As years are passing manufacturers are learning how to avoid more and more of PM in their products.
Pd in MLCC is a song of the past. Yes, the very high end MLCCs are still using Pd but boards containing meaningful quantities are getting rare and tend to be of high end type (medical, military, industrial).
The same becoming true with gold sources.
Carat stock of course is going to stay (albeit one have to pay close to spot price and often *more* than a spot price even for scrap - look on ebay auctions of gold scrap for evidence).
With boards it is going from bad to worse.
Standard gold platings are substituted with ENIG, more and more chips, including BGA chips, are either transitioning from gold bonding wires to copper or aluminum equivalents or deploying gold free flip chip tech.
The policy of manufacturers is to make their devices *not to* last, so any features extending longevity are withdrawn.
Few years more and gold will only be found in historic devices or in medical, military and NASA boards which are of the type most unlikely to find their way to small scale refiner.
So it looks like gold refining for small ventures is coming to an end.
Of course PGM refining from catalysts will still carry on but this will need far greater investment than gold recovery as it would be rather daft idea to contaminate your own premises including living quarters with chloroplatinates, then fingers cross and hope for the best.
So the jig is up for small refiner.
Do you agree with this assessment or are there some other gold resources which small refiner can exploit in foreseable future as his feedstock?
Pd in MLCC is a song of the past. Yes, the very high end MLCCs are still using Pd but boards containing meaningful quantities are getting rare and tend to be of high end type (medical, military, industrial).
The same becoming true with gold sources.
Carat stock of course is going to stay (albeit one have to pay close to spot price and often *more* than a spot price even for scrap - look on ebay auctions of gold scrap for evidence).
With boards it is going from bad to worse.
Standard gold platings are substituted with ENIG, more and more chips, including BGA chips, are either transitioning from gold bonding wires to copper or aluminum equivalents or deploying gold free flip chip tech.
The policy of manufacturers is to make their devices *not to* last, so any features extending longevity are withdrawn.
Few years more and gold will only be found in historic devices or in medical, military and NASA boards which are of the type most unlikely to find their way to small scale refiner.
So it looks like gold refining for small ventures is coming to an end.
Of course PGM refining from catalysts will still carry on but this will need far greater investment than gold recovery as it would be rather daft idea to contaminate your own premises including living quarters with chloroplatinates, then fingers cross and hope for the best.
So the jig is up for small refiner.
Do you agree with this assessment or are there some other gold resources which small refiner can exploit in foreseable future as his feedstock?