Board cleaning

[worker0]

Heloo,
I try to clean boards out of green plastic and instead using NaOH I buy Natrium Hypochlorite.

Can someone explain what is brown chunky substance and green emerald plastic like subsstance on splited DDR stick on place where is chip placed. Thanx

 

[Yggdrasil]

So what you are saying is that since you didn't have Sodium Hydroxide you used Sodium Hypoclorite and expected it to do the same job?
Chlorine based cleaners can contain some NaOH for the Ph, but it is a completely different animal in the world of chemistry.
Why did you do that?

 

[butcher]

Yggdrasil,
where are your gloves?
Where are your gloves?
where are your gloves?

Iron can have several different oxidation states and color different solutions differently...

The chlorine can form several iron salts green FeCl2, brown FeCl3 combination of both.
The caustic solution could also give you iron oxides or hydroxide can show colors of red or yellow (black) rust depending oxidation state of the iron.

Is it solder mask, maybe the green plastic like epoxy coating your asking about.

it is possible the black is your gold dissolving as chloride and cementing back as black onto all of the other metals junky or not...

 

[Martijn]

Worker0, safety!!!! please! Not the tree of life... :wink: he's wise enough. Protect yourself from metals in solution. Mosty all are toxic.
The values seem to be taken from the ddr stick. The gold fingers and the ic's are taken off, correct? The rest (probably enig plating: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.rigiflex.com/blog/an-overview-of-immersion-gold-enig-surface-finish-for-pcbs/&ved=2ahUKEwill9f3sfDoAhWEjqQKHTl-DCcQFjABegQICxAG&usg=AOvVaw0kZhH_WpD_UY9yghHBAJ-q
is too thin to waste your time and money on. Try rubbing it off with a pen eraser gum. And then try a gold finger or plated pin to get a feel for whats actually there.
Martijn.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Butcher, you should adress these things to Worker0

I don't need gloves to comment on the forum I hope, there are forum rules for that kind of language :mrgreen: :twisted: :lol:

I have nothing in this thread other than a reply to Worker0
I can take correction for my own mistakes but there is not much to learn by beeing corrected for other persons mistakes.

 

[butcher]

You have an electrochemical cell going on with millions of reactions from all of the different anodes and cathodes in solution (circuit board full of little batteries) (in my mind your picture looks like a million little electrochemical cells or batteries working under the liquid) doing all kinds of oxidation and reduction reactions at once all kind of like a battery soup.

 

[butcher]

Yggdrasil,
where are your gloves?
Where are your gloves?
where are your gloves?

I am so sorry, I do apologize.

In my reply, I was copying and pasting (or at least attempting to) the login name of the poster worker0 who I was trying to reply post to.

I (blindly by mistake) copied the wrong post with your login name in it. from the images below where you post a reply and you can screen through the topic, I must have copied the name close to the picture or something like that anyway I got something wrong.

Although, as I was writing a reply, I thought something was funny about it, (but then) I could not put my finger on what it was?

I was focused on (or trying to with my blindness) the picture of not wearing gloves?
It did not make sense, or something about my reply did not?

As I wrote the post (after pasting the wrong login name--yours), I could not figure out what was wrong and why you would not have gloves on to take a picture, as I was sure you would, and do, and that you are careful of the dangers as long as you have been a helpful and productive member of the forum and would know better, then I would look at the picture of what it showed and would get more confused.

Knowing I was not looking at a picture that came from a member with a lot of experience, began to confuse me even more and more, I could not figure it out, little did I know the confusion came from my own doing of pasting your name...

I had no idea I copied and pasted and the wrong name, and that what was wrong was ME, I was the one who pasted wrong and then became confused who I was responding too and basically made this whole mess.

Heck, I would not have known I made such a mess if You have not just brought it up to me now.

Note I copied and pasted names in this post reply (Hopefully I have not screwed up this reply also, can you forgive me?

Hey, I took my monthly trip to town for grub and was shocked to see most everyone in town had gloves and masks walking around with spray bottles, maybe you can forgive a tired ole man of coming home and reading and replying when he should be sleeping and yelling stomping and warning you to wear gloves if you post on the forum, you might get sick, then get your keyboard sick, and my keyboard is wired to (OH Heck never mind) just please accept my apology, my friend.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Things happens and I kind of expected it was something like this :wink:

 

[Yggdrasil]

Still if Worker0 could explain his reason for swapping chemicals like this,
we may be able to have a discussion that saves his day and maybe more in the future.

 

[worker0]

Hi guys

If safety is concearn I wear gloves all the time, but for taking pictures of nail I did not out them since nail was not complety submerged in solution only half of them and touchscreen dont like gloves. This solution on hypochlorite is weak and it it used for clothes bleachin even without gloves. At least my fammily member use it. I removed fingers and ICs from thise boards and waiting to process them. I have about 50 KG of this boards and was wondering can this chemical do anything in lack of NAOH. I did not fully depopulate boards because I was wandering can this chemicall do anyhting to green plastic. For nex processing i will depopulate them, as I did other boards...

 

[Yggdrasil]

While the lack of gloves may or may not be a danger in this setting it is not crucial,
many has been cautioned for the lack of gloves during the process of taking pictures.

In my eyes the reasoning by the selected chemical is what raised my eyebrows.
Did you just choose a random chemical, based on what was available, or did you have a reasoning behind it?
My fear is that if that is the case, you may some day make a choice, that can seriously injure or kill yourself or the ones in your vicinity.

 

[butcher]

worker0 ,
Safety should be your concern and just as important to you as gold.

You are wasting your time, you are not learning, nor will you learn these skills if you keep doing this.

Chemistry and working with metals is dangerous, you will not see these dangers now because you do not know anything about them, and you are not going to learn about them unless you listen and study.

Why are you trying to harm your family?
Why take pictures of it to show us?

Actually I am glad, you did take pictures of it, so we can see what you are doing, so we can help you to understand these dangers and learn to become a safe worker who knows and understands how to get gold without harming his family and others.

What good is it to get a few pennies worth of gold if it makes you sick or your children?

Why are you mixing chemicals and metals without any understanding of what will happen?

Even if a chemical is safe to use in your home or a chemical that you can eat like salt NaCl can become dangerous in some chemical reactions, they can become dangerous after mixing these chemicals with each other or with metals.

Deadly gases were used to kill in the war, these deadly gases were made from chemicals you have in your home now.

You have one of those chemicals with you now, I see you holding a nail in it without gloves, toxic deadly poision you made without knowing what you are doing.


My friend, we may be able to help you to learn, but you must listen, and open your ears, and eyes to see what we are saying.
Stop trying to get gold with chemicals until you learn the dangers.

 

[worker0]

Most danger on photos is not pointed in gloves, it is pointed on gasse ( i was wearing mask anyway ).

Is it possible to do this boards with CuCl2 after removing tin from them?

 

[Yggdrasil]

AP or CuCl2 is usually the preferred process for any copper base metal.
And a mask will not stop the gases to any significant degree, only vapours, unless you use higly specialized masks.

But you have still not explained why you chose to use Hypochlorite in this leach?
I can appreciate that English is not your primary language, but in order to help,
we need to know what you have been doing and why you chose to do as you did.
When we know that, it is easier to see how we can help you.
No matter what you are doing you need to understand why and follow the basic safety precautions.

 

[worker0]

Yes English is not mmy primary language but Im giving everythhingn of myself to write correctly.

I choosed this chemicall only because it bleach. If it can dilueted bleach clothes I was considering that it can remove green from the boards.

Update: this chemmical attacked everyhting. Even gold and even resin of IC chip. Is it possible to recover or cement dissolved gold?

 

[Yggdrasil]

It is caustic (some NaOH in there) so it would attack different things, I'm not aware bleach (Hypochlorite) can attack gold by itself, but it may have attacked the base metals and gold is floating around as a fine powder, pratically invisible to the naked eye.
Or there may have been some free chlorine to oxidize the gold.
It would however immediately cemented back on the base metals as a black/dark powder.
An AP leach may liberate most of it for dissolving and subsequent and precipitation.

The dangers of selecting a random chemical can not be stressed enough.
Unless you have an understanding of what is going on, you may in the best case loose what you have, in the worst case injure yourself, others or the environment.
In most cases there is no need to remove the green laquer on the boards.
Hot NaOH may do it, but that is really dangerous for any organic matter, it will dissolve skin and tissue and then we haven't mentioned burns yet.

 

[butcher]

You are just making a dangerous mess endangering yourself.
Just mixing chemicals and metal without having at least some basic understanding of the dangers is foolish, and dangerous.
Gold is more than likely going into solution, In fact, I am sure some gold is going into solution along with a whole bunch of other chemical and electrochemical reactions, putting base metals into solution, and also plating them out or cementing them back out...

Not all of the gold will cement back out onto undissolved base metals, tin in solution will lock up much of the gold as colloids.

This is just a dangerous mess but we can learn from it.

The circuit board place into the solution (the electrolyte) becomes like many little tiny little batteries between the traces and components of the two dissimilar metals in the electrolyte solution gases evolve and make other chemical reactions, the solution itself is reacting with metals in solution, these electro and chemical reactions produce by-products and thus other reactions base metals forming salts will change the solution chemically and even the pH thus even more chemical reactions just a mess even to explain...

With a circuit board having many copper traces (wires) and dissimilar metals different, between two of these traces, we have an electrochemical cell each with a different electrochemical reaction between the electrodes of the different sets of the multiple of these doing chemical reactions, there are many reactions going on in solution.

Gold can be put or kept in solution by a wide pH range.

Not only the electrochemical reactions going on, which introduce other chemical reactions as the electrolyte solution change partly because of the electrolysis.

You also have several other chemical reactions, between the metals and the solution as it changes from the reactions.

This is just making a big dangerous mess of what you could easily have got a bit of gold from if you had spent your time studying before trying.

once you put the circuit board into bleach it was no longer bleach, it could even change to acid with everything going on electrically in solution and chemically, and the environment.

All you are doing is making poisons.
STOP wasting your time, time that you could be using to learn to get gold.
Put the chemicals away they will do you no good (until you learn more).
Spend your time collecting scrap and learning how to collect scrap.
Spend your time learning the dangers and how to work safely.
study how we deal with these toxic hazardous waste.
Study how to prepare or preprocess your scrap.
Study how to recover gold (I suggest memory foils begin with as long as you do the processes right tin will not steal your gold ).
Study how to refine your gold (I suggest you learn to the sodium hypochlorite method first)( before learning aqua regia)
Study how to melt your gold...
following these instructions to study before you use any chemical.

Then you will be ready to open that bleach bottle and use it to get your gold, and you will be able to do it safely, helping your family instead of harming them by doing things blindly.

Please listen, my friend, this is a very hard subject to learn (especially at the beginning) and dangerous, but if we can get you started in the right direction, and you will listen and take good advice, we can help you also begin your journey into how to get gold and do it safely, this may take some time and take a lot of work on your part, but if getting gold is important to you we can help, but first you will need to listen to good advice and follow instructions.

Look these over...
View attachment AuNPs.pdfView attachment pH hyopochlorite.rtf

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22976-5



https://www.interempresas.net/Plastico/Articulos/45912-Soluciones-en-FRP-para-el-servicio-con-hipoclorito-sodico.html

https://www.https://www.interempresas.net/Plastico/Articulos/45912-Soluciones-en-FRP-para-el-servicio-con-hipoclorito-sodico.htmlams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Hypochlorous%20Acid%20TR%2008%2013%2015.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hypochlorite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypochlorous_acid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrochloric_acid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrochloric_acid


https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk03dWppkn1HqRjVV9I_g2LsQaDo4dw%3A1587325965243&source=hp&ei=DaycXrmyDNLT-wTNsYCYDg&q=colloidial+gold&oq=colloidial+gold&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzIHCCMQsQIQJzIECAAQCjIECAAQCjIECAAQCjIECAAQCjIECAAQCjIECAAQCjIECAAQCjIECAAQCjIECAAQCjoFCAAQgwE6AggAOgQIIxAnOgUIABCRAlCPDViqPWCNQmgBcAB4AIABeogB4wqSAQQxMC41mAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpeg&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwj57LGCovXoAhXS6Z4KHc0YAOMQ4dUDCAk&uact=5


PS. In the beginning, you are learning a new language (gold chemistry) and it will be very difficult, but the longer you study the easier it is to study and learn and then it becomes something fun, as well as useful.

 

[jarlowski1]

Worker0 you are your own enemy. Looking back at some of your previous post on this forum I can see just how impulsive you are. Impulsiviness can and will cause you and other people harm. I believe I told you a few moths ago to stop what you are doing and study on this forum. There is nothing gained by you aimlessly going around mixing any chemical you can think of to try and get gold. You are just losing your gold!

You do not know chemistry so stop mixing chemicals together without at least knowing what is happening when you do. If you read on this forum about the stuff you are trying to refine then you will learn what processes are used. There is a reason why these processes are used and why others are not. You only have 1 pair of lungs, 1 pair of eyes, your skin even though it regenerates it suffers from heavy metal poisoning once it gets into your bloodstream. The skin has millions of tiny holes that can absorb the chemicals AND vapors. Imagine how you will feel when you literally can't tolerate being in your own skin because it itches and burns ALL of the time. Imagine how you will feel when you can't breathe because you inhaled a toxic amount of chlorine gas (which is not very much at all) if you go to the hospital there is absolutely nothing they can do for you but hope you don't die, and if you do all they can do is watch. PLEASE PLEASE STOP AND STUDY!

 

[Shark]

I choosed this chemicall only because it bleach. If it can dilueted bleach clothes I was considering that it can remove green from the boards.

I use soap and water to clean cloths but it does not mean it will remove the green solder mask from boards. I have never tried it, but I would be willing to bet a wooden nickle it won't work. Listen to butcher and Yggdrasil, they are trying to give you the shortest way to learn this. Without the advice I received from butcher (and many others here) when I first started this, I would still be way behind where I am now. I have extra time to do things right the first time, I just don't have enough time to waste doing it twice.

"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

 

[Martijn]

Worker0, pease take the advice given. Stop experimenting with chemicals. Research and development is something for experienced chemists, self taught or professionally. Who can assess the risks and can act accordingly.

Only use tried and proven processes, we use them for reason.

Unless you have the equimpment to safely handle and analyse all the compounds made, experimenting is really playing with your life. Maybe not in this particular situation, but with that mindset, surely in time.

Saying bleach is relatively safe in a house hold situation is true, but you can not know which reactions will take place and what metals go in solution as butcher explained and is very much true. The more you throw in te mix, the harder everything is to separate. Trash in trash out is often said here.
Most metals in solution are toxic. Acute or after accumulation over longer periods.

Did you check my comment and link on enig plating? What can you really expect to be gained in the end? Some people have stopped processing e-waste, because of the amount of work compared to the return. And you are attempting the low end of that spectrum with your limited knowledge if i may say.

You say you use a mask....i get the shivers.
Which gases does your mask filter out?
Which gases are you creating?
What is your exposure level: amount of gases created, venitation?, exposure time? Saturation level of your filtercartridge? Meaning when do you know your mask is no longer filtering the stuff you dont want to breath... What was that gas called again? You dont know right? Are you thinking you are protected and therefore getting more exposure time/higher levels?
As said, study. Hoke e.g., start acquaintance testing.
Small tests to verify known reactions and what to do with waste.
Read, study and ask us if you have understood it correctly before you put it in practice. We can warn you and improve of needed.
Be safe. Martijn.