For Sale ~15lbs of gold plated pins.

[Acidrain]

182g mixed metal plated connector pin yield. Disolved in AR, dropped with paired copper/sulfamic acid. Refined with AR/SMB.

 

[brywil1970]

I've actually been trying all kinds of recovery, trying to find the most suitable.
The solid pins, I disolved base metals with nitric, the disolved foils in AR. That was very time consuming and used a lot of nitric for a small return.
The pogo barrels went into copper(2)chloride leach and took a month but was relatively hands free and then foils to AR.
I want to try straight AR digestion now and make a dirty drop which I'd then refine. Seems like that might be faster and use less nitric. Someone actually recently told me that you may be the guy to talk to about such a process. Have you tried this method?

Hey i am new and just read this post. I am wondering how this process would work with GF jewelry scrap. Everyone that has commented has been doing gold plated pins. Thanks for your time

 

[Acidrain]

Hey i am new and just read this post. I am wondering how this process would work with GF jewelry scrap. Everyone that has commented has been doing gold plated pins. Thanks for your time

Gold filled and plated are in essence the same product, gold filled is much thicker though and not usually 24K. Gold filled usually is karat gold of various karat and plated e-waste products such as what i process are plated with 24 karat.
I don't process karat gold or gold filled so I don't feel comfortable guiding you as to which process would be suitable. There is a ton of information here in the forum and in Hokes book of refining though and I would recommend that you read as much as you can.

Best of luck in your adventures!
David

 

[Towercom87]

For $100/lb, these would have to yield 2g/lb of gold or more to be worth it even to most hobbyists, given the cost of refining.

For hobbyists who simply enjoy the process, maybe they'd go for it at that price.

Just putting my two cents in ….sreetips did an iconic video where he bought 10 lbs of pins just like these for $1000 on eBay. May want to ask him what he yielded but at beginning of video I think he said he thought he would get an oz off that. Don’t hold me to that but that’s what I recall.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Just putting my two cents in ….sreetips did an iconic video where he bought 10 lbs of pins just like these for $1000 on eBay. May want to ask him what he yielded but at beginning of video I think he said he thought he would get an oz off that. Don’t hold me to that but that’s what I recall.

Welcome to us

 

[Alondro]

Just putting my two cents in ….sreetips did an iconic video where he bought 10 lbs of pins just like these for $1000 on eBay. May want to ask him what he yielded but at beginning of video I think he said he thought he would get an oz off that. Don’t hold me to that but that’s what I recall.

It's POSSIBLE to get an ounce from 10lbs pins... but there are a number of caveats. They must be old. They must be THIN, so there's less base metal to plating. And they must come from high-end equipment.

There are some ultra-high grade pins where 5+ grams per pound can be expected. But they're not typical finds in e-scrap.

You'll never get that much gold from modern-era pins.

 

[Acidrain]

Just putting my two cents in ….sreetips did an iconic video where he bought 10 lbs of pins just like these for $1000 on eBay. May want to ask him what he yielded but at beginning of video I think he said he thought he would get an oz off that. Don’t hold me to that but that’s what I recall.

It's POSSIBLE to get an ounce from 10lbs pins... but there are a number of caveats. They must be old. They must be THIN, so there's less base metal to plating. And they must come from high-end equipment.

There are some ultra-high grade pins where 5+ grams per pound can be expected. But they're not typical finds in e-scrap.

You'll never get that much gold from modern-era pins.

I'm at just over one troy ounce and still have several more pounds left to process from this purchase.

 

[brywil1970]

I am happy to hear that it worked as it should

Maybe I mistaken what I wanted to say with brown colour.. It is usually so brown that you cannot see through it even when you pour the barren liquid from the gold precipitate. You can help yourself with LED torch and aim the light beam from under the spout of the beaker to see if any particles are escaping or not.

Gold precipitate is usually very heavy and compact, but do not expect 999 purity from this recovery operation. I make 995-997 on average, and yes, if you have some dissolved silver (as silver chloride in this solution), it will also drop alongside gold.

I use this as a quick and reliable recovery method. Main drawback is that you add additional copper into your waste stream - it is evident and clear. But the amount can be significantly lowered when you pair precipitation/de-NOx with sulfamic acid. NOx gasses generated in solution are further reduced to unreactive nitrogen species, and effervesce from reaction mixture.

Then, if desired, you re-refine the gold obtained, which is an easy task since you will get reasonably pure gold precipitate.

In "production mode" I didn´t even filter the solution from dissolution in AR - I just strained it through tight mesh strainer to get rid of obvious floating debris, and then immediately dropped with copper/sulfamic. This is much easier then setting up for regular filtration, no need to cool down the juice - you save time and energy. Not suitable for every instance, but like 90% of a time, you will be OK with this.

Still looking into your process for refining gold filled jewelry. Problem is I would think there would be silver present in my material. Is there another step that i could use to put the silver back into solution?

 

[orvi]

Still looking into your process for refining gold filled jewelry. Problem is I would think there would be silver present in my material. Is there another step that i could use to put the silver back into solution?

With AR dissolution, you can reduce the overall amount of material fairly well - if base metal used don´t contain too much lead or tin. Which usually don´t. You just need to make sure there are parts where base metal is exposed - if you will process goldfilled. However, most of the karat alloys are attacked by AR after prolonged heating.

I would advise to try some reasonably sized sample and see from there. In my opinion, worst case scenario is that some parts won´t react well as acid won´t pass through karat layer very well. And there can also be silver chloride buildup.
But silver chloride crust is easily removed via dissolution in ammonia or sodium thiosulfate solution.

If I were you, I would take like 100g sample, throw it into the HCl, dose nitric in small portions and observe the reaction. When it visibly stop reacting, I will decant/filter the residue, wash it well with water. And if there is significant AgCl buildup, macerate the solids in ammonia, and you will see if there is still gold left or not. Many times, AR etch gold out of the material, leaving just AgCl crust. When you dissolve AgCl leftover, you will clearly see if you still have some insoluble residue (this will be persumably gold-related or silver related) or not.

Aside of that, gold will be in solution, as well as some AgCl = > dilute with two times volume cold water to precipitate most of the AgCl and proceed to gold drop as usual.

 

[orvi]

No worries! These guys here. The hollow body I'm speaking of is the larger tube part, with the spring and plunger removed.

These are testing pins for automated machines testing functionality of populated PCBs or other machine parts. Gold plating is usually fair, and "silver" retractable spring tips can be rhodium plated. Many times indeed are. You will notice it relatively clearly as the foils take veeeery very long to dissolve (if ever dissolve) in hot AR. We done them whole in bulk, stainless springs will also dissolve. As our shredder was out of service in that time, we cannot separate them efficiently (doing several kilos by hand simply isn´t viable and economical).

If you keep temperature and nitric low, very small amount of the Rh pass into solution, as there will be much more reactive metals in the pot. But regarding weight, Rh was always below 1g/kg even from types where all of the "silver" points were Rh plated.