Are these connectors any good for gold recovery?

[E-waste Zevenbergen]

I got these slot connectors, fully gold plated, they are from vintage HP instruments from the 80's. What yield can i expect from these per kg of just the pins? And will the solder be a problem during refining?

 

[Yggdrasil]

I got these slot connectors, fully gold plated, they are from vintage HP instruments from the 80's. What yield can i expect from these per kg of just the pins? And will the solder be a problem during refining?

I do not know about yields.
But do a few small tests of the plastic in HCl and if it holds up you can dissolve the Tin with HCl.
Best would be to pull the pins from the plastic and then remove the Tin with HCl for so using a Cupric Chloride leach for the base metals.
Or if you have much material, maybe a sulfuric stripping cell.

 

[andu]

Best way to know would be testing, given the year I would expect a rather good yield.

 

[anachronism]

Do they have "amphenol" anywhere on the casing? They made a lot of these for many brands. If they are genuinely for HP and from the 80s then they do yield well but the issue is that without knowing which particular fitting they were for you can't know. The pins themselves I've seen yield from 2g per Kg to 15g per Kg, but I would suggest that until you've actually got a result you work on the lowest figure. Averaging or guessing won't do any favours.

Take the pins out and wash in hot HCl to get rid of the solder before going to AR.

 

[anarxi]

As a rule, Amphenol and other manufacturers coated connectors of this class with a thickness of 20 microinches, which corresponds to 0.5 microns.
the yield of gold per kilogram varies depending on the thickness of the brass pins that were gilded...
At the same time, it is worth understanding that taking into account the number of pins per kilogram or pound of weight, a difference in thickness of even a few microns greatly varies the gold yield depending on the weight of the pins...

 

[E-waste Zevenbergen]

As a rule, Amphenol and other manufacturers coated connectors of this class with a thickness of 20 microinches, which corresponds to 0.5 microns.
the yield of gold per kilogram varies depending on the thickness of the brass pins that were gilded...
At the same time, it is worth understanding that taking into account the number of pins per kilogram or pound of weight, a difference in thickness of even a few microns greatly varies the gold yield depending on the weight of the pins...

Some of them are marked amphenol, and some are marked CINCH. I think i saw a production date of 1975 on some of them. I think all pins together will weigh around 200 grams, most of them very flat fully plated pins with a high surface area to weight ratio. I will save them for a rainy day to break away all the plastics

 

[E-waste Zevenbergen]

Do they have "amphenol" anywhere on the casing? They made a lot of these for many brands. If they are genuinely for HP and from the 80s then they do yield well but the issue is that without knowing which particular fitting they were for you can't know. The pins themselves I've seen yield from 2g per Kg to 15g per Kg, but I would suggest that until you've actually got a result you work on the lowest figure. Averaging or guessing won't do any favours.

Take the pins out and wash in hot HCl to get rid of the solder before going to AR.

Hi, thank you for your reaction, some are amphenol and the rest is CINCH. I have some fully gold plated and gold traced boards from the same equipment, 1975-1980s i think. Even the backsides of most boards are gold plated, just completely covered in solder. I will desolder everything from these boards and save the components, and then dissolve the solder in hcl 35%. After i treat the gold pins from the connectors, can i just throw everything in the same pot and dissolve everything with ar? Or should i treat them separately? And do you recommend trimming the clean gold fingers and save them for later to process in a batch of solder-free material?

 

[eaglekeeper]

I got these slot connectors, fully gold plated, they are from vintage HP instruments from the 80's. What yield can i expect from these per kg of just the pins? And will the solder be a problem during refining?

Owltech has a YouTube video where he processes connector pins similar to yours. I think the video was posted 3 years ago. I'm not sure if your material is the same quality or not.

edited to add context.

 

[g_axelsson]

When dissolving the tin, make sure to capture the solids in a filter. Any gold with solder on it will dissolve and when the solder is dissolved the gold will end up as a ultra fine powder.

Those circuit boards are great for gold recovery. The plating is as thick as on the fingers and on both sides too... at least the ones I ran into. Even heavy gold plating under the solder mask, but the solder mask is too strong so the normal way of removing it with lye doesn't work.
I ended up with forgetting the bucket with coper chloride and broken up boards for a couple of years. When I came back to it every copper conductor were dissolved and I physically removed the solder mask, now with voids below the gold plating, with a steel brush. It was a lot of work but I finally recovered all the gold.
A couple of years ago I got another large hP instrument and it's as full with gold as the first one... I'll leave this one in the storage until I'm retired.

Göran

 

[Ag and Au]

I got these slot connectors, fully gold plated, they are from vintage HP instruments from the 80's.

I have some fully gold plated and gold traced boards from the same equipment, 1975-1980s i think. Even the backsides of most boards are gold plated

I am currently processing dozens of these edge connetors and dozens of similar HP boards in seperate AP buckets. I smash the plastic connectors with a hammer (covered with a cloth) and remove the metal contacts (very tedious work). I also remove all of the components and the solder from the boards. I have quite alot of gold floating in the buckets. I will not have an exact amount for another month or so.