Aloha :)

[Twirlwind]

Good afternoon everyone,


My name is Rocco ( italian mother so there are many more names i don't want to bother you guys with haha ). I'm 32 years old and counting. Though i keep celebrating my 18th birthday every year !

Location : The Hague in the Netherlands. Along the west shore near the sea.
Profession : I work at serveral railroad companies. We do allot of maintenance such as welding and shifting the rails. We also build in new rails and rail switches. I also build in safety systems for the railroads but thats mostly work i do in the summer.

Hobbies : Car detailing and restorations. I have 5 old vauxhall cars wich i build with my dad and completly restored them. Having my own garage ( wich can never be to big ) i at least have the room to do everything myself. I also like scrapping metals from work. I also have my own devil forge to melt copper and aluminum to make bars and stock them so i can sell them when the prices are more profitable.

Interests : Learning new things i can build with my hands or anything wich requires physical work with my hands.
How long have you been refining gold or have interest in precious metals? : Since 2 years now. I was working on a new safety system for the railroad when all of the old equipment was thrown away. I was looking through the containers and noticed that there ( besides copper that i tend to scrap ) was allot of gold plated PCB, switches and so on. I then searched my biggest friend google and found this forum. Here i got provided by way to much information that costed me a half of a lifetime reading and learning wich parts were worth saving for recovery of PM's. So for now im still scrapping from allot of different PCB plates that come from the safety systems ( allot of tantalum capacitors, MLCC's and gold plated pins). I want to start learning how to process it myself and gain the precious metals inside.

What are you looking for in our community? : Knowledge and good conversations.
How did you discover our Forum? : Google

Here are some of the PCB i tend to scrap allot. Most are lower quality since i allready broke down the higher grade boards and sold the plates as scrapped ones. I can get them for free at work and could easely sell them to the nearest recycle stations but my interest in getting the PM`s out is bigger than selling the whole boards.

 

[Alondro]

I have a number of boards with the old IC chip holders having the 'silver' metal lining the inside of the holes instead of gold. I wonder what metal that is?

 

[Twirlwind]

Do you mean where the Eprom should have been stuck in ?

 

[Alondro]

Do you mean where the Eprom should have been stuck in ?

Yup, those little guys. I have a bunch that have tiny gold plated inner parts, and then others that are 'silvery', which is what I'm curious about. The outer metal jacket seems to be a nickel alloy. If the 'silvery' parts are silver or another PM, then I'd process those along with the ones with gold inside each hole. If it's just tin or chrome-plated, I'll toss the whole component into my 'tin bin' where I put all the modestly valuable base metals.

 

[BlackLabel]

Hi Rocco,
On pics 1, 2 and 5 are golden studs (testpoints) marked with X…

These are gold plated brass.
Desolder them, count or weigh them, get rid of the tin by dissolve it in warm HCl, cut them in the middle and treat them wit AP for a while. After about two weeks, the brass core should be dissolved.
After washing with HCl followed by a washing with water and drying the gold foils, you will get the yield per piece.

In case the plating is too thin or if you used too much H2O2, the plating could get dissolved. After harvesting the foils, you could put some copper bars into the AP-solution. This will cement out the gold.

 

[orvi]

Hi

nice boards. Industrial stuff is almost everytime worth something. Most of the value will be sitting in IC chips I assume. Having a good source of scrap is half of the success
I hope you won´t have too much issues getting the necessary chemicals, sadly, I know how the regulations work in EU :/

 

[Twirlwind]

Yup, those little guys. I have a bunch that have tiny gold plated inner parts, and then others that are 'silvery', which is what I'm curious about. The outer metal jacket seems to be a nickel alloy. If the 'silvery' parts are silver or another PM, then I'd process those along with the ones with gold inside each hole. If it's just tin or chrome-plated, I'll toss the whole component into my 'tin bin' where I put all the modestly valuable base metals.

I do not have any with silver plating that im aware of. The ones i`ve got are all gold platen inside but with the plastic around them i dont collect them since i allready have so much work on the other SMB and allot of mid grade backplane pcb`s.

Hi Rocco,
On pics 1, 2 and 5 are golden studs (testpoints) marked with X…

These are gold plated brass.
Desolder them, count or weigh them, get rid of the tin by dissolve it in warm HCl, cut them in the middle and treat them wit AP for a while. After about two weeks, the brass core should be dissolved.
After washing with HCl followed by a washing with water and drying the gold foils, you will get the yield per piece.

In case the plating is too thin or if you used too much H2O2, the plating could get dissolved. After harvesting the foils, you could put some copper bars into the AP-solution. This will cement out the gold.

I hoped they were i`ve noticed them a year ago aswell and started collecting them "just in case". I haven`t tried any recovery yet but im hoping to start this summer when i got a fume hood and the chemicals i need.

Hi

nice boards. Industrial stuff is almost everytime worth something. Most of the value will be sitting in IC chips I assume. Having a good source of scrap is half of the success
I hope you won´t have too much issues getting the necessary chemicals, sadly, I know how the regulations work in EU :/

Heyhey, yes they are worth something most of them but i also gain board wich are of a lower grade and just sell them to the nearest scrapyard. I hope i can get the necessary chemicals wich i recenly started to read up on. Not sure on the regulations in the EU but online i allready had a hard time finding anything wich could be bought as a regular consumer. I might be able to buy it through my employer if we dont need to many chemical certifications ( with im almost sure you do ). Or ill buy consumer grade chemicals and learn how to purify them if thats possible .