Gold Ribbon Cables?

I pull these things from printers all the time. The internal ribbons that mate to the ink cartridges are definitely gold or gold-plated copper. Can someone enlighten me on the best method for removing the gold from the cables? I have burned them with good results, but I'm wondering if there is a better method. Is anyone else stockpiling these for processing?

Fever

Fever,

I've never tried to process any of these. If it were me I would trim the excess ribbon around the group of gold bumps keeping them all on a single smaller piece. Then I would process them as if they were pins or fingers with any of the previously mentioned etchants. I wouldn't waste my time with them until I had at least a pound of smaller trimmed gold bump clusters. I typically do five pound batches of pins or fingers if possible.

Steve

It will take a while before I have a few pounds of these :lol:

But, like everything else, it all keeps adding up!

Thanks Steve....

Fever

Fever,

I'm not sure of the make up of the ribbons. If the covering is the same as the solder mask on circuit boards or not so this might not work.

What I have been using to peel away the solder mask on circuit boards is:

1 pound bottle Rooto Lye. Drain cleaner.

Mix with 40 ounces of water. Slowly--it will get hot. Once it cools add a gram of table salt. Pour your mix in to a thick plastic tub. Submerge the boards for 3 to 4 hours. Hang them to dry. They will develop a white powdery covering. Scrub with a stiff brush. It may take more than one treatment.

I was lucky to get a huge pile of solder samples and haven't yet had to deal with solder ,tin or lead yet using this solution.

I don't know if it will work with the ribbons to expose the copper/gold or not either.

A 1 pound bottle of Lye only costs about 4 to 5 bucks at the hardware.


hope that helps.

Fever,

I'm not sure of the make up of the ribbons. If the covering is the same as the solder mask on circuit boards or not so this might not work.

What I have been using to peel away the solder mask on circuit boards is:

1 pound bottle Rooto Lye. Drain cleaner.

Mix with 40 ounces of water. Slowly--it will get hot. Once it cools add a gram of table salt. Pour your mix in to a thick plastic tub. Submerge the boards for 3 to 4 hours. Hang them to dry. They will develop a white powdery covering. Scrub with a stiff brush. It may take more than one treatment.

I was lucky to get a huge pile of solder samples and haven't yet had to deal with solder ,tin or lead yet using this solution.

I don't know if it will work with the ribbons to expose the copper/gold or not either.

A 1 pound bottle of Lye only costs about 4 to 5 bucks at the hardware.


hope that helps.

Thanks for the suggestions AgAuPtRh.

While it makes sense, I'm not sure these fragile cables would stand up to your process. They really are fine-wired, and the after burning them, it looks like the small gold buttons on the ends of the wires are all that's of any value (the copper wire will be recycled of course). But, they all add up over time. I plan on burning them, then dissolving the copper from them in Nitric, then a further cleansing in AR. It will take me a long time to get enough of these to warrant processing, but when I do, I'll post my results here.

Fever

Good ! I hope you'll get good results. I wish you good luck.

Here are a few other components that I harvest along with the ribbon cables. The first picture is the area on the ink cartridge that mates to the ribbon cable itself. Both the ribbon cable and the cable interface on the cartridge contain gold, as you can see. The interface on the cartridges is glued on and peels off quite easily.

The second photo is a picture of a CPU-like chip that is the most gold-rich item in a printer. It's some kind of processor, though I haven't really determined exactly what it does. It's a unique looking chip. If you look closely, you'll see that the internal raceways are plated in gold, and there are many of them. The legs are also plated, but more lightly than the inner workings. It's cool how the chip has a glass top to it. It allows you to look right into the chip and see the inner workings. Some other similar chips have a silver looking inner matrix that may be palladium or silver. Again, I still have to research these chips to know for sure.... Perhaps someone can educate me as to what these are, and their potential values?

Fever

The silk screen on the end of the board states CCD, this stands for charge coupled device. You obviously are salvaging combination psc's (printer scanner copiers). The chip is a camera eye or 'Charge Coupled Device' in all likelyhood.
:wink:
Steve

I figured you would know what these are! Thanks Steve! :lol:

Yes, I have salvaged many hybrid machines, so this makes total sense.

After I accumulate enough of them, I'll ball mill 'em and do the digestions one way or another. Hopefully they will be worthwhile. Every little bit adds up!

Fever

HOW MUCH GOLD WOULD THE RIBBON ON INJETS HAVE I GOT 100DREDS BUT IS IT WORTH IT

It's all worth it, if you have the time, patience, and desire to deal with them. There will be only a small return on these, but if you cut off just the gold-plated surfaces only, and process them in large quantity, you will get some gold.

I would save them for when you are doing batches of higher-grade stuff, so as to not set up your gear just for these.

Keep saving them up!

Fever

I too have been stockpiling these. There appears to be more gold on the printer ribbons than on many pins. Still it will take lots and lots of them to be worth it.

Fix

fixinator said:

I too have been stockpiling these. There appears to be more gold on the printer ribbons than on many pins. Still it will take lots and lots of them to be worth it.

Fix

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Objects like these present some interesting opportunities, assuming you have any karat gold to be refined. I'd like to give you an example of something similar so you can see the possibilities.

Any of you that have had an EKG may be familiar with the round plastic objects that are pasted to your chest. They're foam, with a conductive gel in the center. The leads from the EKG are snapped to these pads, which send the needed signals to the machine.

Do you have any idea of what these things are made?

No----not the plastic------the buttons that make the connection.

I know with certainty that the older ones were silver plated copper for the outside button, but the inside button is pure silver. They're a mess to process, and it's very best if you have a die and a punch press to cut out the button from the pad (I built such a setup, and had a punch press). Once the button was extracted, it was incinerated to eliminate the small amount of plastic that came with the button, then the buttons were used as the added metal for inquartation. You have to dissolve something------why not be dissolving something that you'd be dissolving anyway?

The one negative here is that you will be unlikely to know what came from what, but if you're running your own gold, and don't have need to know, I can't think of a more economical way to extract values from low value items, and do it in the process of running something you intended to run anyway.

Give it some thought.

Harold

Harold-

If we were to incinerate these cables as is by adding them to our crucibles, along with used filters, slags, and all of the appropriate fluxes, how does the copper and any other metals present not contaminate the gold bead? I may have misinterpreted your comment above. Did you mean that we should burn them and then treat the remaining metal bead with acid to dissolve it and then proceed with precipitation?

Thanks in advance for the clarification,

Fever

I'm going to assume that they were mine.

I'd clip them to remove only the gold buttons, and what little wire and insulation came with them. I'd then incinerate them to eliminate traces of insulation, screen them to get rid of the ash (which would go in my waste materials for future firing in a furnace because you're likely to lose a little gold here), and use the buttons and what little wire that came with them as the added metal for inquartation. That's the point. If you have no need for inquartation, it's of no value for you. The objective here is to dissolve them only once, but for more than one reason. If you melt them with other junk, you gain nothing. You're better off to put them directly in acid, after degreasing.

Unless you have a melting furnace that can sustain high temperature for a prolonged period of time, and use a reducing flux, screwing around with slags will end up killing one hell of a lot of your time, and you're probably going to be leaving the bulk of the values behind instead of recovering them. The metals in slag must have a reason to collect and form a button.

A flux that will be good for recovering values will be very hard on crucibles. It must liquefy everything it contacts, and must be thin and fluid, to allow the prills to agglomerate. If you mess with thick, pasty flux, and don't provide a reducer, you're really wasting your time. Fluorspar is a wonder thing to thin your slag, but it is very aggressive and dissolves most everything in its path. Even alumina.

Want to talk about what you're doing? I'm at a loss to understand where the slag you mentioned came from.

Harold

I have no slag, I was just referring to a previous post in which you mentioned further processing slags for PGM's. I was presenting a hypothetical situation to assist in developing my question. Sorry for the confusion.

Do acids attack plastic emulsions like those present on these cables? If not, then I think you have a great idea by dipping them directly in acid and processing from there.

Thanks Harold....

Fever

I'm not sure I can answer the question about acids and plastics. I've seen bits of wire insulation go through the nitric process unscathed, but there are many types of plastics used, each with their own characteristics. Makes me wonder why you're asking, though. If it's with the idea of just tossing the cable in acid, I'd do my best to discourage you------you don't want to introduce anything that creates doubt, or anything that uses acids unnecessarily. I'm open to discussion if I've missed the point. It might help if you were a bit more forthcoming with your ideas.

You likely know that nitric, being an oxidizer, can create some interesting compounds when you start experimenting. Some of them are quite unstable (nitroglycerine, for example), so, speaking for myself, I'd be very cautions about what you mix with what. Some of the commonly used compounds are dangerous----silvering for mirrors, for example. When dried, it is quite explosive.

Too damned bad sue turned out as he did. He could have been a valuable asset to this group-----assuming he was who he said he was. My chemical education wouldn't cover the bottom of a small thimble, so I'm not much help once you get off the well documented, beaten path. I pretty much stick to the book.

Harold

Fever said:

Harold-

If we were to incinerate these cables as is by adding them to our crucibles, along with used filters, slags, and all of the appropriate fluxes, how does the copper and any other metals present not contaminate the gold bead? I may have misinterpreted your comment above. Did you mean that we should burn them and then treat the remaining metal bead with acid to dissolve it and then proceed with precipitation?

Thanks in advance for the clarification,

Fever

Click to expand...

I tried burning these with a mapp/oxy torch. The amount of toxic fumes from the plastic made it too dangerous. I've had some luck with a lye soak. The gold dots usually fall off and can be filtered out and washed.

Fix

lazersteve said:

The silk screen on the end of the board states CCD, this stands for charge coupled device. :wink:
Steve

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damnit.. you beat me to it.. I was also gonna point that out..