New to this whole thing, questions about pins, and some things

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owossopc

Member
Joined
Jan 14, 2019
Messages
6
I wanna start by saying I am new to this idea. I've been selling e-scrap material for about 3 years, but I think Im gonna try to process some of the material for fun. I have an endless source of varying types of materials and a professional setting to do the work.

I plan on using an AP type process, just because I am not really comfortable with AR.

Anyway. I have this other material sample. It is the pins pulled from female sides of IDE cable connectors. They're easy enough to get out, and I have significant access to them, so curious. I know I know, yield will differ based on maker, and it appears only the end couple of millimeters have any kind of plating. I'm curious too if they'll have any silver content.

I guess time will tell, just wondered if anyone had any experience with this sort of pins?
 

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The modern IDE connectors have very little gold in them. The older stuff can be pretty good though. You need to look out for the older 3-M ones, they usually have fully plated pins.
 
owossopc said:
I wanna start by saying I am new to this idea. I've been selling e-scrap material for about 3 years, but I think Im gonna try to process some of the material for fun. I have an endless source of varying types of materials and a professional setting to do the work.

I plan on using an AP type process, just because I am not really comfortable with AR.

Anyway. I have this other material sample. It is the pins pulled from female sides of IDE cable connectors. They're easy enough to get out, and I have significant access to them, so curious. I know I know, yield will differ based on maker, and it appears only the end couple of millimeters have any kind of plating. I'm curious too if they'll have any silver content.

I guess time will tell, just wondered if anyone had any experience with this sort of pins?

what is your expectation of yield - g Au per KG of pins?
Better yet - what the yield needs to be for you to even consider pursuing gold recovery on this material?
 
It won't be fun with that kind of material, you will need a magnifying glass to view results.

Why not start with material, that has known good yield? There has to be some reward to keep things interesting.
 
Dr.xyz said:
It won't be fun with that kind of material, you will need a magnifying glass to view results.

Why not start with material, that has known good yield? There has to be some reward to keep things interesting.

Everyone starts somewhere and where most people start is thinking that things have more gold than they really have. I did that too! Also nobody listens to people telling them the reality. The best thing to happen to anyone is to spend loads of hours slaving away to find they've half a gramme of gold for all their efforts.

THEN they listen but until they do it themselves- they don't see it so I think I call this stage a "rite of passage" that needs to be observed. 8) 8)

Do your connectors Osso - you'll find out the hard way with this kind of material and please don't mistake me I am smiling all the way through typing this because I'm there with you all the way! Been there, done it, worn the teeshirt and I bet most of the guys here have too. 8) 8) 8) 8)

Jon
 
anachronism said:
Do your connectors Osso - you'll find out the hard way with this kind of material and please don't mistake me I am smiling all the way through typing this because I'm there with you all the way! Been there, done it, worn the teeshirt and I bet most of the guys here have too. 8) 8) 8) 8)

Jon

Only a few of us will admit it though, :lol: :lol: :lol:

I think he is on the right track in that he isn't starting with something exotic, with more potential for harm, PGM's for example. I started off running stuff like this because it is what I had, with easy access to more. To be honest, I still save those cables, and tear them down about twice a year. `Of course I don't get them by the gaylord like most of you guys do either. It is just something I enjoy as a break that still works out in a copper cell,
 
most of time gold recovered with these type of pins are very very small from what i saw within years and years of refining gold but you can collect them then refine ,but even though , you have to have these pins in a very very big quantity to not being disappointed,
cheers :G
 
You ain't a refiner until you have hunted the gold, killed the nitric, filtered the metastannic acid and made a tiny button.

Göran
 
Awesome replies guys, thank you. Let me bring you all up to speed.

As for everybody else here, this will be a bit of a learning experience for myself.

I want to start off by noting that I don’t intend on trying to get rich, just looking for a fun hobby. If I make a few bucks here and there, cool.

I have my first attempt at stripping gold in the works as we speak and I’ll post pics in a new thread. Sort of interesting. Having a ton of fun.
 
:lol: I have a whole closet full of those T-shirts :) Slow learner.

owossopc, AP is not a good approach for such poorly plated connectors, you will generate a LOT of poisonous Copper Chloride solution and get almost no Gold at the end of it.

If you are keen to go through the AP process, then spend way too much money buying a few kilograms of ram modules online, trim the Gold plated fingers off and run those through AP. You will at least end up with a little bit of Gold at the end.

Low grade IDE pins are not the right type of scrap to start with.
 
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