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NickPerry

Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2014
Messages
20
good morning (or noon/evening/night.. whenever your reading this :p

I'm going to start an scrap electronics refinery (small scale). and would like your input to see if you guys think I'm on the right track.

short summary:

start with the scrap that I have.
sell the easy to separate stuff (copper from wires, Aluminum from heat sinks & HDD's)

strip all board to the bare components.

use the money from there to invest in chemicals so I can de-plate the gold fingers & pins for a semi-easy gold recovery.

'pyrolize' the ic's/flatpacks and crush them by hand, panning out the gold internal wires.
(put the rest aside for further processing later for the stuff I missed)

with the money from that gold, I'll make myself a cheap ball mill, density seperator & HHO torch.
& then I'll do the more refined processing of all the other components for silver/palladium/missed gold/ect.

then either a:
with that money I'll start buying small quantaties of scrap electronics from people/friends (or see if anyone is willing to donate for free)
and continue to process & inventing

or b:
since I live close to gold bearing ground, I might buy a claim, and mine for gold, using the techniques I've learned to get the best yield from my concentrates & make a better density separator (I think I can do better then the humble sluice)



The Long:

This is what I have:

-Free time (lots of it)
-humble little pile of scrap electronics (see below)
-lots of tools
-free electricity (within reason)
-space to work
-misalliances things (household items, firewood, ect)
-a wide verity of experience in almost everything from programming, to working on cars, to factory work, etc etc etc.
-access to a vehicle with free gas for smaller occasional trips.

things lacking:

cash = $0. (this project will have to be self sustaining)
I tend to procrastinate if I have to do multiple steps after each other (unless I'm on my meds, which I can't afford right now :p)
currently unable to land a job.

materials I have:

-glass cola/beer bottles will act as beakers for now.
-home made 'heat plate' with a infrared heat sensor for me to keep an eye on the temp.
-propane torch

electronics:

1302g of bare copper:

quko.jpg


1400g of low grade electronics:

gq1f.jpg


468g of cheap wire (but a lot of the wire's have gold plated pins still)

d9xp.jpg


2446g of aluminum heat-sinks (some with a copper base)

dsv7.jpg


268g of extremely low grade jewelry (i think most of it is stainless, and if I'm lucky here and there there might be some silver/cheap gold plating)

i6kg.jpg


832g of IDE cables:

i5xe.jpg


4926g in hdd's

urre.jpg


983g in high quality electronics (old cell phones/satellite usb stick, etc)

2ett.jpg


5231g in optical drives

3ke1.jpg


993g in floppy drives

mnds.jpg


59g fiber CPU's
&
157g in ram

v63n.jpg


1890g in computer pci boards (graphic cards/sound cards/etc)

hdbm.jpg


1594g in motherboards

s1vf.jpg



now I know for a fact I have more dead cell phones/mother boards/& some ceramic CPU's, but this is all I can find right now, and will serve as a nice start.

does it sound like I'm on the right track?

how would you go about things if you were given this to start with?

Thank you in advance for any input :)
 
My suggestion would be to get that day job. Find an income stream other then refining. Your pictures show maybe a gram of gold. That's after many hours of work separating material into piles that would need to be processed in different ways requiring different acids and different equipment, much more then the $40 gram your going to get, which no one will buy for $40. Trust me on this. I have spent way more on this hobby of mine then gold I have gotten back. And I get most of my material for free. Do yourself a favor and do not rely on this as an income stream. I d
 
I have seen many posts on this in the forum. The ones who do this for a living and are very successful at it will tell you the same thing. I do this as a hobby. I can afford to loose money on it and hoard my gold, the little that I have from processing 20 mother boards and 40 laptops with some misc gold filled and 3 pounds of pins. This will not pay your bills. I would just hate to see you waste your time on a lost cause.
 
Dont be discouraged. Your goals can be acheived.
However, you may want to review the plans you have outlined.
If you need some guidance, my time and expertise is available to you free of charge.
 
Platdigger:

First I would say forget about making a profit on computer scrap

I value your opinion, but that probably won't happen :)

unless you can generate a lot more volume

I certainly agree there (got a few Idea's on how to do this, but I'm going to start with what I have, that way I know first hand what I'm getting in to :)

Even then your best bet, at least at first would be to sort and resell

how so? my thinking is: the more middle men you can eliminate, the more profit there is to be had (of course it makes things more difficult, but I can live with difficult, I'm not after easy money at the moment)

Thank you for your input!


joubjonn:

I will continue to hand out resume's and asking around for job's, of course :) but it's been several months with no bite, so I'm assuming that trend will continue, and since I prefer to be my own boss anyway, I though I'll try this in between the job hunting, and see what yields results first :)

but you think there is only a gram in all this? shoot.. I was hoping to pull out 2-3 grams + a bit of palladium & silver. hmm..
I'm still not discouraged though ^.^ but thank you for the more realistic estimate!

joubjonn #2:

i have enough money to pay the bills for the next few months, I'm just not going to use any of it for this endeavor, it'll either be self sustaining, or it'll fail. and the only thing I'll loose is my scrap electronics, but at the very least I'll gain knowledge & more storage room. at best I'll have my own successful company :)

Thank you for your comments!

Aristo:

as you might have been able to see, not even a gun to my head can discourage me. (the only thing I'm worried about is procrastination)

However, you may want to review the plans you have outlined.
If you need some guidance, my time and expertise is available to you free of charge.

thank you so much! guidance and expertise is priceless.

but I don't see much wiggle room near the beginning.

- since I have no cash on hand (more accurately, I'm not going to use any cash on hand), so I have to get the maximum dollar for all this trash, and it seems to me, to get the maximum I will refine it down to the base metals.

- and to get more stuff I'll be putting out a few ads asking for free scrap electronics. but I won't do that until I know I am capable of refining my own stuff first.

perhaps you can see a different first step I can take?

Thanks Again!
 
scrapping a little electronics can be educational, and if you work with enough of it you can make a few dollars from the scrap and form a little gold button, the education you can gain from the forum can help you in many ways, learning where to find scrap, buying, selling, and how to identify higher value scrap like sterling and karat gold, and learning their values and how to refine and recover precious metals, the higher the value of the scrap the more value you can gain from that scrap, electronic scrap is really considered trash, you can make a few dollars from that trash, if you can deal with tons of trash you can make more.

Every penny saved or earned is another penny in your piggy bank, and the pennies can add up.
I feel education is the key, the more you understand the better you will do, electronic scrap is a great learning tool, you can get a little gold from it, it is unlikely you will get rich from scrapping and refining electronic scrap on a small scale, but with the education you gain and working with the higher value scrap, and learning this art will put some gold in your safe, which can remain a hobby, an educational tool or even a business eventually.

I agree with the comments above, look to make your living with a job or some other means, use this new hobby to gain an education which can put some gold in your pocket, and eventually make a profit, or even turn into an income, or give you some gold for those hard times...

There are Many different ways a person can use the education he will gain from the forum, to help him profit. and all of them do not depend on the use of chemicals chemistry. Like some may just learn to buy and sell at a profit...

If you are just starting out, you really need to concentrate on some other means to make a living, it will cost a little to learn and takes time, concentrate on making your living, and use this as a hobby, to gain the education, which may help you profit later, use the skills you have now to make your living, and use this to gain another skill which can help you make a living later, or add to your living.

Say I was a man that knew nothing about electricity, and I was thinking electricians can make a lot of money or a good living, it would not profit me to buy a book on basic electricity and open my own repair business, or to start trying to generate and produce electricity for sale, first I would need the education, learn what can and cannot be done, I would need that education, but I can use it as a hobby to learn electricity, and gain the experience, while I make a living at my day job, and eventually become an electrician, and eventually turn my new hobby with electricity into an income.

NickPerry,
Like all new gold miners, you have gold fever.
A terrible disease. Education is a great cure for that disease, it can help bring you back to reality.
Note not all miners with this disease can recover, Some do not wish to see the truth.
 
butcher:

wow, that was extremely well written :)

use this new hobby to gain an education which can put some gold in your pocket

That is actually my true goal, but I like the saying 'shoot for the stars, to reach the moon'

concentrate on making your living, and use this as a hobby

I grudgingly agree, and I will probably do some programming (something I'm very good at) to make an income, but I just want to spend a full 30 days without distractions, and see where I end up. and as you said:

Like all new gold miners, you have gold fever.
A terrible disease. Education is a great cure for that disease, it can help bring you back to reality.
Note not all miners with this disease can recover, Some do not wish to see the truth.

yes, I admit it. I do have gold fever, though I think I'm one of the cases that can't be cored, since this is something I've looked at for a good 5 years or so. but I've only now have the time & means to give it a shot (well, I've done some small 1 person 'mining' before, but I've only spent a few weekends doing that)

I don't want to be cured of gold fever, I just want more gold to satisfy my cravings =D
 
I also still have gold fever, but luckily with education I have gained from mining experience and the forum, I can keep this disease at bay.
In remission.
 
From your other post I can see chemically you are starting at zero. To get a realistic view on how long your plan will take, I just wanted to add, that there are a lot of people here, who probably started at zero, who mastered one or two processes after one year.

But you could sell all the more diffult stuff for example on ebay, only saving goldfingers, after a half or a year you can have learned the basics and gathered enough goldfingers to recover the gold with AP, refine and re-refine it with chlorox method and to do this in a profitable scale.

Leave the mainboard as they are and sell them, they go for more than they are worth to a smallest-scale-refiner.

Concentrate on mastering this first and I see a little chance you will not get too much dissappointed.
 
interesting calculation I did (bit disappointing, but, whatever) the price of an 'avrage' (pentium4) computer using the info here:http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldr...&p=127369&hilit=copper+from+heatsinks#p127369

I left the Neodymium separate, since the $ amount per gram seems way off to me (I got it off a Google search since there doesn't seem to be a stock chart for it)

*** NOTE: I'm well aware the values can change drastically between different types of computers, but I think this is a nice starting point to get a rough Idea on what to expect.


Element $/g | g in PC | $value

Ag Silver 0.63 | 0.79 | 0.49
Au Gold 41.31 | 0.143 | 5.9
Pd Palladium 25.20 | 0.19 | 4.79
Al Aluminum 0.0017 | 420 | 0.7
Cu Copper 0.006 | 320 | 1.92
Fe Iron 0.0002 | 7200 | 1.44
Ni Nickel 0.018 | 57 | 1.02
Zn Zink 0.002 | 76.6 | 0.15
Nd Neodymium 1.00 | 23.2 | 23.2
Sn Tin 0.023 | 28 | 0.64
Sb Antimony 0.004 | 2 | 0.008
Pb lead 0.002 | 20 | 0.04

total worth of scrap computer = $17.098 + 23.2 (Neodymium)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

butcher: :)

solar_plasma:
From your other post I can see chemically you are starting at zero
close to anyways (I've made some fireworks and stuff a while back, still got some potassium nitrate left from it that I'll use to make nitric acid)
but as far as using chemistry as a means of separating materials, yes :)

But you could sell all the more diffult stuff for example on ebay

Blasphemy! lol, I tend to dive in head first into things (always following stringent safety lines though) but I love challenging myself to understand the most difficult things in this world :)

Leave the mainboard as they are and sell them, they go for more than they are worth to a smallest-scale-refiner.

since I'm learning at the moment, even though that will make economic sense, I'm going to use the mobo's that I have to learn how to refine them. but thank you for the tip. any Idea why small refiners buy them at a loss?

Concentrate on mastering this first and I see a little chance you will not get too much dissappointed.

I could only successfully pull one flake of gold off this whole pile, and still not be disappointed. this endeavor is an adventure for me. and just with any adventure, you might set out to find a treasure, but the enjoyment comes in the path you take.


EDITED: to make the chart look neater.
 
Our problem with that chart is recovery and refining all of those metals from the circuit board, and doing it without costing us money, we can get a little bit of those metals, some of that gold, maybe some of the other metals listed as scrap off the board.

Even some of the other metals there, which we could try to recover from the circuit board would not be worth spending our time, energy, acids, or money on.

By cherry picking the good stuff and treating it. we can get a portion of the values in gold, or some other metals, but we will not be able to recover and refine all of the metals, or value listed from that computer, so as recovery and refining on the small scale we do, that circuit board will not give us that much value calculated.

Also trying to recover values from too many metals in solution only leads to loss of values...

That is why it is suggested to cherry pick the good stuff, to recover and refine precious metals from, and sell the rest of the circuit board...
 
Hey, it's all about hard work. Doesn't matter how small you start. Good for you if you can learn from what others tell you, but don't let anyone discourage you.
If you work hard, whatever job or business you do, you will succeed.
 
You can't stop an eager dog from running blindly to find the ball...
Interesting...

Everyone that first looks to electronics for riches looks at it from this angle and runs!...

First and foremost what you must do is take everything you have now and break it down to individule pieces. Transisters, mosfits, resisters, biosters, Thingamidoodles...etc. You need to time yourself and see how long each component takes for complete tare down to individule pieces. This takes the most time untill you get the system working.

You can't simply smash everything with a hammer and drop it all into acid and have a nice shinny gold button at the bottom.

This is what you first must learn. What's best yeild for the work.
To make extra $$$ now, you should be out driving around everywhere making contacts, finding places that have scrap. Any scrap to strip down to take to the scrap yard for $$$. Copper insulated wire is $.80/lb right now. Stripped to bare wire it's about $2.70/lb. Sounds great to strip it, untill your hands bleed and a couple fingers are disslocated.
Yes, both my thumbs pop out if I hold something to tightly to pull apart.
I softened the joints pulling insulation of wires. Takes way to long and way to much effort.... Cost of labor for profit is way below minimum wage stripping wire.

Use every means you can think of to get scrapping for income. That's where bread and butter is. The PMs are just a bonus untill you find the major scores of like items that you can easily extract PMs from.

Do all this while you do the required reading and learning here.

Good Luck and let us know

B.S.
 
I did exactly like pantherlikeher explained. And mind this is just a hobby for me.

I called every computer repair outfit I could find within 20 minutes of my house. And asked if they had scrap. Most said NO. 2 said yes. And that's how I get a few dozen computers and scrap metal every few months. I take the scrap metal from that (cases, heat sinks, wires, etc) and trade that with a local scrap yard on my way home from work for motherboards. Just takes a few minutes on the phone that's all.
 
if you have lots of time i find knocking on doors (computer shops & businesses) works much better then phone calls & emails
 
butcher:

sorry, yeah. I forgot to mention, that I have also figured out to purify that amount in chemicals costs ~ $20 (that's using the cheap stuff) to get the $17.098
but I think I have a few tricks up my sleeve that in a month I can recover %50-70 of the metals without the use of chemicals. (but we will have to wait and see)

Also trying to recover values from too many metals in solution only leads to loss of values

that's why I intend to separate the metals as best I can via mechanical means before purifying them via chemical means. (at first manually, but later I plan to automate it)

I will keep you guys posted on how I intend to do it (without to much details, if it works, I intend to patent it)

That is why it is suggested to cherry pick the good stuff, to recover and refine precious metals from, and sell the rest of the circuit board

I think I mentioned before, but that is probably what will happen later when I get more stuff in. the early stages is about me learning the trade, even if I won't use everything I know, I still want to know it. just in case.


Thank you for your insight though! sorry, my optimism is probably looking like ignorance at the moment. but if I let small things like 'facts' and 'financial viability' get to me, I'll never even get started. and that would be the worst sin of all :)

(p.s. I'm joking about the facts/financial viability thing, of course I understand that, and I am concerned about it, but the learning phase is not the time to worry about it)


alexxx:

THANK YOU! =D it's refreshing to see plain old encouragement (don't get me wrong, constructive criticism is extremely useful and all, but the occasional flat out encouragement is greatly appreciated =D

Pantherlikher:

You can't stop an eager dog from running blindly to find the ball

well, you could. but that would take all the fun away!

You can't simply smash everything with a hammer and drop it all into acid and have a nice shinny gold button at the bottom

D'Aawwwwwww!!! lol jks. I actually have years of experience stripping components off of boards, I used to build little robots as a hobby, and rather then buy components off the shelf, I would strip components from old vcr's and such and use them, though, unfourtunatly, I think I've tossed a lot of that stuff when I moved. (and I'm not going to scrap my little robots/circuits :p (not that there would be much in them anyways, just some basic transistors/logic gates/resistors/cheap caps/and the ocasional op-amp or 555 timer)

but anyways, back then I would de-solder with a solder pen and a vacuum thingy. now I'll be using a heat gun.. whenever I can find it that is :)

you should be out driving around everywhere making contacts

I begrudgingly agree. (I don't like dealing with people much :p)

Though I already have a friend willing to donate her broken x-box 360.

not to mention, I found some more components for the start up cause =D

vch2.jpg



untill your hands bleed and a couple fingers are disslocated

Kinda like this?

nwng.jpg


it's already healed a fair bit, so it's kinda hard to see, but a nice blood blister on the thumb, a nice long knuckle->knuckle juicy blister on the index finger, plus a few more blisters on my other hand.

and all that for about 1 pound of copper.
then I figured out a better way to do it by hand that's much easier on the fingers (getting a machine would be even easier, but they don't do well with coaxial & shielded wires though)

I was wondering though, will a ball mill pulverize electrical wire? or is it too flexible?

because if it can, I could make a ball mill, and use a shaker table to sort out the copper from the insulation/aluminum shielding.

btw, I love your initials =D

joubjonn:

Thanks for the Idea! it seems obvious now, but I didn't even think of asking the computer repair shops >.< I was focusing on normal home owners, and offices.

Thank you!

necromancer:

Thanks! I'll try that (despite not liking to deal with customers), if it means a successful business, then I'll do it :)
 
Sorry, but to me it sounds like: tommorow I hire to a ship, soon I will be able to sail it by myself, need no crew then and get more money, then I can buy the ship, earn more money and buy a fleet. On the long run I take over Maersk and Hapag Lloyd...because I am smart and I will work hard. Dreams are ok, but calm down. If you want to do all at once, you will end up performing nothing.

Don't want to be mean or discourage.

edit: but maybe I just don't understand this american-dream-culture
 
NickPerry,
I really like your enthusiasm, and I am not trying to discourage you, and I do not think other members are either, just trying to help, keep up the enthusiasm and put it to good use.
 
Aaahh..the American Dream...

Having it now and work later is todays dream.

The dream is to see where you want to be someday and work to achieve it.
Work being the key word.

Try to refrain from the internet lingo. lol is not good here. There are people from all over the world and that would confuse most as it wont translate to thier language.

Everyone here has had visions of riches as anyone with the gold bug has had.
The sooner you realize reality, the sooner you will be better off at reaching your dream.

Non of us want to stop or discurage you, just slow you down enough to see what your need to do to get up and running.
I hate people as well but I've gotten very good at being nice and able to talk which is needed to get scrap and other things. Gotta bite the bullet and do it.

You said you have a "secret process" for depopulating components. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Do several searches up in the google search. I'm guessing you will find your process well explained here. If not SHARE and we will be your witness that you invented it and help develope it.

Your pile of stuff is only the beginning. I am always being called a Hoarder as my garage is over filled with boxes of stuff to get stripped. Unfortunately, I can not tare down fast enough to keep up. I have everything that was wire and switches here. From computer boards to curling irons. Yes, Curling irons have a wire and a switch that has either an all silver button contacts or plated so it will get torn apart.

Use your time wisely please. Search here and learn from ground 0. The beginning will get you moving forward the fastest.

B.S.
 
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