Beginner needing some advice :)

[travis86]

Ive been reading up on this wonderful hobby for almost a month now. I have taken apart some scrap I had laying around the house to try my first batch with. I know I would be lucky to get a gram of gold from what I have pictured but I dont wanna mess up alot of gold at once. The silver thing in the upper left hand side of the pic is what im using to hold little gold pins and connectors. From what I understand is I start off with 70% Nitric acid mixed with distilled water and let the solution leach base metals from my pcb's. Then filter the solution and onto the aqua regia stage with low heat on hot plate. Add a few drops of Sulfuric acid to remove any lead from the solution. Dilute with tap water and filter solution. Drop gold out by using Sodium metaBisulfite. The following steps after are easy and I understand. But im having a hard time figuring out how much chemicals do I add for a certain amount? And is it necessary to remove all chips and transistors from pcbs? My cell phone board has gold traces on both sides and removing all the little chips is hard to do. I also have some gold inside of a plastic ribbon from inside a cell phone and was wondering if Nitric acid would eat away the plastic film and leach the copper from under the gold plating?

 

[philddreamer]

Welcom Travis!

Do a search on AP process. Its more suitable for processing e-scrap.

Take care!

 

[Tauran]

hi travis

phil is right. i did that exact thing for my first batchmches and ended up with a light green slurry. the pcb's will dissolve almost completley leaving you with a big mess (the're mostly made of copper and zinc).

ap is far safer and cheaper. it also leaves all your gold alone while only destroying base metal.

keep reading and enjoy

 

[travis86]

Thanks guys. I started making poor mans AR before reading these posts and nearly killed myself by making my own Sodium Nitrate. I started doing the AP methods on my small batch and has been working out pretty well so far.