best way to handle these

[mjgraham]

Hi, I like many are just getting started and I have a question or two as per normal, I have searched the forum which is amazing really, so much information. I have some of these parts and I am wondering what might be the best approach. Currently I only have access to HCl, I was wondering if I should just use HCl or use it with peroxide? I have already seen that I can add too much peroxide and push the gold into the solution, sure it is a pretty green and I am not sure what to do to get it back out. Of course I am dealing with small amounts, I hope to have a scale soon that seems to be another important factor. I know I want to rid all of the base metals as possible before the next step. At any rate this place is great I have to admit I find my self up late hours reading.
Thanks
Jarrid

 

[jeneje]

If i'm not mistaken those are top hats, i think you can use AP for those. 2 parts HCL to 1 part proxide.
ken

 

[mjgraham]

That was what I was thinking, actually it is a laser diode, got some gold structure inside also most like will need 50 lbs of them for any good, I am looking forward to getting some equipment, just mixing stuff in baby food jars and guessing is not the best plan, of course in just a short time I have found out the garage is not the best place either.

 

[arthur kierski]

they look very much(similar) like transistors ----and by my experiments with transistors they (the transistors) are very rich with gold----

 

[qst42know]

These are sometimes filled with some sort of grease. Perhaps a thermal compound?

 

[butcher]

If you used too much peroxide in your copper II chloride etching solution (acid Peroxide),and have some dissolved gold, you can just keep using the solution on more material, the gold will eventually be replaced from solution as a brown powder, or plate to any remaining elemental metal in your vessel.

 

[Geo]

that's a transistor, i run batches of them through AP alone.

check here. http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uchobby.com%2Findex.php%2F2007%2F07%2F15%2Fidentifying-electronic-components%2F&h=wAQE3Xdk2

 

[Marcel]

Reminds me of the stuff I had last week and resold, because of the hefty nickel component in the wires ( constantan wire):
There was gold inside as well and a white thermal grease, supposingly silicone. The stuff looked nice but the yield was lower than 0,1% or much went into solution, so I dropped them. Not really AP friendly. golden wires came off nicely though, ended as lightweight hollow tubes, the housing as foils...
This material is often promoted as transistors from the 70s with tons of gold in them. Which is both not the case.

 

[mjgraham]

I wondered that also , I first put them in HCL and that took care of the solder and such but the AP soultion really has not had much of effect on them, they don't seem to be filled with anything there are gold plated inside and have some small wires but getting the case to disolve doesn't seem to work I did heat a couple in AP and it did eat it up but there is nothing left basically which makes me think there is so little gold on there it was able to just take care of it. What my plan was is to see how much there was, these came off a little board with some gold plated pads & vias and a connector with plated pins, I was able to work on the other items , I basically wanted to know how much this device contained before I tried to get more but I am seeing it is so small I really cant measure it, of course I am just working with the foil material. I guess really I should try 10 or so to see but not being able to easily recover from these devices makes it hard to tell.

 

[Geo]

heres a half pound of these that i did in AP, wonder why our outcome was so different.

 

[mjgraham]

humm maybe another try, I think my main problem right now is lack of equipment and time, gotta slow down, I'll let you know on the next try.

 

[Geo]

as you can tell, i stopped the process short. the only thing i wanted to do was remove the top cap. i wont show the outcome of the other few attempts i made. some went all the way to just foils, seems crazy to want to keep the base metal in the base. :lol: i wanted to see just what i could do with AP by manipulating concentrations of acid and heat.

 

[mjgraham]

yes heat seems to have a big impact, I guess one other thing is I was only using like 10ml of acid , may just be too little. Heh on thing I didn't think of at first was one day I was boiling HCl, I for some reason just thought the vapor was mostly water, then I thought, what water maybe the garage is not the best place.