Anyone near Western Pa toll refine? Refinery?

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Grelko

Well-known member
Joined
May 8, 2015
Messages
699
Location
Pennsylvania
I'm looking for somewhere that I can drive to "or meet someone halfway" without needing to pay shipping costs. Possibly within an hour or two, so that would narrow it down to somewhere between Pittsburgh and...

(Pa) Uniontown, Erie, Clarion, Greensburg, Kitanning. (OH) Cleaveland, Zanesville, Canton, Youngstown, possibly Columbus. (WV) Weirton, Wheeling, possibly Morgantown.

I can already tell you that it's probably going to be rough. :mrgreen: :lol: :roll: :| :?

Edit - You wouldn't be processing every single board, just the components and a few of the boards that have gold plating/flashing on them, plus the contacts. Maybe 80-100 pounds of material total


I'll post an update with pictures as soon as I get everything unboxed, re-sorted and weighed. It has got to be around 500+ pounds of every type of board. Most are from computers or flatscreen TVs, the rest are from toys, games, microwaves, washers, dryers etc."

Most of the copper windings/aluminum/steel has been removed. There might be a couple electrolytic capacitors left in the mix.

Basically, I stripped most of the boards with a hammer/chisel and the components are in a bucket, but I did get to sort some of it.

Quite a few boards are from flatscreens, so they have the gold plating/flash on them along with some fully plated boards "soundblaster etc."

There is a pile of boards that haven't been stripped, couple CD/DVD drives, fans and I think 3 or 4 laptops.

I also have 2/3 of a pound of silver contacts "a few are gold or gold plated", pulled/clipped and put in a container.

A couple pounds of chips/components and some fingers have already been processed, or partially processed. (Most of the BGA chips are gone, but I never processed the bases)
 
Here's a bunch of pictures finally, plus small explanations above some of them. I didn't weigh anything yet. I'm guessing around 100 pounds for everything.

Might take a little while to get them all up, I think there's 51 total.


The board is 2 feet by 2 feet.
IMG_0758.JPG
The container sitting on the blue one, is the number pads from VCRs, radios, and radio amplifiers etc.
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the plastic container on the board is mainly ram chips that look like BGAs on the backs. "green fiber"
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All of the gold pins have been removed, except for the top left. "5 plus the broken ceramic"
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top left, BGA green fiber "bottoms". Plastic lid is silver contacts "some are gold".
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None of the ram has fingers attached. Top left has a few ram with chips, top right, ram cards, bottom is all of the fingers and a few odds and ends.
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Top right container is full and partially plated gold pins.
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4 gallon bucket about half full of mixed components. All of the MLCCs would be in here.
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Silver mylars
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I'm not sure what these are called, but the gold parts are actually pins. You can see the back of a black one in the next picture.
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A couple un-opened packs of these.
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Probably close to 50 pounds of resistors and diodes.
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Front and back to most of the rest of these pictures.
These first ones are, left TV boards, right Printer/scanners.
IMG_0772.JPG
 
A lot of the boards from old radios have gold plating/buttons but are brown on the back.
Radios, baby swings "the ones that play music", more games.
IMG_0806.JPG
IMG_0807.JPG
IMG_0808.JPG
IMG_0809.JPG
IMG_0810.JPG
 
Left overs from pretty much anything else I found that has gold plated boards like, TV remotes, old microwaves, digital stoves, washer/dryers, old calculators and a bunch of other things.

IMG_0811.JPG

I also have a couple large boxes of boards "couple hundred pounds" that have been scraped clean "mainly TVs, motherboards, DVD drives and computer related cards etc.

A couple boxes of boards I cherry picked, and a good bit that I haven't even touched yet.

I'm probably forgetting at least a few things that are still packed away.
 
Have you called Don Mappin at Atlantic Precious Metals in Leetsdale,PA?
He provides full service burning, milling and refining services and has a terrific reputation within the PM Refining Industry. He can most likely provide you return of most popular Hallmarked fine metal Bullion products against your scrap material. Good Luck
 
goldnboy said:
Have you called Don Mappin at Atlantic Precious Metals in Leetsdale,PA?
He provides full service burning, milling and refining services and has a terrific reputation within the PM Refining Industry.

I've tried finding places near me for a while now and never saw this listed anywhere. Awesome, thank you, I'll be sure to give him a call very soon. I could definitely drive there.

goldnboy said:
He can most likely provide you return of most popular Hallmarked fine metal Bullion products against your scrap material. Good Luck

That would be great. I'm actually more interested in the metal itself, so bullion would be fine with me.
 
Well, that didn't work. They only work with dental and jewelers materials "floor sweeps etc". The lady I spoke with did say that they might be able to help me out, if I can get everything into powder form so they could test it, but they wouldn't be there until after the new year.

I might be able to ship material around the country instead of driving, but it would take me a while to get the amount for shipping costs once I get the total weight of the material I would be sending.

I should just toss everything into a bucket or two with HCl and let it go for months, until I can finally get around to working on it. That's where the other half bucket of components is already.
 
Grelko if you don't mind the honest word here.

It's really not enough to tweak a refinery's interest. It's not even high grade stuff. Process it yourself as you mentioned. Sorry an all but that's the straight word.

Jon
 
anachronism said:
Grelko if you don't mind the honest word here.

It's really not enough to tweak a refinery's interest. It's not even high grade stuff. Process it yourself as you mentioned. Sorry an all but that's the straight word.

Jon

No problem at all. I started last year trying to find a place that would take depopulated boards, but still haven't found anywhere that wants them.

I want to process it myself, but I've had a bucket out back with AP and components sitting in it for over 6 months now. I never get around to working on it, so I thought I'd put pictures up to see if anyone else wanted to toll refine the rest of it.

I'll probably just toss everything in to buckets and slowly let them dissolve for months, drop the PMs with copper and send the dried powder to a refinery unless I finally get to work on it. There's a place a few blocks away that might accept the powder, but they work with ore.

When I get a couple minutes I've been picking MLCCs and chips off of a few boards and might put them in the "sell" section eventually, but I don't use Paypal, so I'm not sure how that go.
 
A point here if you can get the material down to recovered powders it's simple to go that extra step and refine it yourself :idea:
 
nickvc said:
A point here if you can get the material down to recovered powders it's simple to go that extra step and refine it yourself :idea:

I was thinking about that too, but how much I've worked on it this year, it's not looking like I'd have time for that. I can let everything dissolve in the buckets without actually needing to do anything, except drop in some copper and filter out the powder when it's done. I don't have nitric, or a fume hood, so I can basically just refine the gold with HCL+Cl if I get around to it. I'm sure I'll get to work on it again sometime, it's not like it's going anywhere. The rest of the powder would need to be sent out.
 
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