Boards after stripping components

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
goldsilverpro said:
daveerf,

I am comparing this with two standard methods. The first is the old standard incineration, grind, screen, melt, etc. The second is to process everything mechanically - grind it and separate it into its various fractions using some hand sorting and lots of equipment - magnetic separators, eddy current separators, etc. There are a few patents on this second method.

Dissolving requires:
(1) - More labor and lots of equipment.
(2) - Much more fume control - hoods, scrubber, etc.
(3) - Much more waste to deal with - acid wastes mainly. For every ton of base metal dissolved, I would guess that you would generate at least 40 drums of acid waste.
(4) - Lower efficiency
(5) - Much higher chemical costs
(6) - Much slower process

Most anyone of you that has puttered around with these things know the above list is true.


Harold_V said:
Heh!

I had been refining less than two years when I realized that e scrap was a waste of time unless it was done for sheer pleasure. The work involved to recover an ounce of gold is astronomical----making it very difficult to make a profit. As a result, I ran only that which came my way free of charge, and refused any from customers. The time and chemicals involved in extracting an ounce of gold would easily process 50 ounces of scrap karat gold. Why waste my time and resources?

As a hobby?

I'd be the last guy to say it's a waste of time.

I am a high school graduate, and just barely. I took no math classes in high school, and no chemistry classes. What I learned about refining has been very revealing, and, to say the least, profitable. My horizons were expanded in ways I can't begin to explain. I'd do it all over again, given the same circumstances, starting much earlier.

I would still avoid e scrap. Mind you, I'm speaking from the perspective of a guy that would make his living as a refiner. I reiterate----it is a wonderful hobby----it's just not well suited to making a profit unless the material can be run in the same fashion as the "big boys".

In the short time I've been collecting escrap and sorting and separating to process as I've read here on the forums it's obvious these two guys are spot on. The labor to process a ton of scrap would be off the chart. I do plan to recycle, reclaim and reuse everything possible (including copper) but escrap won't ever be more than a hobby. I get all the scrap for free so PPE "lab equipment" (mostly a one time expense) and chemicals are my only expense. It might be possible to recover enough PMs to pay for all of this and maybe if I'm smart AND lucky help finance my other hobbies... then again, maybe not.

One thing really concerns me though, incineration and halogenated flame retardants. I would guess the big guys incinerators and scrubbers take care of the "dioxins"? produced but I'm not so sure a backyard escapper would be eliminating this stuff. The safe level for this stuff was said by one of the "experts" to be zero (I've read a lot and not sure now who that was). I understand the dangers and safety precautions surrounding the chemicals and processes spoke of here but the plastics scare me more. One of the better pages I found:

http://www.electronicstakeback.com/toxics-in-electronics/flame-retardants-pvc-and-electronics/

If this ever was to be more than just a hobby I would expect it to arise from dealings with the local jewelers that I will sell any gold and silver to.

Sorry for bumping an old thread, it just happens to fit with what I'm researching right now and brought up that sick feeling in my gut about plastics. Be safe, have fun.

Doug
 
lysdexic said:
Sorry for bumping an old thread, it just happens to fit with what I'm researching right now and brought up that sick feeling in my gut about plastics. Be safe, have fun.

Doug

Bumping an old thread is very rarely a bad thing. It shows you have searched the forum and helps keep topics in one thread.

Jim
 
This is an excellent thread for many of those on here that are thinking a handful of escrap will pay the bills. It won't. I do it for fun and I have certainly spent more on equipment then I have gotten back in PM's at this time. I'm sure that will change soon and I even get most of my scrap for free. A few hundred pounds of it! But I'm slow so that might have something to do with it.
 
jimdoc said:
Bumping an old thread is very rarely a bad thing. It shows you have searched the forum and helps keep topics in one thread.

Jim

Thanks Jim perhaps if more of us newbies kept questions to topics already on the forum "we" wouldn't have so difficult a time finding what's already here. 98 hits just on "AP reusing copper chloride". I understand why people would get frustrated answering the same thing over and over, yet I see more patience from those with knowledge than I'd have. I didn't need to say all this, it's just my way of saying thank you to ALL of you. I really appreciate you all taking the time and effort to put this information out there. I don't want to think about what might have been if I didn't find it.

Doug
 
I can speak from experience as one of those former newbies that thought they could make a profit from stripping boards, now I have about 10 lbs of partially stripped mainboards nobody wants. Personally I'm chalking it up as a learning experience, but I can say this for certain, I didn't start turning a profit until I started selling the raw boards to middle-men processors (cashforcomputerscrap, boardsort, etc). Once I started doing that I became MUCH less discouraged and began to form a business plan / model.

That said I do still save the choicest of boards I find to dismantle and recover values from on a hobby level
 
Its fairly easy. Use a fire pit, build a fire, wait for the fire to die down untill you have only hot ambers. Use a grill top, or stove shelf etc anthing you might think will work, have that 1 to 2 feet from the hot ambers and let the heat do its job while you pull off connectors, ics etc. If it gets to hot pull it off and let it cool down. Use a respirator, gloves and safety glasses if your using a half face respirator. This is by far the fastest method. Once you complete this process you have several options to remove the solder, soak the boards in ONLY HCL for a day, than wash with warm water and repeat the process one more time if youre anal like me, this helps ensure most if not all of the solder will be remived. Other process is diluted nitric with citric acid. 5 to 10% diluted acid, water and citric acid wait one day and wash the boards should be good to go. Yes the gold traces fingers etc will look a little strange but the gold is still there.

AND YES, they do or did make boards with palladium traces. When gold got expensive several companies started looking for a cheaper metal, platinum is way to dense and at the time they didnt have the technology to use platinum like they wanted. Palladium become the metal they chose. So from 60s and 70s you can find palladium plating, you can google this and find simple evidence to read about it.
 
No Disrespect Harold and GSP,

If you have any e-scrap you would like to part with I am sure there are many of forum members that would take them off your hands.

I agree, the values are hard to come by without a l lot of manual labor, however, I have seen people recently laid-off from 65,000 dollars a year jobs take jobs at Walmart for minimum wage.

I can site many good deals encountered in my readings here on the forum, not all limited to karat jewelry refinings. These opportunities are also few and far between with most jewelry just being worn or sold at close to spot.

Besides I thought that was kinda the point of this forum, to learn, share, and speculate on refining techniques to fine tune processes. Who knows, with the combined intelligence on this forum, we might come up with a totally acidless heat-less refining procedure for lower grade materials that will revolutionalize refining. My point, discouragemnet is almost never the answer.

Thanks Guys, and keep up the good work,
Nick 😉
I recently read an article that talked about 2 brothers that have come up with a revolutionary idea for precious metal recovery from e-scrap. When I read the article my understanding was that they would take all e-scrap grind it up and then electrocuted somehow. Forgive me I don't know the details it didn't speak on details. But the electricity would somehow get all the precious metals off. Or maybe All metals I'm not quite sure. Again. And then they would process it with acid and whatnot to get those said metals whether they be precious or base metals. Perhaps someone can look it up and give a better more comprehensive understanding then I
 
Back
Top