A Bunch of Ceramics

[Moo]

Hay forum,

I am currently trying to sort various ceramic cpus out and get what I can so far I have broken away the pins from ceramic cpus and seperated them from the gold tops and core attached to it, I sat them in AP overnight but being the inpatient person I can be sometimes I decided to backout and do it a quicker way. Some Pins had the gold plating stripped some hadnt anyway I washed them really well with water and plan to proceed like so,

For the pins still attached to ceramic body. Boil in 37% hcl and recover foils. Place body of ceramic aside

The Cpus with the cores and gold tops (heat spreaders) Process in poor mans AR along with a batch of other ceramics without gold tops I recovered after a weeks bath in AP, Process all together after grinding to powder, And the bodys remaiing after boiling the pins mentioned above.

All bottom Lids that I have collected to be boiled in HCL and foils recovered.

Gather all foils and boil in HCL wash boil again wash then dissolve in HCL/Bleach

Can anyone see any problems, or have any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[vegaswinner]

If you plan on using AR anyway why not just use Sams method (video tutorial in tutorial forum) and process the whole cpus, pins included in one batch? You still need to remove the lids but other than that just break the cpu's into a few pieces, put then into a beaker and boil away.

 

[Moo]

Vegas for the life of me I cannot get these Gold tops off the ceramic body heated like all hell to no avail, so Just ended up breaking ther pins off and removing bottom lids as described

 

[samuel-a]

Vegas for the life of me I cannot get these Gold tops off the ceramic body heated like all hell to no avail, so Just ended up breaking ther pins off and removing bottom lids as described

No need to remove tungsten based heat spreaders. Just break them and put with the rest of the cpu.
Bottom lids are to be removed and process seperatly.

 

[Moo]

Thanks for the info Sam I will be using the method described on your video for this, are all ceramic gold heatspreaders the same tungsten material? Is there any need to remove the base
metals beforehand or can they all be removed when proceeding with the refining of powder? You left out of the video the part where you add some sulfuric to drop any lead sulfate, how long does this take to drop and how is it removed before proceeding? I will be using lab grade sodium nitrate.

 

[vegaswinner]

The tungsten tops are not markedly affected by the AR treatment although you will probably find you get like a fine yellow tungsten powder in your solution which is difficult to filter using coffee filters. Most of this will settle with the lead and silver so the bulk can go through a coffee filter, the last bit I filter through a tightly packed funnel. The solution should be filtered while still cold, I usually leave it for about 30/45 minutes after adding the sulfuric. The bottom lids can be removed several ways, if gold i use a centre punch and just hit it through the top of the cpu. I feel this is a good method as it helps to expose the underside of the silicon wafer where you will find more gold foil but a mapp torch will also work well, the ceramic type lids can be just broke open with a hammer.

 

[samuel-a]

Yup, what vegas said.

The heat spreader on most old ceramic cpu's are made of high tungsten "alloy". To test that, smack it with a hammer, if it breaks, it is indeed tungsten based.
Since it is not an alloy in the true sense of the word, it bahaves, on impact more like a ceramic material (a very strong one) then an actuall solid metal or metals solution.
If the spreader only bends, it is probably copper based and requires removal before the acids.

 

[Moo]

Okay thanks guys I have done so and all cpus+pins are readty for processing I noticed they were rather dirty and upon addition of 37% hcl the colour went green so Im going to pretreat these bvy boiling in acid for a few hours first, after doing so would it be just as effective to use HCL/BL rather then the sodium nitrate id rather avoid it if possible. Also the bodys from the ceramics I bathed in AP for a week are pretty much eaten up cant see any gold on them at all, worth doing anyway to get the wiresw inside?

 

[vegaswinner]

You can use hcl-cl on the cpu's that have been leeched with AP to dissolve the wires and pin foils. This will not work on the other cpus due to base metal presence.

 

[Moo]

Thanks vegas, do I need to ball mill these so it can get to the wires inside or just break up, there pretty much all stripped from the outside.