safe. 

Martijn.


----------



## butcher

I only watched the first part of the video, I will watch more later when I have more time.

I can see you are doing what you can to work safely, I was also concerned with safety, consider putting your pants over your boot tops, I can just imagine a boot full of acid. Roll the tops of the cuffs of your gloves, so when you raise your hands the acid does not run down your arms.


----------



## Dr.xyz

I'm suspecting that "waste management" is done by the nearest river or lake.


----------



## acpeacemaker

Dr.xyz said:


> I'm suspecting that "waste management" is done by the nearest river or lake.



Taking a stab at someone's credibility by stereotyping them isn't okay. I've seen a lot of stuff like this over almost 11 years on the forum, and I've never said anything. But sometimes they get under my skin.


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## jimdoc

They should show what they do with their waste, as they went through the trouble of making the video showing everything else. Youtube viewers need to see that. Or they will follow what has been shown and dump the waste where ever.


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## cosmetal

acpeacemaker said:


> Dr.xyz said:
> 
> 
> 
> I'm suspecting that "waste management" is done by the nearest river or lake.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Taking a stab at someone's credibility by stereotyping them isn't okay. I've seen a lot of stuff like this over almost 11 years on the forum, and I've never said anything. But sometimes they get under my skin.
Click to expand...


Couldn't agree more. . . take a quick look at "Dr. xyz" posts. I have and I couldn't find one that was of a positive nature.

James


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## Yggdrasil

Guys, that may well be right regarding his posts.
They are however usually on topic and largely correct in what I can remember from the top of my head.
Gloomy and dark but to the point as the Fins often are portayed in films :twisted:

We have seen quite a few of these youtube videos fron the south western part of Asia, 
with total lack of safety and so on, so his observation and comment may be warranted in that scope.

But you guys are correct in that we should let the benefit of doubt come first,
and ask him what he do.

Best done in a PM maybe?


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## Martijn

I hope he replies with a picture. 
Love seeing gold. Many do. 
That's why i felt obligated to make some comments to his video and the way he works. 

Giving your you tube channel a boost is fine but the most help wanted posts here are caused by people trying to replicate what video's like this show without the warnings. 

I see a couple health an evironmental risks he could control a bit better. Let's all get better at it.

Martijn.


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## Adrian2

Dr.xyz said:


> I'm suspecting that "waste management" is done by the nearest river or lake.



because that's what you're doing n think other peoples do the same


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## Adrian2

that's already good and you can improve to better than that


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## kjavanb123

Hi

I ran 305g of green piece under the BGA chips and got 0.25g gold. 

So that makes my yield from them 0.8g gold from 1kg of them. 

Here are the pictures 












Thanks and best 
KJ


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## Trinity358

Hi, 

Can anyone explain me how much yield get in per killo/lb this kind IC Processors, image link bellow 

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQkpMNWA6sQwgdPWxrPCk6f5LKpdgmPO70QZA&usqp=CAU

Thanks


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## scrapparts

Trinity358 said:


> Hi,
> 
> Can anyone explain me how much yield get in per killo/lb this kind IC Processors, image link bellow
> 
> https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQkpMNWA6sQwgdPWxrPCk6f5LKpdgmPO70QZA&usqp=CAU
> 
> Thanks



I have 50 of those chips I removed from a board a few weeks ago. I'm going to process them today. I'll post what my yield is, MINUS the caps. I'm processing my caps together I've accumulated from other ceramic cpu's. But those caps seem to have a nice amount of gold around the outer edges. I forget if they're magnetic or not. I'll post that info too.

scrapparts


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## Trinity358

scrapparts said:


> Trinity358 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Can anyone explain me how much yield get in per killo/lb this kind IC Processors, image link bellow
> 
> https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQkpMNWA6sQwgdPWxrPCk6f5LKpdgmPO70QZA&usqp=CAU
> 
> Thanks
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I have 50 of those chips I removed from a board a few weeks ago. I'm going to process them today. I'll post what my yield is, MINUS the caps. I'm processing my caps together I've accumulated from other ceramic cpu's. But those caps seem to have a nice amount of gold around the outer edges. I forget if they're magnetic or not. I'll post that info too.
> 
> scrapparts
Click to expand...


Thanks your reply, I'm waiting for your result of final destination...


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## scrapparts

Sorry, but I've been busy the past few months. 

The gold recovery yield I got from 50 of those ceramic chips was *1.3g*, and not including the tops.

scrapparts


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## Francois

Tzoax said:


> cosmetal said:
> 
> 
> 
> You deserve some time off.
> 
> Thank you for your continued hard work and shared information!
> 
> James
> 
> 
> 
> 
> James, i can't wait to continue... i will rest for this weekend - and i will continue in monday. And thank you again for resolving mystery of "little elf shoe" here... https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=27544#p290938
> 
> I forgot to add some more data about this last test i made (Intel BGA - type 1). Actually it is *492-pin BGA* chip - so naming this class of BGA's like that is more precise terminology and easier to remember/recognize it.
> They are found on older motherboards - i saw many Socket 370 (and older than that) motherboards having 492-pin BGA chip.
> 
> 111.jpg
> 
> And again, *14.77g of gold /kg and 0.0282g of gold per chip *for this type of BGA's - brings this BGA type of chip at *first place for gold content* based on my tests (so far).
> 
> Alex
Click to expand...



Looks like the 440BX is one of the richest chipsets (Pentium 3)  

Interesting to know what percentage was in the next generation of chipsets (Pentium 4)?
What percentage is in the north bridge i82850, i82845, VIA VT8753 (Socket 423, Socket 478). And in the south bridge i82801BA, i82801BA, VIA VT8233(A/C).

Most likely the gold content in the chips has decreased, though maybe not.

I also wonder how much richer or poorer the north bridge is than the south bridge?

Maybe there is such information on the forum, I haven't found it yet


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## Rreyes097

Grelko said:


> Do you happen to know the mesh size of the sieve you were using? I've been using a flour sifter, approximately 25-30 mesh? I believe I counted 27/inch. (The square holes are a bit smaller than 1mm by 1mm) I was wondering if I should keep going until everything is around -100 or smaller, either with my pipe crusher, mortar/pestle, or just re-burn it. I just sifted out 397g of black/grey powder from a batch I did yesterday.
> 
> I ran a small batch on an old scrap BBQ before, panned it a bit, then ground it up small enough to have the powder go through a coffee filter. I ended up with some copper and bonding wires, maybe 15 of each. Took a good while to get down to just the wires though.
> 
> I was wondering if it's possible to crush the pieces up enough, so that you wouldn't need to incinerate it at all? I have to buy coal/charcoal, but I can use my pipe crusher or mortar/pestle for free. I'm just seeing if I can save a couple dollars.
> 
> 
> Edit - Nov 10th (Answered my own questions)
> 
> Over the last 2 days, I very slowly went through approximately 200 grams of the powder I had. The bonding wires must be around -150 or -200 mesh. I knew they were really small, but I didn't think they were quite this small. Just messing around with a makeshift goldpan, I spent atleast 10+ hours going through it. I used a hard drive magnet, and even went as far as using tweezers to pick out the copper wires. It might end up weighing 0.1g? (it's still wet and is probably around 80% gold, the rest is black). It was all mixed chips "even the 3 legged ones with the copper tops that have a hole in them", just the lowest recovery, no Ram, CPU, N/S bridge etc.
> 
> Yes, it is possible to crush the chips enough, that you wouldn't need to incinerate them. (Just incase you live in an area that doesn't allow fires) It'll take you a while if you use a pipe crusher and mortar/pestle though.
> 
> On a side note, panning bonding wires is probably about the same as panning "gold flour", except you might want to use an eye dropper instead of a snuffer bottle. I may just melt this down into a tiny picker, then dissolve and clean it after saving up more.


Must I boil in Hcl first? Can I just incinerate them? Or will the solder and what not mess it all up?


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## Rreyes097

Tzoax said:


> I just tested a new type of chips - SMALL BGA chips, like in newer RAM memory types (DDR2/DDR3), and the similar chips from motherboards and cards. They are all small, square or rectangle shaped, and all of them have a foil base with solder balls.
> I soaked the chips in concentrated HCl and bring them to boil 3 times, the most of the tin dissolved. I incinerated the chips and washed with water. This time i used poorman's AR with KNO3. There was still some tin left so it took me some time to filter the solution with metastannic acid. I dropped the gold with SMB and washed the gold powder with hot water. I redissolved the gold again with poorman's AR to be sure that all of the contaminants are gone. I waited until AR was crystal clear and the contaminants like silver chloride and metastannic acid was settled at the bottom, then i carefully decanted the AR solution through the filter paper and dropped the gold with SMB again. I rinsed the gold powder with hot distiled water 3 times/3 times with hot HCl/3 times with hot distiled water. i dried the gold, measured it and here are my results...
> View attachment 30335
> 
> Total weight of chips: 233.7g
> Number of chips: 919pcs
> Average weight of one chip: 0.25429815g
> Gold recovered: 1.1g
> Avg. gold per 1kg: 4.706889g
> Avg. gold per one chip: 0.001196953g


So when you are boiling the chips in HCL are you dumping the HCL and putting new HCL every time three times?! That's a lot of HCL. Just want to confirm.


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## MicheleM

@Rreyes097 you can also scrap Tin balls off with a knife edge to recover tin metal (and eventually the gold inside them). Another option , take "exhausted" CuCl2 to do the job and recover the copper


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## Rreyes097

So the legs that you cut off with scalpel , you save those and process those by themselves using nitric? The AR?


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## Rreyes097

Tzoax said:


> This is my little contribution to the site, I have tested various types of chips for gold content using these steps:
> 1. Separation of the specific type of chips, removing paper stickers if any, removing wires from the edges of the chips with scalpel (*some types of chips are processed along with these wires and that will be indicated), weight them, and count the pieces of chips included.
> 2. Pyrolizing chips with butane torch.
> 3. Turning chips to ash on a hotplate
> 4. Shaking the chips inside of the glass jar and sieving the ashes
> 5. Repeating steps 3-5 until all of the white/grey powder goes through the sieve, and the resin consists of wires, silicon dies and heat spreaders
> 6. Washing with hot water until water is clear
> 7. Removing magnetic wires with neodymium magnet while still inside in water (*these wires are processed separately, I remove the basic metals with nitric acid and process them with aqua regia, for every 5kg of all kind of chips I recover 2-3 grams of gold only from these wires, so all of my results are not including gold from these wires, and not including the gold from the resins-wires, silicon dies and heat spreaders, it only relates to sieved ash).
> 8. Remove the basic metals from concentrate with nitric acid and washing again with water
> 9. Aqua regia, neutralizing excess nitric with urea, dropping the gold with SMB.
> 10. washing the gold powder 3xdistilled water 3xHCl, 3xdistilled water.
> 11. Weighting the gold and calculating the percentage of gold yields by kg of specific chips and even the gold yield of one piece of specific chip.
> 
> I will post one by one type of chips. This is a first type - SMALL VARIOUS CHIPS. You can see on the pictures shapes and the size of these chips. They have at least 6 wires, some of them are thinner then the others, also some of them are square and have wires of all 4 sides. Since their size are similar and very small, I decided to classify them as small various chips and process them together. Because they are very small I have not removed the wires.
> View attachment 30247
> 
> View attachment 30246
> 
> The total weight is 747g, there are 6317 of chips, and the gold recovered was 1.0g.
> Conclusion is:
> 1kg of small various chips contains 1.338688g of gold. (only from ash, not including magnetic wires with gold bonding wires trapped inside of them and resins-wires, silicon dies and heat spreaders)
> Average weight of one chip is 0.118252335g.
> Average gold content by one chip is 0.000158303.


So how do you process the metal you take out?


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## Martijn

Rreyes097 said:


> So the legs that you cut off with scalpel , you save those and process those by themselves using nitric? The AR?


The wires are the basemetal legs. Scrap.


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## Rreyes097

Martijn said:


> The wires are the basemetal legs. Scrap.


Doesn't it say that the wires that are taken out are processed separately? Please read#7


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## Rreyes097

Rreyes097 said:


> So the legs that you cut off with scalpel , you save those and process those by themselves using nitric? The AR?


Didn't realize I posted about that already my apologies. I guess I'm just reading it wrong.


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## Rreyes097

I figured it out. I had to go back and read some posts over again a few times more. Thanks


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## Martijn

Rreyes097 said:


> I figured it out. I had to go back and read some posts over again a few times more. Thanks


Happens to all of us.  
He describes how the by neodynium magnet separated wires are processed in step 7: nitric bath followed by an AR bath. He does the same on the resin concentrates which contain the bulk of the gold in step 8 and 9. 
He gets 2-3 grams of gold per 5 kilo of pins from the magnetic wires.

Here is something to consider though: To dissolve 5kg of basemetals in nitric to yield 3 grams of gold is creating a lot of waste and using nitric. 
As far as i understood: For one gram of copper to dissolve takes about 4ml of nitric. How that ratio is with (kovar?) wires, no idea. But if you take that number, and my calculation is correct, for 5kg that would mean 20 liters of HNO3 is needed to get about 3 grams of gold. Diluted with eaqual parts water. 
Depending on what nitric costs you, profit gone? 
And buckets full of carcinogenic nickel salts. About 40 Liters. 
Decide if thats worth chasing for you first. 
And that us his number of recovery, with his processes. Yours could be lower or higher. 

I would try AP, the slow and cheaper method, on some of the wires to see if that dissolves the pins. Still a lot of toxic waste to deal with. There are other ways to get the gold. Some leave the base metals intact. 
Most is discussed somewhere in this thread, but its has become a very long read of 500 posts. 

Martijn.


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## Rreyes097

Yes extremely large post. Thanks to me, for I didn't understand for so long. I now understand that the point of the ball mill wasn't simply to break open the chip but to also get the gold wires free of the basemetal and silicon dies. I just kept noticing what looks like gold plating on some of this metal. And so I wasn't sure. But I think I've got it now.  Thanks!


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## orvi

Not worth the acid treatment, only in a way of stripping the gold selectively over the base metal. 
More viable would be lead-dip gold stripping. Or bismuth-dip, if you feel more "eco"  

Iron or nickel has poor solubility in aforementioned metals at low temperatures, whereas gold is nicely soluble. Hot tumbler is the thing you want - operating at some 300-400°C, in reducing atmosphere or with addition of some reducer to combat surface oxidation of molten Pb/Bi.

Yeah, you does not get all of the gold. Some will stick to the legs of course, but you can minimize that by good shaking through stainless steel mesh with simultaneous heating. It is a big difference to get 80% of gold ending up in few hundred grams of lead/bismuth, than to treat these 5kg of legs with AP or AR to produce 20+L aqueous waste - which is relatively toxic due to nickel. Not to mention the cost of that ammount of acids.

Cupel the Bi/Pb away to be left with the PM bead. Of course, some deposition of NiO and Fe2O3 would be seen, but overall, if you keep temperature below 400°C during the stripping, co-dissolution of Fe/Ni wouldn´t be that significant. Alternatively, if you somehow screw this up, you can cupel that away to the point it will go, and then dissolve the residue directly in AR (if not much lead will be left). In case of higher silver content, inquart it right away and part in nitric.


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## Rreyes097

orvi said:


> Not worth the acid treatment, only in a way of stripping the gold selectively over the base metal.
> More viable would be lead-dip gold stripping. Or bismuth-dip, if you feel more "eco"
> 
> Iron or nickel has poor solubility in aforementioned metals at low temperatures, whereas gold is nicely soluble. Hot tumbler is the thing you want - operating at some 300-400°C, in reducing atmosphere or with addition of some reducer to combat surface oxidation of molten Pb/Bi.
> 
> Yeah, you does not get all of the gold. Some will stick to the legs of course, but you can minimize that by good shaking through stainless steel mesh with simultaneous heating. It is a big difference to get 80% of gold ending up in few hundred grams of lead/bismuth, than to treat these 5kg of legs with AP or AR to produce 20+L aqueous waste - which is relatively toxic due to nickel. Not to mention the cost of that ammount of acids.
> 
> Cupel the Bi/Pb away to be left with the PM bead. Of course, some deposition of NiO and Fe2O3 would be seen, but overall, if you keep temperature below 400°C during the stripping, co-dissolution of Fe/Ni wouldn´t be that significant. Alternatively, if you somehow screw this up, you can cupel that away to the point it will go, and then dissolve the residue directly in AR (if not much lead will be left). In case of higher silver content, inquart it right away and part in nitric.


I have no idea how to do any of that. I don't have 5kg of the stuff but perhaps a pound of it so far. But I understand that I won't get the gold off of it. I accept that


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## Yggdrasil

Rreyes097 said:


> I have no idea how to do any of that. I don't have 5kg of the stuff but perhaps a pound of it so far. But I understand that I won't get the gold off of it. I accept that


Somebody in here said they just put it outside in the Weather and let it rust, after a few years most is gone by mother nature.
Clean it and check it from time to time.


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## Rreyes097

Yggdrasil said:


> Somebody in here said they just put it outside in the Weather and let it rust, after a few years most is gone by mother nature.
> Clean it and check it from time to time.


I guess that's one way of doing it. It is hard for me to know that there's gold in there but not able to get to it.


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## BlackLabel

Bucket, AP solution, waiting?


----------

